Noninterventionism will not clean up Joe Biden’s mess

Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

State Department Holdovers Continue to Work with Anti-US Regimes

President Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia on May 13 praised the Gulf countries for exporting technology, not terrorism, and for building, not bombing: “This great transformation has not come from Western interventionists … giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs.”

In general, this noninterventionist approach is correct. However, to restore US leadership, Trump must reverse the interventions imposed by the anti-US Joe Biden regime and the State Department (DOS).

Latin America is full of examples: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and others. Guatemala could be the most blatant. The Trump administration’s inaction there de facto continues the Biden policy of imposing criminal socialists on Guatemala.

Most of the heroin and cocaine, and illegal immigrants entering the United States, pass through Guatemala. Mexico has strict controls on air and sea access to its territory, but its 595-mile border with Guatemala is porous. Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama have helped their leftist allies to dominate the Guatemalan state, and this meddling has facilitated illegal flows.

Guatemalans would welcome a US policy of supporting the proper application of law. DOGE revealed USAID subversion, including the imposition of perverse gender ideology, which Guatemalans overwhelmingly reject. USAID financed violence as part of the DOS agenda of imposing Bernardo Arévalo as president in 2023.

DOS-imposed prosecutors and judges have protected the destructive agenda of the successors to the Fidel Castro-backed insurgents. Their agenda includes preventing hydroelectric plants and mines from operating and invading private property. The violence and consequent unemployment foment emigration.

Soviet-aligned propaganda falsely attributed the insurgents’ military inability to overthrow the government by force to scorched earth and massacres. This false narrative attempted to hide what the communists had learned in battle: Guatemala’s indigenous population’s culture rejects collectivism, expropriation, and redistribution of wealth. These individuals would thrive with a decentralized, limited government.

Having failed militarily, the insurgents in 1996 abandoned violence for internal subversion. DOS helped this new strategy under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, but it hit the lottery with Obama. His team assumed leadership of the effort to subjugate Guatemala to globalism.

Hillary Clinton took over Guatemala’s Justice Ministry in 2010. Biden and US Ambassador Todd Robinson, in effect, a proconsul, added control of the judiciary in 2016. The Guatemalan president had recourse but eschewed it to avoid confronting DOS.

Robinson’s successor in 2017 continued his DOS career colleagues’ imperialist agenda, but he let Alejandro Giammattei slip through the cracks into the presidency. When the Biden-Robinson high court’s term ended in 2021, Giammattei appointed magistrates not under DOS control. This freed Attorney General Consuelo Porras to fire corrupt DOS prosecutors and prosecute them and corrupt DOS judges.

Calling her corrupt without providing evidence, DOS sanctioned Porras for having properly applied the law. DOS blatantly intervened in the 2022 attorney-general appointment process to keep Porras from reappointment. This drew numerous US congressional inquiries that would have exposed DOS crimes, had the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) followed the evidence.

DOS was desperate to hide its personnel’s and its agents’ crimes and to continue its conquest of Guatemala. For this, and as part of the Biden agenda of flooding our country with illegal immigrants and drugs, DOS involved itself in the 2023 electoral fraud that installed communist Arévalo. His party’s website decried the “odious inequalities generated by uncontrolled capitalism.”

The Biden regime and DOS vilified Porras for investigating more than 1,000 complaints of electoral fraud and uncovering evidence that requires Arévalo’s removal from office. US officials intimidated Guatemalan society, especially the judiciary, through information warfare techniques to have Arévalo illegally inaugurated and to keep him in office.

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his assistant Brian Nichols, in separate HFAC hearings, admitted DOS had extorted Guatemalan congressmen to pass a law intended to remove Porras from office. Incumbent Ambassador Tobin Bradley and his number-two, Patrick Ventrell, have threatened Guatemalan officials and businessmen with visa cancellations and economic consequences. The goal has been to get them to support Arévalo and oppose Porras. Bradley and Ventrell are still in their posts executing Biden’s policy four months into Trump’s administration.

Despite DOS crimes against her, Porras has been faithful to her oath and cooperates with US agencies regarding extraditions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said extraditions of transnational criminals are essential to US national security.

The US embassy recently bragged about extraditions to the United States that they attributed to “elements” of Porras’s ministry. They omitted that only Porras could have requested the extraditions and that Guatemala’s attorney general is not subject to presidential authority. Bradley and Ventrell want to keep Trump in the dark regarding Porras’s importance as a US ally. She is pivotal to exposing DOS treason to the US public.

Trump’s philosophy, as expressed in Saudi Arabia, suggests his preference to let Guatemalans work out their Arévalo problem. This will not cut it. Biden and DOS, not Guatemalans, created the problem. Trump should immediately remove Bradley and Ventrell, work with Porras, and show Guatemalans he supports the rule of law. Guatemalans have shown that, once bad foreign actors have been extracted, they have the potential to successfully govern their own affairs and be a US ally.

Steve Hecht is a businessman, writer, and film producer, born and raised in New York. He has lived and worked in Guatemala since 1972. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Master of Business Administration in Banking and Finance, both from Columbia University.

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