the battle for Venezuela between Washington vs Moscow: Russia want their language to be the second language in Venezuela lmao
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U.S. Indicts for Maduro for Leading a Fictional ‘Cartel of the Suns’
Protests outside the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C. in May 2019.(Credit: Jefferson Morley)
The U.S. government has a long history of manipulating drug trafficking charges to advance geopolitical agenda. From 1975 to the late 1980s, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was on the CIA payroll. U.S. intelligence knew that Noriega permitted the Colombian cartels to ship cocaine through his country in return for huge cash payments. His drug activities were tolerated because he helped the CIA monitor leftist movements and other drug traffickers.
Then Noriega crossed the first Bush administration, and the U.S. invaded Panama. The justification: Noriega was a drug trafficker. The fact that the CIA had long known about and tolerated Noriega’s drug trafficking because he supported U.S. policy is beyond dispute.
The CIA’s collaboration with drug traffickers in the 1980s is a matter of public record, acknowledged by CIA Inspector General himself.
The charges filed last week against Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro are another instance of drug war theater.
First, the charges need to be put in context. In the big picture of the illicit narcotics business, Venezuela is a small player. Ten times as much cocaine passes through Mexico as through Venezuela. Seven times as much passes through Guatemala. Colombia, Venezuela’s neighbor and a U.S. ally, produces and ships more cocaine than Venezuela. In short, Venezuela is one of the less important targets of U.S. counternarcotics policy.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo singles out Venezuela because Washington policymakers (and some Democrats) want to impose “regime change” on Venezuela. Drug trafficking charges make it harder for anyone Congress or the press to object to this policy. These charges will not deter drug trafficking in Venezuela. They will deter debate on Venezuela in Washington.
In the case of Maduro, however, the charges are more legend than fact, as the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) reports.
And then there’s this fact.
WOLA is left-liberal think tank in Washington with a track record of reliable reporting. While the Trump administration (and some sectors of the Democratic party) support “regime change” in Venezuela, WOLA is working for a negotiated settlement.
It's always hidden agendas while people are distracted
US expands Navy presence in Caribbean. Is military action against Maduro more likely?
MIAMI — When President Donald Trump weighed the options earlier last year to address the political and humanitarian consequences of Nicolás Maduro’s tight grip on power in Venezuela, he realized his harsh rhetoric against the South American leader was not backed up by a show of force in the region.
© Carolina Cabral/Getty Images South America/TNS President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro speaks during a press conference at Miraflores Government Palace on March 12, 2020 in Caracas, Venezuela.
That was corrected Wednesday, as Trump, surrounded by the country’s top officials, announced an expanded military presence near the Venezuelan shores that had been unseen for decades.
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, National Security Council Director Robert O’Brien and Attorney General William Barr all said during the press conference that the additional military is meant to crack down on “counternarcotics operations,” but is also aimed at denying funds to Maduro and his closest allies, who have been recently indicted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges.
“When we started the maximum pressure policy in January, the president analyzed what our military assets were in the Western Hemisphere because obviously, all the options were and are on the table,” a senior administration official told the Miami Herald.
“There was no balance; most of our assets were in the Middle East, Asia, etc., so he asked to recalibrate those assets to have the necessary presence in the hemisphere to see where this situation was going” regarding Venezuela, he added.
The move was in line with Trump’s longtime belief that the U.S. should not spend resources on faraway regions, the official said.
The shift from considering Maduro “illegitimate” to being publicly labeled a “narco-terrorist” provided a rationale for the military moves, despite government data suggesting Venezuela is not a primary transit country for U.S.-bound cocaine.
The official also cited the destabilization that the Venezuelan political and humanitarian crises have caused in the region, with millions of Venezuelans overwhelming neighboring countries such as Colombia, as another imperative to expand U.S. military presence in the hemisphere.
Colombian President Iván Duque was one of the loudest voices asking for more support to deal with the migrants but also with the “narco-terrorists” of Colombia’s two main guerrilla groups, the FARC and the ELN, both harbored by Maduro in Venezuela.
Esper published a list of the forces mobilized for the mission, including Navy destroyers, Coast Guard cutters, Navy littoral combat ships, helicopters, Navy P-8 patrol aircraft, along with Air Force E-3 AWACS and E-8 JSTARS to carry out airborne surveillance, control, and communications.
The operation includes security forces assistance brigades. At the press conference Wednesday, Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there were “thousands” of sailors, Coast Guardsmen, soldiers, airmen and Marines involved.
Some experts have been surprised by some of the assets mobilized to the region.
“There is some serious military hardware listed here,” said Adam Isaacson, the director of the Defense Oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America.
“I can’t recall the last time there were U.S. Navy destroyers in the Caribbean or the eastern Pacific coast (on operations, not exercises). And each E-3 AWACS plane costs more than a quarter-billion dollars,” he said on Twitter.
According to the U.S. Southern Command, in charge of carrying out the operation in the Caribbean and the Pacific Eastern coast, those aircraft have been in use in the region.
“AWACs is one of the aircraft we have used to conduct detection and monitoring operations in the past,” José Ruiz, a media relations officer at Southcom, told the Miami Herald. “Insofar as Navy ships are concerned, flight-deck capable ships are one of the assets that comprise the kind of force package that enables the disruption of illicit drugs flowing into the U.S.”
Such Coast Guard “force packages” — patrol aircraft, ships with flight decks, helicopters and law enforcement detachments — are standard in counternarcotics operations, Ruiz said.
Southcom’s commander, Navy Adm. Craig Faller, has been advocating for more resources for counternarcotics operations in Central and South America. In a congressional hearing in March, he announced that U.S. military presence would increase in the region in terms of ships, aircraft, and security forces to “reassure partners” in combating “illicit narco-terrorism.”
News of the operation has unsettled Venezuelan leaders and revived hopes within the Venezuelan population that a U.S. military action against Maduro is in the making.
On Thursday, Maduro’s No. 2, Diosdado Cabello, made threats on live TV against the U.S. and the Venezuelan opposition, in particular leader Juan Guaidó, the head of the National Assembly who is recognized by the U.S. and nearly 60 countries as the legitimate president of the country.
