The Obama Doctrine

The Obama Doctrine: Replacing Democratically-Elected Governments by Undemocratic Contrivances

Wayne MADSEN

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

Born out of U.S. think tanks, most with covert links to U.S. intelligence agencies, the Obama Doctrine on foreign policy will have at its hallmark the replacement of democratically-elected governments with leaders chosen by undemocratic means. The Obama Doctrine first reared its ugly head in June 2009 when the Obama administration sanctioned a «constitutional coup» against the left-leaning democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. The «cover» for the coup was a contrived Honduran Supreme Court decision that authorized Zelaya’s ouster. The Honduran coup had the support of the U.S.-trained Honduran military, as well as U.S. military personnel in the country detailed from the U.S. Southern Command in Miami.

The Honduran coup was followed in March 2013 by the Paraguayan «show trial» impeachment of leftward-leaning and democratically-elected president Fernando Lugo. The Paraguayan Congress, dominated by right-wing oligarchs, removed Lugo and replaced him with a right-wing savant who took his orders from the U.S. embassy and CIA station in Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital.

Proving to itself that «constitutional coups» could be successful in its own hemisphere, the Obama administration and its CIA operatives, some operating under the non-profit cover of George Soros’s Open Society Institute, set about to organize similar undemocratic changes of government in countries further away. This past February’s ouster of democratically-elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych by a clique of World Bank stooges, Zionists, and neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian parliament led to Europe’s worst crisis since the end of the Cold War.

After deposing Yanukovych, the Obama administration saw another opportunity to depose a democratically-elected populist leader, Thailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. The Thai Constitutional Court, dominated by judges beholden to royalists and wealthy oligarchs, deposed Yingluck because of purely political charges by the Thai right-wing that she abused her office. Yingluck, in an undemocratic manner, was replaced by her Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongphaisan. Nine other government ministers were also ordered to resign. The caretaker government was authorized by the court to remain in power until a July 20 election.

Yingluck and her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, himself deposed in a 2006 military coup, have advocated for Thailand’s poor rural class. The rural movement, known as the «Red Shirts», engaged in street battles with the pro-royalist «Yellow Shirts». The Yellow Shirts never recognized the outcome of the 2011 election, which saw the pro-Red Short Yingluck cruise to victory. The Yellow Shirts conspired with the large CIA station in Bangkok, as well as local Soros-funded operatives, to deploy «rent-a-mobs» to launch protests against the Yingluck administration. 

Red Shirt leaders accused the Thai court of using its powers to unseat a democratically-elected leader. There is little doubt that the clearing out of the Yingluck government in Bangkok was tied directly to the recent visit of Obama to Asia where he set about to recreate the old Cold War Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) to confront the expanding growing power of China in the region. After having secured military base rights in the Philippines, a founding member of the long-defunct SEATO, Obama traveled to Malaysia to discuss an expanding U.S. military role in the country that extends from the Malayan peninsula to Sarawak and Sabah states on the island of Borneo. One holdout for Obama was Thailand, whose pro-Red Shirt government was more interested in expanding economic opportunities for Thailand’s poor agrarian sector of the population than in playing host to Cold War-era military bases and trans-Pacific «free trade» opportunists. For that reason, Obama and his CIA masters conspired with Thailand’s royal family, corporate tycoons, and elements of the Thai military to engineer Yingluck out of power. 

In a three-month period of time, the Obama Doctrine saw the undemocratic expulsion from power of the «2 Ys» – Yanukovych and Yingluck. Based on this success, the Obama administration, with the twin harpy advocates of Obama’s so-called «Responsibility to Protect» policy, UN ambassador Samantha Power and National Security Adviser Susan Rice, at the helm, was more dangerous than ever. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro faced a dual CIA and Soros operation to destabilize Venezuela through street mob action, financial pressure, media propaganda, and attempts to convince Venezuelan military officers to stage a coup.

Media propaganda, channeling contrived news stories about financial collapse in Venezuela, are being facilitated by working relationships between such outlets as Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal and well-funded «think tanks», such as the Inter-American Dialogue rife with Council of Foreign Relations, Ford Foundation, neocon American Enterprise Institute, and Open Society Institute veterans on their board of directors and staff. Master currency manipulator and Wall Street bankers have conspired to devalue the Venezuelan bolivar, resulting in de facto boycotts of Venezuela by multinational corporations like Ford Motors and Toyota and resultant lay-offs in the auto industry and other private sector industries. Bringing international bank pressure on a targeted nation is a hallmark of the Obama Doctrine, as witnessed by the World Bank and European Union financial pressure on Ukraine prior to the coup against Yanukovych.

The same combination of political and economic pressure was brought against Thailand by the United States and its Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) allies of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. It is clear that the United States is bent on restoring a new version of the old SEATO to counteract China, Russia, and their Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The old SEATO consisted of the United States, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, and Pakistan. What the Obama administration appears intent on creating is a new Asian defense alliance to complement the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union. The TPP is planned as an «Asian EU», which the United States seeks to dominate. The TPP consists of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam (South Vietnam was an observer member of the old SEATO), Mexico, Peru, and Chile. In addition, Laos, South Korea, and Taiwan were also observer members of SEATO. 

With the Philippines’ agreement on U.S. military bases, it appears likely that it will be the next country to join the TPP. But one holdout was Thailand. As a basis for any agreement to participate in the TPP, Yingluck demanded special guarantees for Thai farmers, a base of support for the Red Shirts. Washington and its trade allies refused and a decision was made in the ivory towers of Washington and Wall Street to depose the troublesome Yingluck and replace her with a government more to the liking of the Wall Street bankers and the Pentagon generals eager to restore SEATO as a centurion force for the «free traders» of the TPP.

Rather than seek to have Pakistan rejoin a Western-led Asian defense pact, the architects of a new anti-Chinese and anti-Russian SEATO hope to lure India into the fold. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra Modi is seen as more attuned to the wishes of the Western defense planners than is the Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi, the grandson of Indira Gandhi. It was Indira Gandhi who viewed SEATO as an imperialist threat to Asia, thus prompting her to establish close relations with the Soviet Union. The Wall Street bankers and Pentagon war planners are not about to cast their lots with Rahul’s Congress Party.

After the ouster of the «2Ys» of Yanukovych and Yingluck, the Western war mongers and global bankers are in search of new prey. Venezuela and Cuba are now feeling the heat… South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, and other nations showing degrees of independence from the «New World Order» are clearly in the gun sights of the Obama Doctrine practitioners.