We are publishing the third and final part of our interview with Pedro Miguel, the advisor of the National Institute of Political Education in Mexico’s governing party MORENA.
In the United States, between 35 and 40% of the population does not believe in the democratic institutions of the country. They have a fundamental criticism in regards to the political and economic situation of the U.S.
And they are armed. And they have a leader who calls them to insurgency: Donald Trump.
“Mexico needs to prepare for a wave of refugees from the U.S.”
On the other side, we have Biden, who is paralyzed institutionally. He has no clear project left. The one he had was boycotted and sabotaged at all ends.
And heading to the 2024 elections, there is a candidate who, in the current political scenario, prepares to lose and disclaim these, supported by millions of armed fanatics.
He has already demonstrated his capacity to take over a government building with the storm on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. And now, 5 years, the Biden Administration and a lot of hate campaigning later, where will this end up?
Given the current political landscape, the most reasonable thing for Mexico to do is to prepare for refugees coming from the U.S.
This is a headline you are delivering here…
Just imagine it. Shootings every day, a widespread social insurrection. And there is no political solution in sight, because the Republican Party has been infiltrated, hijacked, overtaken by an ideology that is anti-establishment and anti-systemic. We are talking about armed groups here!
The system of liberal democracy can integrate and assimilate anti-systemic movements, as long as they are unarmed and peaceful. But in the United States, this movement has since years been arming itself up and proposing violence as the correct path to decide political conflicts.
And today there are dozens of groups, like the Survivalists, the Libertarians, the Proud Boys and so on, which emerge from the depth of the U.S. and consider that a rebellion is the only path ahead, should Trump now win the elections.
And for Mexico, this is a very worrying situation. We have to the north a neighbor that, 20 years ago dominated 30% of global trade, today conducts 11% of it, and whose share within the next 20 years will fall to approximately 4%. Which superpower can stand that without going to war?
So, there will be two wars, one in the attempt to avoid the other: The U.S. will go to war with China in order to avoid the civil war inside itself.
Meanwhile, the arrival of Trump to the presidency has destroyed all international confidence towards the United States: He clearly has showed that he does not care for his allies, except their military spending, and, with very minor exceptions, he refrained from using military interventions as a means of politics. His presidency caused a huge trauma for the US allies.
From Mexican point of view: Trump or Biden?
My immediate answer is: None of them.
To be true: Trump has been the most respectful president towards Mexico since decades. Not because he was a respectful individual who cares about principles, but because he is a person who gives a damn about the rest of the world.
His basic demands were: that Mexicans stopped going to the U.S. and that we should return American factories to them. Well, the factories came to Mexico on the basis of an economic model and by private decision.
Actually, interventionism is in the genes of the American system. They can’t think otherwise. Notwithstanding, there is the insight growing in the White House that the future of Mexico will not be decided there anymore.
And whenever there was an act of U.S interventionism, Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador reacted strongly, without limiting the tone. This has not led to a rupture of relations but to more respect.
And the degree of interventionism has decreased. During their times, Bush and Obama were deciding on the movements of the Mexican Armed Forces! That is not happening anymore.
And what was Trump’s interventionism? To stop Central American immigrants. Here the Mexican government at first had a policy that was a little utopic: to guarantee the free passage of all immigrants, without documentation. That was rejected by the U.S., caused security problems within Mexico and was even dangerous for the immigrants themselves.
That policy changed later on. And besides that, there was no intervention at all during the four years of the Trump administration.
At the end, there is a truth: We cannot move away. The United States is there, right in the north, and we cannot pack Mexico up and move to another continent.
The famous Argentine writer Fonetti once went to the U.S. to held a conference. He explained in detail and length how the US had intervened in Latin America, how they colonized us, how they exploited us again and again. Then, someone asked at the end of the speech, whether the United States would expect anything from Latin America that would benefit us.
Fonetti answered ‘Yes’ and continued: ‘I think if they permit us, we may be able to save them’.
Actually, the US model of civilization is on the road to the abyss. I referred to the points in politics and economy, and in social terms, this tendency is visible everywhere, for instance in daily school shootings and absolute unhappiness.
This is a society of completely isolated, disarticulated individuals. They are born, they grow and they die alone.
On the other opposite side are collaborative, sharing societies. This communitarian culture of Central America is what saved Mexico till today despite all colonization, invasion, earthquakes, economic crises and so on.