Cuba echoed the concern.
“The military operation announced by the U.S. government involving deployment of warships near Venezuela and special troops movements is a serious threat to the peace of all in the region,” Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba’s foreign minister, said on Twitter. “Alleged combating of drug trafficking is just an opportunistic pretext.”
The senior Trump administration official reiterated that the operation sends a strong warning to Maduro, whom he urged to cooperate with the Department of Justice and the administration to find a negotiated solution.
“The choices here are cooperation or confrontation, and confrontation never ends well,” he said. “We hope common sense would prevail because our goal is still a democratic transition. But now we’re not even dealing with a regime but with a cartel.”
In theory, the fact that there are more military assets in the region would make a military action against Maduro more feasible, the official said. But just because military assets can be used in different missions does not mean a military option is the current policy, U.S. special envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, told reporters on Thursday.
Some critics of current U.S. foreign policy believe the administration is overselling the operation’s link to the situation in Venezuela, using what appears as a legitimate operation to combat drug trafficking.
“The type of military deployment announced is consistent with a counternarcotics operation, and even with that enhanced presence, the number of seizures would still be small,” said Frank Mora, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Western Hemisphere under Barack Obama.
“It is a total political manipulation to suggest that you could carry out a naval blockade or a military intervention with those assets,” Mora said. “The deployment is significant compared with what we have before, but only because we had so little.”
In congressional testimony in January, Faller said Southcom only had capabilities to interdict “about nine% of known drug movement.”
“In an area the size of the United States, we’ve been working between six and eight ships,” Faller said in a press briefing in March. “So we’ve been consistently saying the number we need to cover that zone is much larger, and so that was part of the rationale for the additional force packages we will be receiving.”
Mora also doubts that some of the assets sent to the region would stay for long. Gen. Milley said that the Navy sent additional combat ships from the U.S. Pacific and European Commands and the naval fleet at Norfolk.
“I’m sure those commanders would like their ships back,” Mora said.
Southcom declined to discuss the cost, timeline, and other details of the Caribbean mission due to “operational security reasons.”
MIAMI — When President Donald Trump weighed the options earlier last year to address the political and humanitarian consequences of Nicolás Maduro’s tight grip on power in Venezuela, he realized his harsh rhetoric against the South American leader was not backed up by a show of force in the region.
© Carolina Cabral/Getty Images South America/TNS President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro speaks during a press conference at Miraflores Government Palace on March 12, 2020 in Caracas, Venezuela.
That was corrected Wednesday, as Trump, surrounded by the country’s top officials, announced an expanded military presence near the Venezuelan shores that had been unseen for decades.
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, National Security Council Director Robert O’Brien and Attorney General William Barr all said during the press conference that the additional military is meant to crack down on “counternarcotics operations,” but is also aimed at denying funds to Maduro and his closest allies, who have been recently indicted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges.
“When we started the maximum pressure policy in January, the president analyzed what our military assets were in the Western Hemisphere because obviously, all the options were and are on the table,” a senior administration official told the Miami Herald.
“There was no balance; most of our assets were in the Middle East, Asia, etc., so he asked to recalibrate those assets to have the necessary presence in the hemisphere to see where this situation was going” regarding Venezuela, he added.
The move was in line with Trump’s longtime belief that the U.S. should not spend resources on faraway regions, the official said.
The shift from considering Maduro “illegitimate” to being publicly labeled a “narco-terrorist” provided a rationale for the military moves, despite government data suggesting Venezuela is not a primary transit country for U.S.-bound cocaine.
The official also cited the destabilization that the Venezuelan political and humanitarian crises have caused in the region, with millions of Venezuelans overwhelming neighboring countries such as Colombia, as another imperative to expand U.S. military presence in the hemisphere.
Colombian President Iván Duque was one of the loudest voices asking for more support to deal with the migrants but also with the “narco-terrorists” of Colombia’s two main guerrilla groups, the FARC and the ELN, both harbored by Maduro in Venezuela.
Esper published a list of the forces mobilized for the mission, including Navy destroyers, Coast Guard cutters, Navy littoral combat ships, helicopters, Navy P-8 patrol aircraft, along with Air Force E-3 AWACS and E-8 JSTARS to carry out airborne surveillance, control, and communications.
The operation includes security forces assistance brigades. At the press conference Wednesday, Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there were “thousands” of sailors, Coast Guardsmen, soldiers, airmen and Marines involved.
Some experts have been surprised by some of the assets mobilized to the region.
“There is some serious military hardware listed here,” said Adam Isaacson, the director of the Defense Oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America.
“I can’t recall the last time there were U.S. Navy destroyers in the Caribbean or the eastern Pacific coast (on operations, not exercises). And each E-3 AWACS plane costs more than a quarter-billion dollars,” he said on Twitter.
According to the U.S. Southern Command, in charge of carrying out the operation in the Caribbean and the Pacific Eastern coast, those aircraft have been in use in the region.
“AWACs is one of the aircraft we have used to conduct detection and monitoring operations in the past,” José Ruiz, a media relations officer at Southcom, told the Miami Herald. “Insofar as Navy ships are concerned, flight-deck capable ships are one of the assets that comprise the kind of force package that enables the disruption of illicit drugs flowing into the U.S.”
Such Coast Guard “force packages” — patrol aircraft, ships with flight decks, helicopters and law enforcement detachments — are standard in counternarcotics operations, Ruiz said.
Southcom’s commander, Navy Adm. Craig Faller, has been advocating for more resources for counternarcotics operations in Central and South America. In a congressional hearing in March, he announced that U.S. military presence would increase in the region in terms of ships, aircraft, and security forces to “reassure partners” in combating “illicit narco-terrorism.”
News of the operation has unsettled Venezuelan leaders and revived hopes within the Venezuelan population that a U.S. military action against Maduro is in the making.
