Venezuelans & the US Goon Squad

Amidst all the talk of the US leadership, Maduro, and oil, at least in the US media, there’s not much discussion about the people of Venezuela and what they think about all this. They have suffered a great deal, both exiles and those still there. Make no mistake, they are glad that Maduro is gone. But nobody has ever gone broke under estimating the intelligence of the current US leadership. In the last fifty odd years, Republican US leadership has done some appalling stuff in Latin America, including Venezuela. Noriega in Panama in 1989 was a very similar operation to this Maduro extraction with the big difference that......Panama doesn't have any oil. 

The great challenge is that Venezuela has proven oil reserves of 300 billion barrels, a fifth of the world’s oil. In the late seventies Venezuela’s oil industry was nationalized under PDVSA, the Government controlled oil company, but the privatization was very friendly with international (mainly US) companies and people didn't see much change. It had always been corrupt but after nationalization it got more corrupt. In 1999, flamboyant loudmouth Hugo Chavez was elected by 56% by working people who appreciated his message of caring about the poor in an extremely unequal society along with middle class voters tired of corruption and military connected voters who liked his military background. At the time of his election in 1999, Venezuela was among the biggest oil producers in the world. Lots of excitement, big plans, not all of them bad. He drove US Republicans nuts but was domestically popular enough to keep getting elected, until he died of cancer right after his fourth presidential election in 2013. 

Vice President Maduro, who nobody was too excited about, became president and oversaw a slide into autocracy, and even more corruption and incompetence. Right now, the only people shedding a tear for Maduro are his substantial collection of cronies. They are currently doing a very desperate scan of their options. One of those people is Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. The US leadership is trying to get her to sign a napkin or something saying “The US gets all the oil!” or whatever in exchange for a quick mil air exit and maybe a condo in Miami and a stipend.

In 2005 Chavez had kicked out the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the drug cartels began to coordinate with senior military officers. Under Maduro the military leadership and cartels coordinated to the point of being pretty similar entities. 

But for this current US leadership, every accusation is an admission and it doesn't care about drug smuggling, and not just because they themselves have availed themselves to quite a bit of the cocaine that has come through Venezuela. As with everything they do, this is just a show. Drugs are an excuse for this newest performance. And there isn't too much money for them personally to be made from the drug trade, prosecuting it, or harassing it. But there's lots and lots of money, that could be made from Venezuela's oil. So so so much oil. 

There is something hypnotic about oil for US Republicans. Who among us doesn't see the role oil played in US decisions regarding Iraq? And, these days, for stupid greedy people with a great deal of power and a disregard for international law, Maduro was such low hanging fruit! There are so many reasons for this stunt. The first is that Venezuela seems closer than say Vietnam, Iraq, Ukraine, or Gaza. It's Monroe Doctrine territory, hence the new “Donroe Doctrine". That fits with the Putin Xi Jinping plan of Putin getting his Near Abroad and being able to keep the EU down and play around wherever else he wants. Xi gets to basically do whatever he wants wherever he wants wherever he wants. Then let the US have Latin America, which is the somewhat isolated junior partner hemisphere anyway. Let them all enjoy the convenience of that time zone together while we play around in the grownup hemisphere! So when the US stays over there, less interference from China and Russia. Except their substantial hearts and minds work via social media, but the US is ignoring that. This fits beautifully with Putin’s and Xi’s vision of the Big Men Doing Whatever They Want in the World. This kidnapping is a great president they can live with since they know the current US leadership will in no way be able to do anything with Venezuela. Just look at Iraq. 

And let’s not forget, at a time when the US Republican leadership seems to be just a relentless series of comic and pointless photo-ops...we have a perp walk by a real live foreign bad guy with US military power on display! Boom! Mission Accomplished! 

But the rest of the world has noticed. There isn't a newspaper in Asia that hasn't whipped up a timeline of US Intervention in Latin America. The reason Europe is so queasy about all this is...what happens now? “Such a buzzkill, that collection of tut-tuters on the other side of the Atlantic! They're just jealous of this glorious illustration of Toxic American Masculinity!”

We are told that the US will run things for a while. What a relief! But um, who? Soldiers? USAID's OTA (The US Agency for International Development's Office of Transition Initiatives)? Woops! Gone! Even ICE, the new regime’s Gestapo, with all its billions, looks like the Keystone Cops in the cities where they have been deployed….and those cities are all actually within the boundaries of the US.

The people of Venezuela know very clearly that oil has destroyed their country. Chavez had big plans but those plans were all flooded by oil and what happens when almost all government revenue comes out of the ground. Who controls the oil in Venezuela controls its future. And Venezuelans, at this generationally crucial juncture, are nervous about the US, particularly the current US regime, controlling that oil. 

I asked a very insightful Venezuelan I know who lives in Venezuela unlike very many Venezuelans, and she said:

We all know that the U.S. is looking for oil, there are the ones who are against that and the ones who prefer the lesser of two evils. There's no such thing as cooperation when you are in a lower position, as the Venezuelan people are at the moment. How can Venezuelans demand anything when there's no infrastructure or money or reliable people for this at the moment?

The main issue remains: Edmundo doesn't have any real power, nor Maria Corina, despite having popular support, but the fact is that 26 years of Chavismo and corruption can't be dismantled by people with no power, over the military, police or commerce, legal and illegal. The best-case scenario for this is chaos if Edmundo takes over. Worst, if he or Maria Corina is killed, because there are too many hands involved here, including Cubans, Russians, China, Iran, and the list goes on. Despite no one liking Trump, my take on this is that the most intelligent thing he can do is pressure those remaining of Maduro's people here to "clean the land" of all those other people while Venezuelans regain confidence and get back our country, because at this point we are not citizens but the hostages of this organization. And yes, the payment for it will be oil and maybe other things, like Japan with Okinawa, or who knows at this moment? Is it fair? No, unless it comes with a very well-established agreement, and I don't think that will happen.

Anamaria is a writer, follow her on social media at @Lupitaebovure.....

It would be great if the US government could communicate with Venezuelans about these complex matters but woops!, the United States Agency for Global Media anymore. But Russia and China, I mean they like this Big Tough Guys Doing Illegal Things foreign policy in principle, after all it means the end of the post-war (kind of) rule-of-law global order that they hate. But it is not like they actually want the US or Venezuela to succeed. The last thing Russia wants is all that Venezuelan crude to lower the price of oil. The whole point of their new Big Tough Guys World Order is that those big tough guys spend their time screwing each other in any way they can and Russia and China are very very good at screwing over the big lumbering befuddled United States. Russia will have quite a number of ideas about how Venezuelans can view and treat Americans and American plans in Venezuela.

Legitimacy really matters now and Venezuelans know a ton about elections. The observation of the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election was among the most sophisticated in history. The rightful president, who actually won that election, Edmundo González, and who is not young and has no influence at all, should assume power as quickly as possible under clear electoral and constitutional parameters, with a quick transition plan into new elections, now that the situation has changed so dramatically. 

And what happens with all that oil? Ask Norway, they are the only oil producing country in the world that isn't a mess. Hint, all the revenue goes into a sovereign wealth fund with extremely precise parameters about how it benefits the public in the long term, who oversees it, and how. Now is the time, and sooner or later Venezuelans will demand that. 

Let's hope that the US listens. Not holding my breath. 

###