Appetite for destruction

The Trump Administration has ruled out any dialogue with Venezuelan President Maduro. The regime change cult on the Capitol Hill has further dismissed the idea of mediation within Venezuela. It’s appetite for destruction and it’s happening again right in front of our eyes.

What follows is a feature titled “Appetite for destruction” chosen from Fars news agency coupled with an open letter by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, addressing the people in the United States of America.

Efforts by the United Nations and Latin American leaders to resolve the Venezuela crisis with diplomacy and mediation has gone nowhere, as the US is against such efforts, saying the world needs to unite behind a demand for unconditional regime change. The new sheriff in Washington has declared the “time for dialogue with Maduro has long passed,” and that the US now wants everyone to accept Juan Guaido as his replacement. Washington never gave any time for President Maduro because no one at the White House believes in dialogue and diplomacy. They just want to remove Venezuela from the playing field. It’s the same sentiment that turned Syria and Yemen into ruins. Making things worse, Navy Admiral Craig Faller, the head of US Southern Command, says the military is fully prepared to protect US diplomatic personnel and facilities in Venezuela if necessary.

The Trumpsters, not to be outdone by their predecessors, have come up with two enemies lists. The first one was coined by John Bolton, who is now National Security Adviser. He has come up with the “troika of tyranny” to describe Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, where he sees “the dangers of poisonous ideologies without control.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also been looking at Venezuela. He has declared that “the Maduro regime is illegitimate and the US will work diligently to restore a real democracy to that country.” They both talk about the same thing: regime change for countries that are reluctant to fall in line with Washington’s demands. Other regimes with awful human rights records – to include Saudi Arabia and the usurper, child killer regime of Israel - are given a pass as long as they stay aligned with the US on policy.
The decision of the Trump administration to recognize the member of the Venezuelan opposition, Juan Guaidó, as an unelected “interim president,” will make the situation in the South American country increasingly tense, with efforts to force the current government out of power having grown in intensity over the past few days. President Maduro has managed to maintain his position thanks to the loyalty of the country’s well-armed military, in addition to popular support from Venezuelans who voted for Maduro, as well as Venezuelans who don’t like Guaido, a politician hand-picked and imposed upon them by Washington.

Taken together, the long-standing campaign to effect regime change in Venezuela - a campaign that has been ongoing ever since Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor, was elected in 1998 - will go nowhere. The Trump administration officials are free to stick to their dream of installing a so-called “friendly” government in the oil-rich country. But that will be it.
The substantial concern is that the US might turn to other means to bring about regime change, including the instigation of a new proxy war. After all, the US has not ruled out direct military intervention, and based on its troubling history of ousting Latin American governments through coups, the US might follow the roadmaps of destruction it used to push for regime change in both Syria and Ukraine.
Indeed, there is this danger of another major proxy war, this time in Latin America - much like what has transpired in Syria and Ukraine. The manufacture of such a conflict might pit the US against both Russia and China, both of which have invested heavily in Venezuela, and by extension in the current government, for nearly two decades. The troubling thing is that the US has already laid much of the groundwork for such a proxy war and the chaotic situation on the Venezuelan-Colombian border offers US intelligence enough cover to funnel arms, money and personnel into Venezuela to further destabilize the country. President Maduro says the US has already been doing this for much of the past year.

It is now up to the United Nations and the international civil society to stop Washington’s new appetite for destruction, an effort to push the already tenuous situation in Venezuela to its boiling point. The US has made it clear that it plans to continue pushing for escalation. In pursuit of regime-change agenda and as part of a larger strategy of containment aimed at Russia and China, the US seeks to manufacture a “humanitarian” justification for regime change, funneling of arms and weapons into the country via its foreign borders, mass funding of the political opposition, and covert involvement of intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA.
Given the precarious situation, the roadmap for Venezuela is national dialogue and reconciliation, not effectively creating two governments, the clearest consequence of which would be to deepen the rift in Venezuelan society by forcing citizens to choose sides and take up arms. As it seems, the United States government led by President Donald Trump has entered a dangerous moral universe. As the cult of regime change in Washington walks farther and farther down a destructive path where they see one another only, and as their new adventure in Venezuela points for yet another geopolitical and humanitarian disaster, just like what happened in Syria and Yemen, they will end up having abandoned some of their self-styled fundamental claims about morality, human rights, respect for fundamental norms of international law.

In making their pitch, they have forced more than a dozen European countries to recognize the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, as the country’s legitimate president. In lockstep with the US, Guaidó has asserted that the time for dialogue is over. His intransigent opposition to negotiations is perhaps another reason to question his motives. This comes despite continued United Nations, Chinese and Russian support for Nicolás Maduro’s government and national dialogue.
There is no question that Venezuelans are suffering and some even want to see a change in governance. But that has to come through national dialogue and democratic means and not foreign-instigated regime change campaign that they know fully well will be disastrous. Guaidó stands firm in rejecting dialogue and has not even ruled out a possible call for US military invasion on his behalf. Is this an acceptable norm for a leader who should leave no stone unturned to save his nation from war devastation? Many continue to identify as Chavista, and even those who have shed this identification continue to acknowledge that the Bolivarian Revolution once improved their livelihoods - and could do again. They also support dialogue, because it is a much better option than the current US plan to starve Venezuelans into revolt by applying crippling economic sanctions and military intervention.