On Thursday, Maduro’s No. 2, Diosdado Cabello, made threats on live TV against the U.S. and the Venezuelan opposition, in particular leader Juan Guaidó, the head of the National Assembly who is recognized by the U.S. and nearly 60 countries as the legitimate president of the country.
Cuba echoed the concern.
“The military operation announced by the U.S. government involving deployment of warships near Venezuela and special troops movements is a serious threat to the peace of all in the region,” Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba’s foreign minister, said on Twitter. “Alleged combating of drug trafficking is just an opportunistic pretext.”
The senior Trump administration official reiterated that the operation sends a strong warning to Maduro, whom he urged to cooperate with the Department of Justice and the administration to find a negotiated solution.
“The choices here are cooperation or confrontation, and confrontation never ends well,” he said. “We hope common sense would prevail because our goal is still a democratic transition. But now we’re not even dealing with a regime but with a cartel.”
In theory, the fact that there are more military assets in the region would make a military action against Maduro more feasible, the official said. But just because military assets can be used in different missions does not mean a military option is the current policy, U.S. special envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, told reporters on Thursday.
Some critics of current U.S. foreign policy believe the administration is overselling the operation’s link to the situation in Venezuela, using what appears as a legitimate operation to combat drug trafficking.
“The type of military deployment announced is consistent with a counternarcotics operation, and even with that enhanced presence, the number of seizures would still be small,” said Frank Mora, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Western Hemisphere under Barack Obama.
“It is a total political manipulation to suggest that you could carry out a naval blockade or a military intervention with those assets,” Mora said. “The deployment is significant compared with what we have before, but only because we had so little.”
In congressional testimony in January, Faller said Southcom only had capabilities to interdict “about nine% of known drug movement.”
“In an area the size of the United States, we’ve been working between six and eight ships,” Faller said in a press briefing in March. “So we’ve been consistently saying the number we need to cover that zone is much larger, and so that was part of the rationale for the additional force packages we will be receiving.”
Mora also doubts that some of the assets sent to the region would stay for long. Gen. Milley said that the Navy sent additional combat ships from the U.S. Pacific and European Commands and the naval fleet at Norfolk.
“I’m sure those commanders would like their ships back,” Mora said.
Southcom declined to discuss the cost, timeline, and other details of the Caribbean mission due to “operational security reasons.”
apparently there was a meetings in Jamaica, with trump and the prime ministers from the islands......a few of them didn't go(aint trying to be involved with the fuck shit)
Venezuela crisis: Russian military planes land near Caracas
Two Russian military planes landed in Venezuela's main airport on Saturday, reportedly carrying dozens of troops and large amounts of equipment.
The planes were sent to "fulfil technical military contracts", Russia's Sputnik news agency reported.
Javier Mayorca, a Venezuelan journalist, wrote on Twitter that he saw about 100 troops and 35 tonnes of equipment offloaded from the planes.
It comes three months after the two nations held joint military exercises.
Russia has long been an ally of Venezuela, lending the South American nation billions of dollars and backing its oil industry and military.
Russia has also vocally opposed moves from the US to impose sanctions on the government of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke on the phone with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, urging Moscow to "cease its unconstructive behaviour" in Venezuela.
"The secretary told Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov that the United States and regional countries will not stand idly by as Russia exacerbates tensions in Venezuela," the state department said.
What about the two Russian planes?
Mr Mayorca said on Twitter that a Russian air force Antonov-124 cargo plane and a smaller jet landed near Caracas on Saturday.
He said that Russian General Vasily Tonkoshkurov led the troops off one of the planes.
A military plane with a Russian flag on its fuselage could be seen on the tarmac at an airport on Sunday. Images on social media also appeared to show Russian troops gathered at the airport.
Ties between Moscow and Venezuela have strengthened in recent months, amid worsening relations between the US and Venezuela. In December, Russia sent two air force jets there as part of a military exercise.
Russia has condemned other foreign powers for backing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who declared himself interim president in January.
President Maduro has accused Mr Guaidó of trying to mount a coup against him with the help of "US imperialists".
The Kremlin echoed that line, accusing Mr Guaidó of an "illegal attempt to seize power" backed by the United States and pledging to do "everything required" to support Mr Maduro.
A message to Washington
Russia is intent on demonstrating the limits of US policy towards Venezuela.
The Trump administration is pushing for regime change and the re-establishment of democracy.
But Moscow - a long-standing ally of the Venezuelan authorities - has provided the embattled Maduro regime with diplomatic, economic and military support.
Last December two Russian Tu-160 long-range bombers touched down in Caracas prompting a war of words between Washington and Moscow. There have been joint military exercises too.
While it is not clear what equipment these latest military flights may have been carrying, they send an additional message to Washington.
Mr Trump has refused to rule out military action against the Maduro government.
The Russian President Vladimir Putin is putting down another marker, emphasising that Venezuela is Russia's ally and it is not going to give up this small foothold in Latin America.
It is another example of Mr Putin applying limited means to challenge US policy goals.
What's the background?
Getty ImagesRussia's President Vladimir Putin (R) and his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro are close allies
Mr Maduro narrowly won a presidential election in April 2013 after the death of his mentor, President Hugo Chávez. He was elected to a second term in May 2018 in an election seen as flawed by international observers.
Venezuela has experienced economic collapse - inflation was 800,000% last year. Three million people have left.
Mr Guaidó has accused President Maduro of being unfit for office, and won the support of many in the country as well as US and EU leaders.
The Maduro government is becoming increasingly isolated but Moscow has expanded co-operation with Caracas - increasing arms sales and extending credit.
- 25 March 2019
Two Russian military planes landed in Venezuela's main airport on Saturday, reportedly carrying dozens of troops and large amounts of equipment.
The planes were sent to "fulfil technical military contracts", Russia's Sputnik news agency reported.
Javier Mayorca, a Venezuelan journalist, wrote on Twitter that he saw about 100 troops and 35 tonnes of equipment offloaded from the planes.
It comes three months after the two nations held joint military exercises.
Russia has long been an ally of Venezuela, lending the South American nation billions of dollars and backing its oil industry and military.
