Ever since Trump was elected president, people have been casting aspersions at Russia for their alleged interference in that election. With the attempted coup now underway in Venezuela, we have an example of how the United States does interference — when they don’t like the result of another country’s elections, they just destabilize the government and install their own guy. In the case of Venezuela, the U.S. has been trying to take out their government since at least the time of Hugo Chavez in the early 2000s, going so far as to pull a military maneuver in which Chavez was briefly kidnapped. Chavez survived that attempt. Now it’s Maduro’s turn.
Before we get to Maduro, however, there are a few important things to know about Venezuela. For one, it’s sitting on an ocean of oil, with reserves larger than those of Saudi Arabia. This makes them of major strategic importance to the U.S., and explains why we want control over their country.
To that end, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on Venezuelan officials since Obama declared Venezuela a “national security threat” in 2014. The most recent sanctions in 2017 aimed to cut off Venezuela’s access to U.S. financial markets, with the goal of starving the Venezuelan government of cash.
Sanctions sound relatively innocent, but in fact they are a weapon of economic warfare designed to destabilize a country. The way they work is that they disrupt the economy, which worsens, causing the people to become discontent. The people then demand that the government make things better. Just to make sure the people have an option friendly to the United States, we also fund the political opposition.
In Venezuela, America’s guy is Guaido and his party (“Popular Will”). Since declaring himself president of the country, Guaido has received the full support of the United States government, which rushed to legitimize his claim by recognizing him as president just hours after the announcement. Right wing neighboring countries recognized Guaido as well. Even the EU has fallen into line, giving their imprimatur to America’s latest plans for regime change.
The contrast between America’s man in Caracas, Guaido, and the elected president Maduro couldn’t be starker. Guaido is a member of a center right party formed in opposition to Chavez. Maduro is a lifelong socialist. Guaido went to graduate school at George Washington University in Washington, DC. where he was groomed for his future role in Venezuelan politics. Maduro started out his working life as a bus driver. It’s easy to see why Guaido is the choice of the ruling class. It remains to be seen, however, if Guaido’s obvious appeal to the world’s elite is shared by the people of Venezuela.
The United States has disingenuously insisted that its interest in Venezuela is humanitarian. Looking around the world, it would seem that there are many other nations at least as deserving of our humanitarian interest as Venezuela. Will we depose their leaders too? As for democracy, it appears that America only likes elections when they return the result they want. God help you if you elect a socialist.
Guaido will very likely be the next president of Venezuela, no matter what their people want or need. If so, he will be like Macron in France, a good neoliberal eager to “reform” his land by making it more friendly to capitalists with their privatized globalist agenda. Since none of this agenda has anything to do with making life better for the working class, the people will likely come to despise him. But by then, we’ll have moved on to new countries and new terrible dictators that America must depose.
If at first you don't succeed...
The attempted/failed coup of Chavez was kinda funny.
As I recall, he got wind of it somehow, and hid his army in the basement. They let the whole thing happen, Chavez was taken away, and the new guy installed.
The Bush II administration folks started recognizing the new guy right away. Then Chavez’s forces came up out of hiding and took things back over. Chavez returned. Bush II folks look a little odd for jumping the gun.
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One thing we know is that when we get involved militarily in a region, we get a wave of immigrants from said region. A well-thought-out plan to “build the wall” would mean no US military actions in South America so that we reduce immigration in the future.
We can separate properties with fences, but the neighbors are still on the other side. My sister once had a neighbor that was difficult/insane, and the fence between them never solved the problem. You could still see the piles of trash, watch the weirdness on the deck, and hear the yelling. If fences could solve problems, she might still be living in that location. Instead, the problem was solved by moving away.
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A final thought – we’ve been after Venezuela’s oil for decades, and hate to see profits not coming our way. It’ll be interesting to see if the Trump administration will finally pull it off, or if we’ll be outmaneuvered once again and will need to try, try again.
Humanitarian or Hegemonic?
Very good points you’ve brought up about this latest Venezuelan caper which has been festering for some years now.
Not only is it oil that interests the US & Global elite, but Venezuela has large amounts of strategic minerals and gold …
– Venezuela Confirms Coltan Deposits and $100 Billion in Gold Reserves –
” Basic Industries and Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz told a press conference that only seven countries in the world have reserves of coltan – a valuable black mineral that combines niobite and tantalite and is used in cell phones and computer chips – in sufficient quantities for export.
Sanz said that “strategic mineral,” also known as “blue gold,” is an irreplaceable material in products such as cellular phones and electromagnetic instruments for aviation and other hi-tech industries.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/venezuela-confirms-coltan-deposits-100-billion-in-gold-reserves/5667429
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American Hegemonic ideology is all too conspicuous once again. In desperation it sees Venezuela, and in fact all the Western Hemisphere, as its own. One has only to look at who leads the world in regime change and coups against democratically elected governments. That would be Washington, DC, with its persistent history of the United States and its brute colonization of other nations and contempt for the rest of the world’s countries. This ideology is fed to American citizens as a fact of life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change
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Here is a relevant video piece by Jeremy Scahill about this situation…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVQn_DdkYlU&feature=youtu.be
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There are 193 UN member States.
22 of them support Guaido.
171 don’t.
The 22 call themselves “the international community”
Well now that you mention it...
Hegemonic makes more sense than humanitarian, but the U.S. says it is motivated by humanitarian interests…
Thanks for the additional info. I often wonder how the media can report the news as if the past never happened. Otherwise, they’d surely notice that this sort of thing has happened before, many times.
Interesting to see the UN numbers and heartened to see that the majority are not in support of the current goings on. Which makes sense for the smaller countries — they could be next!
Not being mentioned
But VERY important:
Venezuela has announced that it will sell oil for currencies other than the petrodollar.
Very bad news for Uncle Sam and the international bankers.
The line
That’s usually the line no one is allowed to cross… : )