Trump attacks Venezuela – a gangster on the loose

Marco Consolo writes: On the night of Saturday, 3 January, Donald Trump’s US administration ordered a military attack on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The bombing of military and civilian infrastructure was the operational cover for what imperial military language refers to as an “extraction”. That same night, constitutional President Nicolas Maduro was kidnapped along with his wife, Deputy Cilia Flores, by US special forces and secretly taken to the US, where a sham trial against both began. As I write, there is still no assessment of the civilian and military casualties of the bombings and destruction.

• The bombings and the kidnapping of president Maduro and MP Cilia Flores are a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and render international law worthless, replacing it with the “law of the jungle” and the “law of the strongest”. No country is safe from this international gangster behaviour.

• All this has never had anything to do with defending democracy, human rights or the fight against drug trafficking. It is about the most blatant and belligerent reconfiguration of imperial geopolitics, geopolitical domination of the region and colonial plundering of natural resources. A striking example of this is Trump’s press conference, a gem of infamy and cynicism. The mask has fallen and “the king” (so to speak) is naked.

• It was a military attack, not an invasion with ground troops. Trump has neither political, military, nor territorial control of the country. There has been no large-scale military invasion yet, but rather a kidnapping of a constitutional president in office and use him as a means of pressure and a possible bargaining chip. To take control of the country, a much larger number of troops would be needed on the ground. In 1989, the invasion of tiny Panama required the mobilisation of over 30,000 soldiers. Even all the troops deployed in the Caribbean Sea over the last 28 weeks would not be enough. Added to this is Venezuela’s varied and extensive geography and the complexity of the capital Caracas and its organised working-class neighbourhoods.

• The military attack had several objectives. The main objective was to decapitate the country’s political leadership, with the aim of provoking institutional collapse. At the same time, it sought to create a rift within the armed forces to incite them to rebel against the government, something that neither the United States, nor the putschist opposition and their “vende-patria” allies have managed to achieve in all these years. The second objective is certainly not an original one, given that, since Hugo Chávez’s victory in 1989, it has been the frustrated obsession of successive US administrations.

• Trump, and his trusted hawks ministers, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, have threatened a second wave of attacks, emphasising that the US fleet currently in the Caribbean will remain in the area. The possibility of a full-scale invasion cannot be ruled out, especially if effective and dissuasive action is not taken at the international level, whether diplomatic, economic and/or military. The failure to achieve the goal of inducing a military uprising and a “popular rebellion” (or a combination of both) increases the risk of armed pressure with which the Pentagon could seek to obtain by force what it is not achieving through political pressure, namely the unconditional surrender of the Bolivarian forces and control of the country.

• The weak point in White House’s strategy is that there is no local force with military capability and mass support capable of organising a “legitimate rebellion against the dictatorship” that could serve as a “democratic cover” for the aggression. Venezuela is neither Libya nor Syria, and coup attempts have so far been effectively controlled, including the brief coup in 2002, which saw Chávez kidnapped. Political and military unity in Venezuela has so far proved more solid than in other parts of the world.

• This explains a paradoxical situation. The White House has kidnapped Maduro, but it does not control anything in the country. On the contrary, up to this point, control by forces loyal to the government (and the Constitution) is total. There have been no clashes between different military sectors, no attempts at “popular rebellion” (more or less directed from outside) and no street violence such as the so-called “guarimbas” of 2014 and 2017. The only mobilisations in recent days have been by Chavista forces. Under the Venezuelan Constitution, Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez has been appointed “acting president” by the relevant institutional bodies, and, to date, the Venezuelan government remains intact, as do all other institutions.

• Proof of the weakness of the internal ‘fifth column’ is that Trump has not named a ‘legitimate president’ to replace Maduro (like the puppet Juan Guaidò). On the contrary, Trump slammed the door in the face of putschist leader María Corina Machado (Nobel Peace Prize winner… Sic), declaring that she has no support in the Caribbean country and publicly calling her incompetent for the presidency. Rather than relying on puppets without local support, Trump announced that Washington would take direct charge of the “transition” led by a team of his choosing (perhaps, in his benevolence, with a few Venezuelan puppets). A “transition” to reopen the doors to energy multinationals, which have seen their share prices soar in recent hours but need political stability to do business.

• In this case, it cannot be ruled out that an invading military force may attempt to take control of oil wells and infrastructure in the areas of highest production, to finance the operation and launch an unpredictable strategy of balkanisation. It should be remembered that, according to the “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 (“America for Americans”), Venezuela’s resources belong to the United States, which never accepted the nationalisations of 1976 and the increases in royalties at the beginning of this century, during the Chávez government. The military action highlights a mix of energy-hungry imperialist nostalgia and anti-China obsession (the geostrategic enemy par excellence) that Trump evoked in his statements without naming it.

• A few hours before the military attack, President Maduro had met in Caracas with Qiu Xiaoqi, Xi Jinping’s special envoy. During the meeting, various agreements were discussed, particularly regarding oil contracts in exchange for modern technology to renovate facilities dating back to the era of US domination (and which the US blockade has deprived of spare parts), as well as a substantial stabilisation fund. The armed blockade of Venezuela’s oil exports directly affects China, which imports most of Venezuela’s oil, as well as Cuba itself, which has oil agreements with the Bolivarian government.

• At the same time as the military attack, the US Congress was discussing Trump’s involvement in the “Epstein case”, which, together with the military intervention, caused serious divisions within the MAGA social base. All this, while the government is facing a serious economic and social crisis, with the irreversible decline of US global hegemony and the dominance of the dollar.

• This aggression has been prepared and announced for months (actually for years) under the eyes of the world. Most actors (governments, multilateral organisations, media, academics, many political parties of the so-called “moderate left” and beyond, etc.) preferred to be complicit or turn a blind eye to the winds of war that were blowing ever stronger from the Caribbean. The “made in the USA” narrative of a “cruel and ferocious dictatorship” oppressing its people and force them to migrate has dominated. To remedy these mistakes, strong and decisive action is needed, particularly from other countries that have now been openly threatened by military intervention: Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, etc. The joint statement by six governments (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Spain) is a first diplomatic response to the imperial arrogance of those who believe themselves to be masters of the world.

• The EU, in favour of continuing the war in Ukraine, continues to commit political and economic suicide, and the statements of its nomenclature (Kaja Kallas, Ursula von der Leyen, etc.) shine with Atlanticist subservience. These statements are in addition to the “sanctions” in force by the EU and the robbery of Venezuelan gold (by Euroclear and the Bank of England, among others) with the aim of bringing Venezuela’s economy to its knees and provoking a “regime change”.

• The Italian government stands out for its servile position towards the White House, already amply demonstrated by its active complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people. This is particularly serious in relation to Venezuela, a country that is home to a large population of Italian origin who have contributed to the country’s development. This position also jeopardises the necessary dialogue between Italy and the constitutional government of Venezuela on various issues between the two countries.

• The ‘imperialist gunboat diplomacy’ is not only aimed at controlling Venezuela’s natural resources (not just energy). It also seeks to destroy the example of dignity and resistance that the Bolivarian Revolution represents for peoples fighting for their independence from White House domination. As ‘El Libertador’, Simón Bolívar, argued, ‘The United States seems destined by Providence to plague the whole of America with misery in the name of freedom’. “Che” Guevara himself warned: “Imperialism cannot be trusted even a little”. For those who have no memory (not only Latin American), the history of US interference, consisting of bloody coups, murders of popular leaders and presidents who were inconvenient, military attacks, destabilisation and blackmail of all kinds, should teach us something.

This article was first published on Marco Consolo’s blog here