Russia has also vocally opposed moves from the US to impose sanctions on the government of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke on the phone with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, urging Moscow to "cease its unconstructive behaviour" in Venezuela.
"The secretary told Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov that the United States and regional countries will not stand idly by as Russia exacerbates tensions in Venezuela," the state department said.
What about the two Russian planes?
Mr Mayorca said on Twitter that a Russian air force Antonov-124 cargo plane and a smaller jet landed near Caracas on Saturday.
He said that Russian General Vasily Tonkoshkurov led the troops off one of the planes.
A military plane with a Russian flag on its fuselage could be seen on the tarmac at an airport on Sunday. Images on social media also appeared to show Russian troops gathered at the airport.
Ties between Moscow and Venezuela have strengthened in recent months, amid worsening relations between the US and Venezuela. In December, Russia sent two air force jets there as part of a military exercise.
Russia has condemned other foreign powers for backing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who declared himself interim president in January.
President Maduro has accused Mr Guaidó of trying to mount a coup against him with the help of "US imperialists".
The Kremlin echoed that line, accusing Mr Guaidó of an "illegal attempt to seize power" backed by the United States and pledging to do "everything required" to support Mr Maduro.
A message to Washington
Russia is intent on demonstrating the limits of US policy towards Venezuela.
The Trump administration is pushing for regime change and the re-establishment of democracy.
But Moscow - a long-standing ally of the Venezuelan authorities - has provided the embattled Maduro regime with diplomatic, economic and military support.
Last December two Russian Tu-160 long-range bombers touched down in Caracas prompting a war of words between Washington and Moscow. There have been joint military exercises too.
While it is not clear what equipment these latest military flights may have been carrying, they send an additional message to Washington.
Mr Trump has refused to rule out military action against the Maduro government.
The Russian President Vladimir Putin is putting down another marker, emphasising that Venezuela is Russia's ally and it is not going to give up this small foothold in Latin America.
It is another example of Mr Putin applying limited means to challenge US policy goals.
What's the background?
Getty ImagesRussia's President Vladimir Putin (R) and his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro are close allies
Mr Maduro narrowly won a presidential election in April 2013 after the death of his mentor, President Hugo Chávez. He was elected to a second term in May 2018 in an election seen as flawed by international observers.
Venezuela has experienced economic collapse - inflation was 800,000% last year. Three million people have left.
Mr Guaidó has accused President Maduro of being unfit for office, and won the support of many in the country as well as US and EU leaders.
The Maduro government is becoming increasingly isolated but Moscow has expanded co-operation with Caracas - increasing arms sales and extending credit.
Venezuela crisis: Why Russia has so much to lose
By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Moscow
Getty Images
As the political and economic pressure on Nicolás Maduro mounts, Venezuela's president believes there is one person he can rely on - Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has accused the opposition leader Juan Guaidó of an "illegal attempt to seize power", backed by the United States. Moscow says it will do "everything required" to support Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela's "legitimate president".
But Russia's appetite for protecting relations with Caracas may be more limited than its rhetoric suggests.
Years of close alliance
Moscow has long been a key ally of President Maduro, and Hugo Chávez before him - as fierce critics of Washington, right in America's backyard.
"The relationship is symbolically important. It's about saying 'we're not alone, there are others who are very critical of the US and Western policy'," explains Andrei Kortunov of the Russian International Affairs Council.
That's partly why Moscow has expanded co-operation with Caracas in recent years - increasing arms sales, extending credit and even flying in two bombers last December in a show of support.
AFPVenezuela's defence minister welcomed the two long-range Russian bombers when they flew to Caracas in December
Its backing for Nicolás Maduro in the current crisis is also fuelled by a horror of popular uprisings, particularly those supported openly by the West.
"Unpopular social policies, an impoverished population and economic crisis - against a background of battling the whole world and corrupt… politicians. Guess which country this refers to?" independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta wondered this week.
It was drawing the parallels with Russia that it believes the Kremlin sees - and fears - in Caracas.
Moscow also has money at stake. It has sunk significant amounts into backing Nicolás Maduro, much of that in loans it stands to lose if he is forced from office.
The full extent of Russia's exposure isn't clear.
Who's really in charge in Venezuela? The BBC's Paul Adams explains
Analysts talk of $17bn (£13bn), mostly dished out in credit to the Maduro government. But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to put a figure on it when questioned by journalists earlier this week.
He was even more tight-lipped on whether Russia worried about losing that investment. "I won't respond to that," Mr Peskov said.
Then there's the oil
Venezuela sits on the largest proven oil reserves in the world.
"When we sent weapons, no-one thought of collecting the debt. What was really in mind, I think, was access to the oil wells, to production," argues Carnegie Centre economist Andrei Movchan.
Russia's state-owned firm, Rosneft, now has stakes in multiple projects in Venezuela and has issued significant loans to the country's oil giant, PDVSA.
Getty ImagesRosneft's chief executive Igor Sechin (L) has overseen much of Russia's oil investment in Venezuela
"Venezuela was in a bad shape, so it was easy to agree terms," Mr Movchan says.
'A black hole for Russia'
But whilst state television programmes here have been blasting headlines, slamming the US "intervening in the affairs of a sovereign state", others have been questioning the wisdom of Russia's own Venezuela policy.
"Venezuela is a black hole for Russia, where billions of dollars have been sunk… and the effect is zero," analyst Mikhail Krutikin told Kommersant newspaper. He talked of "utter incompetence and squandering."
Juan Guaidó: "Maduro's regime is killing young, poor people on the streets"
"It's a very unfortunate situation," Andrei Kortunov says. "We knew this was coming, so I wonder what the fall-back position is of those who invested there, but I don't see it."
Russia is now advocating political negotiations in Venezuela, with international mediation. It presents the opposition, and the US, as intransigent for continuing to call for fresh elections.
What is Moscow doing?
Meanwhile, with no sign of imminent mass defection by the military, reports have emerged suggesting Moscow may be upping its support for Nicolás Maduro.
