BARACK OBAMA, the president of the world’s largest military power in the history of humanity, has begun a new phase in the history of Yankee intervention in Venezuela. 

According to him, our country represents an “unusual and extraordinary” threat to the security of the United States.

With all the characteristic cynicism of the spokespersons for imperialism, the aggressor wants to portray itself as the victim.

But what is the reality of the situation?

The Venezuelan people are a peaceful people.

The only recorded case in history of an incursion by Venezuelan armed forces outside of our borders dates back to the 19th century, when the troops led by the liberator Simon Bolivar went to fight alongside the peoples of Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia for independence from the colonial Spanish empire. 

Since then, there has not been one instance of a military presence outside our borders, except on occasions when the armed forces have been invited to military displays for celebrations or anniversaries, such as the Battle of Ayacucho.

So where does Obama’s complaint come from? Is it really credible that a country such as Venezuela could threaten a superpower such as the US?

Ever since it became likely that Hugo Chavez would be the clear winner of the elections in 1998, the US government has set about promoting huge campaigns designed to present a grotesquely distorted view of the leader. 

Chavez was a figure who stood out and incarnated the patriotic traditions of our people, with his strong involvement in popular causes. 

Once he assumed the presidency, the campaign was intensified — not only in terms of propaganda against him, but in terms of concrete actions to overthrow him too.

The US financed and co-ordinated conspiracies and coup d’etats which were defeated by a rapid popular mobilisation and the majority patriotic sectors in the national armed forces. 

The US hasn’t ceased to finance and promote conspiracies in the country, as well as every possible type of activity in order to destabilise and provoke the defeat of the Bolivarian governments led by Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. The plots failed and they will carry on failing.

Nevertheless, they won’t modify their behaviour. The most violent factions, and those most aligned to the interests of the US, impose their politics on the weakest. 

With this in mind, when we talk about US interests we might refer to Venezuela’s petrol reserves, which are the biggest in the world, or to its geopolitical position.

These are two major strategic factors which worry the US empire, especially in the light of a national government which firmly recognises itself as socialist. As two proud countrymen, Chavez and Maduro have sustained a national politics which prioritises Venezuela’s own ownership of its principal natural resource.

What’s more they have stimulated a unified politics in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), an organisation which the biggest energy-consuming powers have attempted to destroy ever since the times of Henry Kissinger. 

And they had almost achieved their objective, until Chavez came on the world petrol scene frustrating the previously servile plans assigned to such countries.

Chavez and Maduro have as socialists applied policies of wealth redistribution — this time not to enrich the privileged sectors of Venezuelan or foreign capital, but to improve in a consistent manner the lives of the Venezuelan people. 

The betterment in the material conditions of the Venezuelan people and the sovereign politics which characterise the government have made Venezuela a strong country — not just for its material riches, but for its revolutionary, Bolivarian vision. 

But as well as policies that are in the interests of the nation, Comandante Chavez spread the seeds of Latin American integration that had been docile since the times of Bolivar. 

In this way, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alba), Petrocaribe, the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) were born. 

Under Chavez’s leadership, Bolivar stopped being just a relic for veneration and was brought back to the present world.

Not only was this expressed in public discourse, but it was expressed through concrete actions too.

Once again, a unified America, our America, has begun to be seen not only as a nation in itself, a territory which simply exists, but a nation for itself — that is, a nation which is constantly aware of the huge potential that lies in its unification, the impressive riches which lie in its soil and, more importantly, the creative power of its people. 

This is what Obama considers an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the security of the US.

Following his logic, should we be weak and submissive, absorbed in our daily problems? Should we essentially stop being Bolivarian?

Should we abandon our principles and our dignity in order to earn the recognition of the empire? I’ll let you be the judge of that.

• Ali Rodriguez Araque is the Venezuelan ambassador to Cuba.