Drums of war in Venezuela: By Jorge Trevino

The current situation in Venezuela needs to be analysed within the frame of the ‘Monroe Doctrine’ that imposes the unilateral control of Latin America by the U.S. The ‘Monroe Doctrine’ goes far beyond a policy of opposing European colonialism in the Americas. It’s, in the facts, a political and military occupation over the Latin American landmass where national government are forbidden to contravene key political or trading interests of Washington in the region and for external global powers to intervene in the area so the U.S. can exert its influence undisturbed.

The so-called cohort of leftist governments that ruled Latin America from the last part of the Clinton administration to the end of the Obama’s regime in 2017 – when the U.S. concentrated in the war against terrorism, the support of regime change operations in former Yugoslavia, North Africa and the Middle East, and in counteracting Russia in the Ukraine and Syria, and China in the Asia-Pacific – was the region’s ‘golden age’ for the progressive governments that came into power in South America. For first time in nearly 200 years – the Monroe Doctrine was issued in 1823 – the subcontinent was set momentously free of regime change operations, coups and violent far right operations sponsored by the CIA and the local oligarchs.

However, the party didn’t take long. After a decade or so the progressive governments of the area starting to fall down like a house of cards one after the other. From 2015 to 2017, during the last quarter of the Obama administration, the governments of Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), Bilma Roussef (Brazil) – the economical locomotives of Mercosur – and Rafael Correa (Ecuador), one of the brains of the South American integration process, felt to give birth to a renovated wave of far right leaders that took over under suspicious allegations of corruption supported by the U.S. Once again the clock of History went back in South America into what it looks to be a renascence of the violent and corrupted oligarchs that have historically gained power from the hand of the CIA.

Who is Juan Guaido?

Guaido self-proclaimed on a street assembly interim President is not only comic but pathetic. Proportionally speaking, Napoleon did something similar once when taking the crown from the Pope's hands and self-proclaimed emperor of the French. Whereas Bonaparte was in front of the Pope and within Nôtre Dame's cathedral, Guaido did it on the street with the bless of a foreign power and its bunch of regional vassals camouflaged by the Organisation of American States, a U.S. led institution specialised in meddling in other countries affairs and backing coups. The fact that
Guaido travelled to Washington in December-January and that almost all Latin American nations did not last in supporting the coup by recognising Guaido overnight, is proof that the coup is U.S. made and that the objective is to impose an ad hoc pro-American puppet government for serving not democracy, no human rights, no free speech but the interests of the American corporations and, at the same time, kicking the Russians and the Chinese out of Latin America.

Juan Guaido is a character that belongs to the most violent Venezuelan far right. He participated in the violent riots against the government in 2007, 2014 and 2017. He did some post-graduate studies at the George Washington University in DC, home of some of the most macabre American ‘deep state’ high rank officials: Allen Dulles(CIA director 1953-1961), J. Edgar Hoover (1924-1972), Colin Powell (Secretary of State during second American invasion to Irak) and nuclear physician Edward Teller (creator of the hydrogen bomb). With such an education baggage it's not hard to figure out to what interests this person will serve if the underway coup fructifies. Guaido's only legitimacy is that of Bolsonaro's in Brazil, Duque in Colombia or Macri in Argentina: Local oligarchs aligned to Washington’s deep state for political, economical, diplomatic, propaganda and military support, a colour revolution now being carried in the Americas.

Maduro's allies and foes

So far Maduro's allies at a domestic level are the provinces executives, the judiciary power, the electoral commission, the army's high command, and an important part of the Venezuelan people. At the international stage, China, Russia, NATO's Turkey, Iran, Mexico, Uruguay, Bolivia, Cuba and few others still recognise Maduro as president. Mexico and Uruguay have offered to mediate between Maduro's government and Guaido's opposition with the latter refusing.

In practical terms neither China or Russia have the necessary leverage to modify the outcome of what will happen next in Venezuela. From a global point of view the Venezuelan putsch has to be seen as the ultimate operation theatre in the American war against China and Russia. In that way the American wars against Russia in the Ukraine and Syria and against China in Taiwan and the South China Sea, have adopted a new more ad hoc theatre for the empire: it's back yard. Venezuela is too far from China or Russia to provide real help. Their leverage there is tiny and militarily speaking neither Russia or China have military bases in the nearby whereas the U.S. has plenty in Colombia, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Peru and Ecuador, with pro-american governments in Colombia and Brazil (bordering Venezuela), backed up by Argentina, Ecuador and Peru surrounding and suffocating Venezuela in each direction. Something is certain, if the shots commence no-one will put his hand in fire for Venezuela. Russia and China may provide diplomatic support and the attempt to break up the imminent full scope economic, financial and commercial blockade that Washington will set up if Maduro doesn’t resigns and leave, but the truth is that the leverage that Russia and China have there is minimum.
How far the U.S. is willing to go in Venezuela? Everything indicates that far enough to depose Maduro. I personally don't think the U.S. will go to a direct invasion of Venezuela, a military intervention is hard to sell and many times highly unpopular. I rather see an operation type Juan Antonio Noriega in Panama in 1989 when American special forces kidnapped then Panamanian strong man and imprisoned him in Guantanamo.

The only uncertainty in here is whether the U.S. will go for a rapid "solution" - the kidnapping or assassination of Maduro - or if they go for the long route: the economic annihilation of Maduro's regime and the starving of his population.

Blatantly said, Latin America is as of today the last region in the world where the U.S. leverage is still unrivalled by the other two big powers. Neither China or Russia can do much but mourning on whatever the U.S. can do in Venezuela.
What is alarmingly disturbing is the way WAR can unify the whole American society. Once someone calls for the shots in a third country the rest clap in fervent “patriotism”.