As fresh US sanctions were imposed on Caracas this week, Novaya Gazeta suggested that Russia had helped fly Venezuelan gold from storage in the Russian Central Bank for sale in Dubai.
There have also been reports that Moscow has deployed private military contractors, possibly as protection for President Maduro.
The Kremlin has rebutted that, too, though Mr Maduro himself was simply evasive. "I'm not making any comment," he told Russian reporters this week.
How far will it go?
The foreign ministry pledge to do "everything" to back Nicolás Maduro does seem to have limits.
"I don't think Russia would defend Maduro militarily. We are for a political settlement," argues retired Lieutenant-General Evgeny Buzhinsky. He describes those bombers sent to Caracas last year as simply "symbolic".
AFPOne Russian tabloid mocked the number of opposition protesters who turned out on Wednesday
"It would be madness for Russia to try to intervene with force," Andrei Movchan agrees. "Venezuela is not Syria. The Chinese are there and the Americans are much closer."
At least in public, Russia has settled for condemning US pressure, calling for dialogue - and waiting. Perhaps it is hoping its ally can weather the storm.
As one tabloid newspaper here argued, opposition rallies on Wednesday were smaller than expected.
"They held the decisive protest - and then they called the next one," Komsomolskaya Pravda joked, suggesting "something went wrong".
Another paper, though, is convinced President Maduro's days in office are numbered, suggesting the Kremlin should simply offer "its friend" political asylum.
"The long, cold Moscow winter is not ideal of course for Maduro, used to palm trees and a year-round average of 25C," Moskovsky Komsomolets reasoned.
"But it's still better than a warm prison cell in Caracas."
By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Moscow
Getty Images
As the political and economic pressure on Nicolás Maduro mounts, Venezuela's president believes there is one person he can rely on - Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has accused the opposition leader Juan Guaidó of an "illegal attempt to seize power", backed by the United States. Moscow says it will do "everything required" to support Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela's "legitimate president".
But Russia's appetite for protecting relations with Caracas may be more limited than its rhetoric suggests.
Years of close alliance
Moscow has long been a key ally of President Maduro, and Hugo Chávez before him - as fierce critics of Washington, right in America's backyard.
"The relationship is symbolically important. It's about saying 'we're not alone, there are others who are very critical of the US and Western policy'," explains Andrei Kortunov of the Russian International Affairs Council.
That's partly why Moscow has expanded co-operation with Caracas in recent years - increasing arms sales, extending credit and even flying in two bombers last December in a show of support.
AFPVenezuela's defence minister welcomed the two long-range Russian bombers when they flew to Caracas in December
Its backing for Nicolás Maduro in the current crisis is also fuelled by a horror of popular uprisings, particularly those supported openly by the West.
"Unpopular social policies, an impoverished population and economic crisis - against a background of battling the whole world and corrupt… politicians. Guess which country this refers to?" independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta wondered this week.
It was drawing the parallels with Russia that it believes the Kremlin sees - and fears - in Caracas.
Moscow also has money at stake. It has sunk significant amounts into backing Nicolás Maduro, much of that in loans it stands to lose if he is forced from office.
The full extent of Russia's exposure isn't clear.
Who's really in charge in Venezuela? The BBC's Paul Adams explains
Analysts talk of $17bn (£13bn), mostly dished out in credit to the Maduro government. But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to put a figure on it when questioned by journalists earlier this week.
He was even more tight-lipped on whether Russia worried about losing that investment. "I won't respond to that," Mr Peskov said.
Then there's the oil
Venezuela sits on the largest proven oil reserves in the world.
"When we sent weapons, no-one thought of collecting the debt. What was really in mind, I think, was access to the oil wells, to production," argues Carnegie Centre economist Andrei Movchan.
Russia's state-owned firm, Rosneft, now has stakes in multiple projects in Venezuela and has issued significant loans to the country's oil giant, PDVSA.
Getty ImagesRosneft's chief executive Igor Sechin (L) has overseen much of Russia's oil investment in Venezuela
"Venezuela was in a bad shape, so it was easy to agree terms," Mr Movchan says.
'A black hole for Russia'
But whilst state television programmes here have been blasting headlines, slamming the US "intervening in the affairs of a sovereign state", others have been questioning the wisdom of Russia's own Venezuela policy.
"Venezuela is a black hole for Russia, where billions of dollars have been sunk… and the effect is zero," analyst Mikhail Krutikin told Kommersant newspaper. He talked of "utter incompetence and squandering."
Juan Guaidó: "Maduro's regime is killing young, poor people on the streets"
"It's a very unfortunate situation," Andrei Kortunov says. "We knew this was coming, so I wonder what the fall-back position is of those who invested there, but I don't see it."
Russia is now advocating political negotiations in Venezuela, with international mediation. It presents the opposition, and the US, as intransigent for continuing to call for fresh elections.
What is Moscow doing?
Meanwhile, with no sign of imminent mass defection by the military, reports have emerged suggesting Moscow may be upping its support for Nicolás Maduro.
As fresh US sanctions were imposed on Caracas this week, Novaya Gazeta suggested that Russia had helped fly Venezuelan gold from storage in the Russian Central Bank for sale in Dubai.
There have also been reports that Moscow has deployed private military contractors, possibly as protection for President Maduro.
The Kremlin has rebutted that, too, though Mr Maduro himself was simply evasive. "I'm not making any comment," he told Russian reporters this week.
How far will it go?
The foreign ministry pledge to do "everything" to back Nicolás Maduro does seem to have limits.
"I don't think Russia would defend Maduro militarily. We are for a political settlement," argues retired Lieutenant-General Evgeny Buzhinsky. He describes those bombers sent to Caracas last year as simply "symbolic".
AFPOne Russian tabloid mocked the number of opposition protesters who turned out on Wednesday
"It would be madness for Russia to try to intervene with force," Andrei Movchan agrees. "Venezuela is not Syria. The Chinese are there and the Americans are much closer."
At least in public, Russia has settled for condemning US pressure, calling for dialogue - and waiting. Perhaps it is hoping its ally can weather the storm.
