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The Prometheans were not alone in eyeing Ukraine. Adolf Hitler saw the region as a key to the eastward expansion of German lebensraum — or “living space”. During the war, parts of the Promethean League became willing collaborators of the Nazi war machine, feeding it intelligence from what Germany deemed its “Wild East”. The project continued after the war, with the US Central Intelligence Agency taking the place of the German Abwehr. The CIA actively recruited fascist collaborators from Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, and beyond — absorbing them into security agencies and establishing intellectual centers in exile that aimed at powering reaction back home. Declassified CIA documents reveal the intention to “exploit nationalist cultural and other dissident tendencies in Ukraine” and “exploit the minority nationality question in the Soviet Union” in the service of the global anti-communist project. With the defeat of socialism in Eastern Europe, these tendencies re-emerged in a vicious tide of reaction, and the long-suppressed echoes of Prometheanism began to sound throughout the region.

The collapse of the socialist counterweight to US power also unleashed a series of wars that dismantled any illusions that the “post-historic” era would bring peace. The assault on Yugoslavia, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, reminded an occasionally-intractable Europe of US suzerainty. But if the governments of Western Europe sometimes greeted US wars with determined, if feeble, protest, their Eastern neighbors were unburdened by such qualms. In 2003, the US war against the Iraqi people found vigorous cheerleaders in all the new Eastern European entrants to NATO.

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The Atlanticist project arrived not only with guns. It arrived with bureaucrats and neoliberal dogmas — accelerating processes of “shock therapy” already underway. Across Eastern Europe, industrial production had already collapsed in the post-socialist period. Our cultural institutions were defunded. Education was “depoliticized”, substituting a left curriculum critical of capitalism and imperialism with one seeped in bourgeois ideology. By the time Joe Biden outlined the conditions for Poland’s accession to NATO in 1997, his prescriptions fell on trained ears. “Businesses like banks, the energy sector, the state airline, the state copper producer, and the telecommunications monopoly will have to be privatized,” he said. For fulfilling what many Eastern European reactionaries saw as their destiny — membership in “civilized”, Christian Europe — the hegemon would extract a bounty.

For the US, this partnership would prove fruitful. For decades, the US had been eyeing control over Eurasia — the “chief geopolitical prize”, as Polish-US strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in 1997. Ukraine, he said, was an “important space on the Eurasian chessboard” and “a geopolitical pivot” that would contain Russia and secure “unlimited” US control over the sprawling landmass and its resources. But the flimsy Franco-German attempts at securing what is sometimes termed Europe’s “strategic autonomy” undermined the US’s eastward advance. From the Druzhba to the Nordstream pipelines, projects of Eurasian integration threatened to undermine the US hegemonic project. “New Europe” became an important vehicle for containing these impulses. And their strategies — and the myriad institutions created to advance them — increasingly echoed those of the Prometheans from a century ago. In 2015, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović and Polish President Andrzej Duda launched the Three Seas Initiative — the NATOfied brood of Piłsudski’s Intermarium. The Initiative would seek to shift trade across the Eurasian landmass from an East-West to a North-South axis, advancing the US objective of decoupling Europe from Russia and China

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As the war in Ukraine escalated in February 2022, that transformation gained new strength. Emboldened by the US nuclear umbrella, and elevated politically within a fragmenting order that continues to disadvantage its peripheries, the Prometheans emerged as the lynchpins of a new, militarised, and subordinated Europe. In 2023, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned that Europe’s pursuit of strategic autonomy “means shooting into our own knee and making with China the same mistake as with Russia”. So here we begin to see why (certain) Eastern Europeans are so excited about a federated Europe that auspiciously excludes Russia — even while extending into Turkey and Azerbaijan. And we see why that story may be far from over. A Trump presidency will bring challenges to NATO that might see European strategic sovereignty reappear on the agenda. Will he turn to the New Prometheans to keep Europe in check once again?

• What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
• What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
• Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
• Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
• What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
• Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
• How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
• Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
• If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?

The governments of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico congratulate and express our solidarity with the Venezuelan people, who went to the polls en masse on July 28 to define their own future.

We are following the process of counting the votes very closely and we call on the Venezuelan electoral authorities to proceed expeditiously and publicly disclose the data broken down by polling station.

Controversies over the electoral process must be resolved through institutional means. The fundamental principle of popular sovereignty must be respected through impartial verification of the results.

In this context, we call on political and social actors to exercise the utmost caution and restraint in their demonstrations and public events, in order to avoid an escalation of violent episodes.

Maintaining social peace and protecting human lives must be the priority concerns at this time.

Let this be an opportunity to express, once again, our absolute respect for the sovereignty of the will of the Venezuelan people. We reiterate our willingness to support the efforts of dialog and the search for agreements that benefit the Venezuelan people.