"'Mr. Eissenstat also mentioned that if the Ministry of Health did not correct this situation, the pharmaceutical industry in the United States and related interest groups could become very vocal and interfere with other interests that Colombia could have in the United States,' said the letter, which was obtained by the nonprofit Knowledge Economy International."
Gunboat Diplomacy, United Fruit, Henry Kissinger
The term "Gunboat Diplomacy" refers to a 19th- and early 20th-century practice of countries sending warships to threaten and intimidate smaller countries.
United Fruit was an American company that controlled land in Central and South America and had a near or complete monopoly on fruit-growing and distribution in the regions. The term "Banana Republic" comes from the way the company and other corporate interests like ITT would join with the U.S. government to enforce plutocratically controlled government against popular democratic uprisings and elections in the region.
Coincident with the threats against Colombia, the Obama administration invited Henry Kissinger to the Pentagon where Defense Secretary Ash Carter awarded him the Distinguished Public Service Award. The Nation has the story:
"Kissinger, Carter said, 'demonstrated how serious thinking and perspective can deliver solutions to seemingly intractable problems.' As to allegations of war crimes, 'the fact is,' said Kissinger, he and Richard Nixon 'were engaged in good causes.'"
Just one example (of many) of a "solution" Kissinger (in support of and with help from then-giant corporation ITT) engineered was the 1973 overthrow of the government of Chile, installing Augusto Pinochet, who killed or "disappeared" between 10,000 and 30,000 Chileans for the crime of supporting democracy and unions. Defending Kissinger for this, his biographer refers to a different gunboat diplomacy action in another banana republic, Guatemala:
"Even his authorized biographer, Niall Ferguson, doesn't deny that Kissinger is a criminal but rather mitigates the crimes by comparing them to other crimes: 'Nearly a hundred times as many people,' Ferguson writes, 'died' as a result of John Foster Dulles's actions in Guatemala as ...were 'disappeared' in Chile... after the 1973 coup vigorously encouraged by Kissinger, yet 'you will search the libraries in vain for The Trial of John Foster Dulles.'" (Ferguson apparently hasn't yet read the books by David Talbot and Stephen Kinzer).
Has the "Swiss" firm Novartis becomes the 21st-century version of United Fruit and ITT? At least they were "American" companies. This time the U.S. appears to be engaging in gunboat diplomacy in support of multinational corporations in general.
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