As one tabloid newspaper here argued, opposition rallies on Wednesday were smaller than expected.
"They held the decisive protest - and then they called the next one," Komsomolskaya Pravda joked, suggesting "something went wrong".
Another paper, though, is convinced President Maduro's days in office are numbered, suggesting the Kremlin should simply offer "its friend" political asylum.
"The long, cold Moscow winter is not ideal of course for Maduro, used to palm trees and a year-round average of 25C," Moskovsky Komsomolets reasoned.
"But it's still better than a warm prison cell in Caracas."
Thats why they have to buy time and pay the people off...
With stimulus checks..
They cant afford an uprising in USA right now...
They can't use the military because they are all over the globe...
The waning powers that be..
know change is coming
And they do not like what they see.
They have to attack venezuela..now because they predict world pressure into lifting the sanctions
Aka economic war USA is waging in Venezuela..
.
And if they drop those sanctions
The Venezuelan economy would explode....
Normally this would be a receipe for world war 3
But Trump and russia are so buddy buddy
It won't happen under a Trump presidency..
This shit bout to get real interesting...
Another reason the "Drug War" is bogus.....
Basically whites do not want to enter into an arms length transaction with non-whites. I ran across the same issues and learned this the hard way when they issued death threats and swarmed me with cars and surveillance. It would not be far fetched for the U.S. to go to war with Venezuela over oil after witnessing this behavior.
They want you to work for their various companies and be under their control (South Africa). The capitalism with you is being an employee and buying from their businesses. You do see various black entrepreneurs making money, however, it is to facilitate a white company to enter our markets such as BET or Oprah.
Isolate yourself and don't deal with them in any capacity. Many countries make the mistake of engaging in trade.
They want you to work for their various companies and be under their control (South Africa). The capitalism with you is being an employee and buying from their businesses. You do see various black entrepreneurs making money, however, it is to facilitate a white company to enter our markets such as BET or Oprah.
Isolate yourself and don't deal with them in any capacity. Many countries make the mistake of engaging in trade.
Last edited:
Honestly, I think that any military action in Venezuela will be a “cakewalk.” Their National Guard is looking for a reason to defect, and there is so much corruption, that the people aren’t going to rise up to defend Maduro.
Even if the citizens did rise up, their citizens aren’t armed with guns.
I believe that it would be an operation like Panamá. Unfortunately there would be US casualties and civilian casualties.
When Venezuela’s economy comes back, it’s gonna be a LOT of money to be made.
Even if the citizens did rise up, their citizens aren’t armed with guns.
I believe that it would be an operation like Panamá. Unfortunately there would be US casualties and civilian casualties.
When Venezuela’s economy comes back, it’s gonna be a LOT of money to be made.
Its wasnt that hidden they openly discussed it at the press conference last week
So at a time when there is a health crisis for which we are under prepared, money is going to be put into fighting a war...this is an easy lay up for the Democrats unless they too are part of the fuckery
Man we might know the same folks. That’s where i got my info from also.
This has been building up for the last few years at least. The US has essentially set up an Armada to create a blockade to starve and choke out Venezuela.
Faux Views and the Right have been decrying them as another failed Socialist State but of course they never mention all of the US' meddling in their affairs.
Russia and China have been running as much interference as they can. That's the only reason we're not in there already.
the whole point of a sub is to go unnoticed. Why the fuck would a sub be on the surface?
people share a lot of hogwash.
really wasn’t no reason to mention it. But I think the prime minister there didn’t attend the meeting in Jamaica. I’m call my peeps and tell him to send my the links, but I think he said Barbados, Trinidad & Tabgo, Guyana and a few other names I don’t recall.
plus there’s no battle for Guyana new found oil....
plus there’s no battle for Guyana new found oil....
Barbados TnT Grenada & Guyana turned down the US request
rest of Caricom said yes
thanks
the sad truth is even without the pandemic, many people in the US still wouldn’t care about this.
The US government’s ‘divide and conquer’ tactics in the Caribbean
Jeb Sprague2nd April 2020
Recent multilateral meetings in Kingston and Mar-a-Lago signal US attempts at intensifying divisions in the Caribbean. ‘Shithole countries’ (as president Donald Trump allegedly labeled Haiti and many other low-income countries) can be important allies for undermining those states targeted for regime change. In particular, Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton has spoken openlyabout US and regional businesspeople benefiting financially from a toppling of Venezuela’s left-of-centre government and a privatization of its petroleum industry. Venezuela reportedly has the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
Over recent decades, the Caribbean has experienced profound change, propelled by new digital technologies, hi-tech remittance networks, new global cultural and media flows, low-cost mass travel and tourism, expanding real estate markets, and new banking and financial arrangements.
People across the region are propelled into the clutches of globalization with mounting inequality and climate breakdown taking a severe toll on their lives. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other brewing worldwide crises such as those stemming from automation and artificial intelligence, nuclear proliferation, and a lack of regional and global coordination around many issues (the latest being the new coronavirus (Covid-19)).
It’s in this context that US officials are seeking to intensify geopolitical divisions in the region, most notably in order to promote its policy of regime change targeting Venezuela.
Targeting Venezuela and its role in the Caribbean
US plans to replace elected Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro with self-proclaimed leader Juan Guaidó failed utterly in 2019; yet an intensification of its economic terror campaign looms even as it continues to be the key factor that hinders Venezuela’s recovery.
The South American country has suffered tremendously, pushing many people to emigrate. While Venezuela has only had tens of coronavirus cases so far, the country’s health system has been battered by US sanctions and will face difficulties if the virus spreads.
Facing constant attack, dramatically intensified since August 2017 when the US imposed financial sanctions, Venezuela has been forced to rely on investment and support from Chinese and Russian state enterprises. By June 2018, Caracas had halted around half of its crude oil shipments around the Caribbean.
A part of the US strategy has been to undermine the viability of Venezuela’s subsidized-ALBA project as a regional developmental alternative to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other neoliberal financial institutions.