There should not be any doubt about what the political class in Washington is pushing for in Venezuela as well: a military overthrow of the Maduro government. The situation is messy, and there are multiple interpretations concerning the origins of the political-economic crisis in Venezuela, as well as how to solve the political crisis and reboot the Venezuelan economy. But Washington seems intent on interventionist strategies - even a military solution.
Nearly every day, both National Security Adviser John Bolton and Republican Senator Marco Rubio have called on the military to align with Guaidó, allegedly “defend democracy,” and oust Maduro, in great violation of fundamental norms of international law and UN Charter. The Trump administration has imposed harsh sanctions on Venezuela that portend economic catastrophe as they directly affect the working class. These illegal sanctions target the lifeblood of ordinary citizens, the state oil company, and its sales to the US and world markets. The aim, of course, is to weaken Maduro’s position by taking away the government’s most important source of revenue. But this has already backfired. Many Venezuelan citizens blame the Trump administration for worsening the economic crisis. And they certainly blame Trump and his cult of regime change for not allowing the Maduro government to fix the economy and build support for international mediation.

If these sanctions do break the government, if the US manages to impose regime change, it is likely many people will feel that whatever comes next is the product of American coercion. On the other hand, even if the opposition centered on Guaidó wins a presidential election, that government will certainly face questions regarding its own legitimacy. Even for many of those who do not support Maduro, anti-imperialist sentiments still run deep; elections that take place as a result of US strong-arming will be tainted by these dynamics and more.
In the prevailing environment, the conclusion is clear: Guaidó’s rejection of dialogue and announcement assuming the role of interim president was a bad political move first and foremost. Now the political crisis is in a stalemate, because he didn’t wait for the next elections and he refused to talk to President Maduro for some kind of national reconciliation and political resolution to the crisis. More than anything else, his supporters, the cult of regime change in Washington, in granting diplomatic recognition to Guaidó’s “government”, created a precarious situation by confusing a normative judgment about who should run the country democratically and through the ballot box with the objective fact of who does run the country - that is, who actually has control over national territory and the state apparatus.

In this new gamble, in this all-or-nothing approach, don’t be taken by surprise if the "Troika of Tyranny" (Trump, Pompeo and Bolton) continue with economic sanctions and fall into a pattern similar to Washington’s decades-long standoff with Cuba. Who knows, Senator Rubio has hinted they might even follow the same destructive path that turned Syria and Yemen into ruins. What is clear is that their perilous regime change campaigns there on the pretext of “democracy promotion” didn’t work out as planned. Fast forward to 2019, there is no reason to think this time it will be otherwise in Venezuela.
Here we present an open letter of the elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, to the people of the United States of America:

If I know anything, it is about the people, because just like you, I am a man of the people. I was born and raised in a poor neighborhood of Caracas. I was forged in the heat of popular and union struggles in a Venezuela submerged in exclusion and inequality. I am no tycoon; I am a worker of mind and heart.  Today I have the great privilege of presiding over the new Venezuela, rooted in a model of inclusive development and social equality, which Comandante Hugo Chávez forged starting in 1998, inspired by the legacy of Simón Bolivar.

We are living today in a historical crossroad. There are days that will define the future of our countries, giving us a choice between war and peace. Your national representatives of Washington want to bring to their borders the same hatred that they sowed in Vietnam. They want to invade and intervene in Venezuela — they say, as they said then — in the name of democracy and freedom. But this is false. Their history of the usurpation of power in Venezuela is as false as the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is a false argument, but it can have dramatic consequences for our entire region. Venezuela is a country that, by virtue of its 1999 Constitution, has broadly expanded the participatory and protagonist democracy of the people, and that in an unprecedented way so that today Venezuela is one of the countries that has held the largest number of elections in the last 20 years. You may not like our ideology or how our society looks, but we exist and we are millions.

Addressing the American people, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro went on to say in his open letter: I address these words to the people of the United States of America to warn of the gravity and danger that some sectors in the White House intend, that is, to invade Venezuela with unpredictable consequences for my country and for the entire American region. President Donald Trump also intends to disrupt the worthy initiatives to open a dialogue promoted by Uruguay and Mexico, with the support of CARICOM, for a peaceful solution and dialogue on behalf of Venezuela. We know that for the good of Venezuela we have to sit down and talk because to refuse to dialogue is to choose the path of force. Keep in mind the words of John F. Kennedy: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” Those who do not want to dialogue, are they afraid of the truth?

The political intolerance toward the Venezuelan Bolivarian model and the desires for our immense oil resources, minerals and other great riches have prompted an international coalition headed by the U.S. government to commit the serious insanity of waging a military attack on Venezuela under the pretext of a nonexistent humanitarian crisis.

The people of Venezuela have painfully suffered social wounds caused by a criminal commercial and financial blockade, which has been aggravated by the dispossession and robbery of our financial resources and assets in countries aligned with this demented onslaught.
In the open letter, President Maduro said: The U.S. people must know that this complex multiform aggression is carried out with total impunity and in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations, which expressly outlaws the threat or use of force, among other principles and purposes, for the sake of peace and friendly relations between nations. We want to continue being business partners of the people of the United States, as we have been throughout our history. Their politicians in Washington, on the other hand, are willing to send their sons and daughters to die in an absurd war, instead of respecting the sacred right of the Venezuelan people to self-determination and to safeguard their sovereignty.
Like you, people of the United States, we Venezuelans are patriots. And we shall defend our homeland with all our soul. Today Venezuela is united in a single cry: We demand the cessation of the aggression that seeks to suffocate our economy and socially suffocate our people, as well as the cessation of the serious and dangerous threats of military intervention against Venezuela.

We appeal to the good soul of U.S. society, a victim of its own leaders, to join our call for peace. Let us be all one people against warmongering and war.

Long live the peoples of America!

Nicolás Maduro

President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

EA/ME