And this culture is today also present within the United States, among the Spanish speaking communities. The Mexican population today practices the culture in the United States.
Russian agent or not?
How is the issue of Ukraine evaluated here? What is your opinion?
The perception in Mexico is very divided. The right sides with Ukraine. The left, in its majority, sides with Russia.
And you are called a Russian agent (laughs). Where does that story come from?
It all begins with the Presidential airplane. Lopez Obrador decided to sell the plane, but it could not be sold.
And as I like planes, I watch Youtube videos of them. And there I see this beautiful Russian aircraft model Beriev 500. This is a firefighting aircraft that descends, gets 200 tons of water in 14 seconds and rises up again to release the water over the fire. An incredible aircraft.
Then I went to President Lopez Obrador and said: ‘How about we propose the Russians to exchange the presidential airplane with one of these?’ He responded: ‘Well, you got a ‘go’. Investigate this idea’.
Then I looked for contacts, and found one in the Russian civil aviation. And a proposal was made. This was a triangle: A European company bought the presidential plane, and with that money, Mexico was to purchase 4 Russian helicopters of the type MI 17. Because in the meantime, the Mexican military did not like my plane Beriev, they told me that the waters in Mexico would nıt permit its operation. They said ‘we don’t want that plane, we want helicopters’.
I said OK, ‘I will get you the helicopters’. The Mexican Navy actually already uses Russian helicopters.
At the end, we received a proposal, which I presented to the President. But the European company wanted to buy the presidential plane very much below the price, hence, there was no agreement and not even a letter of understanding.
Someone carried the news to Lopez-Doriga, famous TV host, but in a wrong matter. They told him the story that I flew secretly to Moscow, had achieved the agreement. According to that story, I was blaming the Secretary of Defense for the failure of the deal. He presented that news on TV.
Well, I made fun of him, saying that I was a disguised Bolshevik, a kind of Mr. Bean who had flown secretly to Moscow. Hence, now I am considered a Russian agent (laughs).
Let’s see what you sat about the Ukraine crisis, and we’ll know whether you are a Russian agent.
My opinion is that it’s both: it is an imperial invasion and a reaction towards a military encirclement.
There are serious problems in regards to Russian-speaking population inherited from the times of the Soviet Union. And there are only two possible solutions: Either changing borders or dissolving them.
You are a Russian agent then (laughs), as you seem to support changing borders. Because that is what happened in the referendums in eastern Ukraine.
It is changing borders, of course. But there is truth in the barbaric approach of Ukraine towards these populations. This is part of the reality. The Russian invasion is without doubt a barbaric act, but there are barbaric acts before that.
The Soviet Union’s solution to that problem was brutal, but effective: they moved populations, the dislocated people, but at the end, they had achieved harmony and borders were factually eliminated.
I know Kyiv. More than that, I was in Kyiv the day Chernenko died and Gorbachev climbed to power (becoming General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, UWI).
The KGB had invited me to learn the Soviet Union, just as the CIA frequently invites people, to show how beautiful and successful they were.
Returning to the question of Ukraine...
There have been referendums, clean or not, where a huge majority voted for the annexation to Russia. This is right, this is wrong, its morally justified or not…Whatever! This is now a given and taken fact.
Now, Russia has nuclear weapons and a nuclear strategy. That means an attack on these territories, which Russia now considers its own, can provoke a nuclear response from Moscow. This is now a matter of fact.
I am not at all in favor of Russia’s invasion. But at the same time, NATO’s strategy of encircling Russia is also madness.
And Putin has a point when asks how the U.S. would respond if Russia deploys nuclear weapons to North Mexico? No superpower can accept that.
And here was the proposal of Mexican President Lopez Obrador: ‘Stop the shooting for 5 years and start the talks and negotiations’. Because in 5 years, we will be in a different world.
Almost no wars end with a complete victory and defeat. And the most probable outcome is that all terminates with a negotiation. Then, let us save the unnecessary killing in the meantime, skip the clashes and get right to the table.
Russia and Ukraine have to negotiate the same as they did when the conflict and started and they will have to in 5 years from now on.
We have seen this in the wars in Central America, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan: A ceasefire and negotiations are proposed. The proposal is rejected. 10 years and thousands of deaths later, negotiations start with the same content.
The only exception is the complete defeat of one side, and that will not happen here. The sooner the negotiations begin, the more lives will be saved.