ALBA itself has faced many internal problems. Yet in late 2019, ALBA leaders declared that in 2020 they would relaunch PetroCaribe, the Children’s Heart Hospitals, its eye surgery program, and its school of medicine.
Thus far, though pummeled, the remaining leaders and left-leaning movements and parties of some regional states have not given in to Washington’s offensive. Historically, many officials in the Caribbean region have argued for the region to be ‘nuclear-free’ and a ‘Zone of Peace‘, yet this has always been contradicted by the fact that so many identify with the West and are located in the US geopolitical sphere. The most vocal exceptions are Cuba (since the 1959 revolution), and Grenada (from 1979 to 1983 under the short-lived government of Maurice Bishop).
Over recent decades, many Caribbean political parties have shifted away from their disparate ideological roots. Instead, they have moved towards promoting economic models emphasizing exports and tourism. Many state elites, with the support of supranational institutions, have sought to focus on creating conditions that attract transnational corporate investors. While participants in ALBA partially promote an alternative developmental stream, they also must regularly juggle close relationships with big business.
US seeking to widen the gulf between Caribbean states
In July 1973, four of the newly independent and leading sovereign states in the English-speaking Caribbean – Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago – all signed on to the Treaty of Chaguaramas. In later years, the other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) states would sign on. Among the provisions of the established treaty, the states are expected to coordinate their foreign policies on matters of regional and international import.
Moving in the exact opposite direction, Trump met with five Caribbean leaders at Mar-a-Lago in South Florida in March 2019. US secretary of state Mike Pompeo later met with Caribbean officials in Kingston, Jamaica in January 2020.
The meetings signaled US attempts to intensify geopolitical divisions. One Reutersheadline read bluntly: Trump dangles investment to Caribbean leaders who back Venezuela’s Guaido.
By signing on to US policy undermining Venezuela, and supporting the interventionist demands of the heavily US-funded OAS (Organization of American States), divisions in the region have been further widened. For Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Saint Lucia, it may even constitute a violation of Article 12 and Article 16 of the Treaty of Chaguaramas, for which they are signatories.
Divisions have occurred in the past. The 1983 US invasion of Grenada was one of the more divisive matters in the region, with some states such as Trinidad and Tobago opposing the attack. Another divisive event was the 1996-1997 Shiprider Agreement. Caribbean countries split over allowing Washington to have the ability to sail into their territorial waters freely, with the US coastguard allowed to interdict vessels. Another split occurred when cruise company lobbyists defeated an effort to create a common head-tax in the region, successfully playing the islands off of one another.
On the other hand, the region has, over time, come together to oppose the US blockade on Cuba. Havana provides a large number of scholarships for students as well as technical and agriculture assistance. For decades, it has built up a lot of goodwill in the region.
Among the general population in the Caribbean, there is also a great deal of historical memory around the role of foreign intervention, with the demand for colonial reparations being widely popular.
In another example of unity, following the 2004 coup in Haiti, CARICOM denounced the US removal of the country’s elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. However, after the US and France advised CARICOM against raising the issue at the UN Security Council, Caribbean officials withdrew in silence. Aristide was allowed to enter Jamaica briefly, but after US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and other US officials objected, he soon returned to his exile in Africa.
Importantly, the leaders of Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and other states in the region did not attend Trump and Pompeo’s recent meetings.
The officials of CARICOM member states sometimes act according to how they perceive themselves to be affected by high-handed US geopolitical policies. They don’t like to be pushed around as ‘small island development states’, and are broadly skeptical of military intervention but are not necessarily unified on this point.
What’s happening now, though, is that US policymakers in a more concerted manner are seeking to widen the gulf between Caribbean states. Some Caribbean officials have more capacity for resilience, while others see only benefits in closer ties with Washington, which can undoubtedly help them with corporate investors. Many interests and pressures exist for siding with the deadly US policy in Venezuela.
Attending the Mar-a-lago meeting with Pompeo were the heads of government of the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia, and the heads of state of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, all having cut ties with Venezuela’s elected government and recognizing Juan Guaidó. The same countries attended the Kingston meeting, with the addition of Belize and Saint Kitts and Nevis. Aside from Trinidad/Tobago and Guyana, the official ‘head of state’ of most former British Caribbean colonies is still Queen Elizabeth II.
Structural crises at home
Governments joining Trump’s Caribbean strategy face deep problems at home.
Haiti’s president Jovenel Moïse, for example, governs without parliament after failing to hold elections, and is suffering a crisis of legitimacy that threatens to topple him from office. US support is a lynchpin for his political survival.
Dominican president Danilo Medina, meanwhile, is facing the largest protests in memory in the country, as he is accused of massive corruption and attempting to steal the February municipal elections. The Punta Catalina power plant Odebrecht scandal alone may total upwards of $1bn, a huge scandal for Medina’s government.
Jamaica’s government, continuing to suffer under large-scale structural adjustment debt, has been promised various deals from US officials. This helped compel the country’s withdrawal from Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program. Venezuela itself faced mounting barriers to maintaining it.
The Bahamas, meanwhile, has long been a virtual US colony, with the island used as a tax haven platform for transnational capital. The archipelago has also been battered under the climate crisis in the form of the recent devastating hurricane Dorian.
As for Belize, another country highly susceptible to pressure from powerful Western states, it was recently reported that one sixth of the country’s total landmass was being used by the British military for jungle warfare training. Belize has also faced annexation threats from Guatemala in the past.
US ‘national security’ strategy and the imperial frontier
Sanctioning and attacking Venezuela through hybrid warfare, some US policymakers and thinktanks now openly plan for a violent escalation targeting the country. With a far-right government in Brazil and US military bases and proxies in Colombia, Washington has helped inflame a hostile situation on the country’s borders.
This has extended to the US tightening the screws on Cuba and Nicaragua, the recent ousting of Bolivia’s elected government, and even a short-lived attempt by the highly interventionist OAS secretary general Luis Almagro to undermine CARICOM and ALBA-member state Dominica.
By late 2017, seeking to halt any kind of compromise with Cuba, Trump’s administration began to claim that Cuba had targeted US embassy staff in Havana with a ‘sonic weapons attack’. Recordings of the ‘sonic attack’, as CNN later reported, were thought to be the mating calls of a loud cricket species.
The US Helms-Burton Act that targets Cuba, meanwhile, is being strengthened. Third parties doing business on the island may face more lawsuits that increase risks for investors. Cruise ship lines and many charter and direct flights have also been blocked from traveling to Cuba, while inward remittance flows to the island have been made much more difficult. Furthermore, the Trump administration is reportedly carrying out new plans to attack the island’s medical services, one of the most vibrant parts of its economy.
Whatever one’s view on Nicaragua’s 2018 violence carried out by some police and government and opposition supporters, US and EU sanctions are not the answer. They’re having a growing impact on the small Central American country beyond individuals: increasing risk calculations for businesses investing in the country, slowing and hurting the likelihood for loans to be refinanced, and – over time – it will make it harder for the country’s diaspora to wire money to family members. Meanwhile, the US congress has expanded funding to influence Nicaraguan civil society.
The end goal of Washington’s NICA Act and EU sanctions is not to promote peace, but rather to push for a draconian neoliberal solution. This is highlighted by Luis Almagro’s recent call for Nicaragua to be ‘strangled‘ through sanctions and other means.
All of this provides evidence of the illegality of waging economic warfare in peacetime.
Pressure on Trinidad and Suriname, deepening ties with Guyana and the Dutch Caribbean
Guyana, a country where roughly two thirds of the citizens live in poverty, has etched a new deal with Exxon that is expected to transform the country into a major oil producer within the global energy sector.
US military activities, meanwhile, have increased inside Guyana; however, such ‘lily pad’ or training exercises occur in many parts of the region. This reflects just how deeply integrated the region is into the US orbit.
In recent weeks, tensions inside Guyana appear to have boiled to the surface as its two main parties compete for leverage. Socially-constructed ethnic differences have historically been amplified, weaponized, and exploited to control political outcomes in the country.
Here it’s important to note the historical formation of Guyana, and the US role in pressuring Winston Churchill to militarily intervene in British Guiana in 1953, overthrowing its first elected prime minister Cheddi Jagan.
New oil discoveries in Surinam may also dramatically alter its political economy in due course. Its authorities have come under pressure to end friendly ties with Venezuela. However, in recent weeks the regional left-wing media outlet teleSUR has expanded its broadcasts in Suriname, a member of ALBA.
Trinidad and Tobago, which sought to honor a new liquified natural gas pipeline deal it made with Caracas, was pressured in February to end the project. Media reports indicate it was halted by Washington’s sanctions and US-based transnationals active in Trinidad’s energy sector.
A cat and mouse game has also played out with Venezuela’s national oil and gas company PDVSA and its contracted third-party oil vessels facing seizure and new pressures through the US sanction regime. This has caused a scramble, with diplomatic crises occurring between Venezuela and the ABC islands, which host a growing array of US southward-aimed operations.
Geopolitics in the globalizing Caribbean
Peace was never a defining feature of US ‘national security’ strategy. The US pursuit of global supremacy includes misrepresenting the world as naturally chaotic and dependent on US leadership. Ultimately, this strategy includes sowing discord, ramping up regime change, and keeping the world unstable. In bringing about political transitions, US policymakers and their allies use the most sophisticated forms of soft power and, at times, backed up by force – as exemplified by the coups in Haiti, Honduras and, most recently, Bolivia.
Challenging this juggernaut requires local, regional, and global efforts and new transnational forms of popular organizing, alongside fundamental changes inside the US where peace, cooperation, and respect for international law need to be advocated for, not shunned.
Jeb Sprague2nd April 2020
Recent multilateral meetings in Kingston and Mar-a-Lago signal US attempts at intensifying divisions in the Caribbean. ‘Shithole countries’ (as president Donald Trump allegedly labeled Haiti and many other low-income countries) can be important allies for undermining those states targeted for regime change. In particular, Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton has spoken openlyabout US and regional businesspeople benefiting financially from a toppling of Venezuela’s left-of-centre government and a privatization of its petroleum industry. Venezuela reportedly has the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
Over recent decades, the Caribbean has experienced profound change, propelled by new digital technologies, hi-tech remittance networks, new global cultural and media flows, low-cost mass travel and tourism, expanding real estate markets, and new banking and financial arrangements.
People across the region are propelled into the clutches of globalization with mounting inequality and climate breakdown taking a severe toll on their lives. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other brewing worldwide crises such as those stemming from automation and artificial intelligence, nuclear proliferation, and a lack of regional and global coordination around many issues (the latest being the new coronavirus (Covid-19)).
It’s in this context that US officials are seeking to intensify geopolitical divisions in the region, most notably in order to promote its policy of regime change targeting Venezuela.
Targeting Venezuela and its role in the Caribbean
US plans to replace elected Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro with self-proclaimed leader Juan Guaidó failed utterly in 2019; yet an intensification of its economic terror campaign looms even as it continues to be the key factor that hinders Venezuela’s recovery.
The South American country has suffered tremendously, pushing many people to emigrate. While Venezuela has only had tens of coronavirus cases so far, the country’s health system has been battered by US sanctions and will face difficulties if the virus spreads.
Facing constant attack, dramatically intensified since August 2017 when the US imposed financial sanctions, Venezuela has been forced to rely on investment and support from Chinese and Russian state enterprises. By June 2018, Caracas had halted around half of its crude oil shipments around the Caribbean.
A part of the US strategy has been to undermine the viability of Venezuela’s subsidized-ALBA project as a regional developmental alternative to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other neoliberal financial institutions.
ALBA itself has faced many internal problems. Yet in late 2019, ALBA leaders declared that in 2020 they would relaunch PetroCaribe, the Children’s Heart Hospitals, its eye surgery program, and its school of medicine.
Thus far, though pummeled, the remaining leaders and left-leaning movements and parties of some regional states have not given in to Washington’s offensive. Historically, many officials in the Caribbean region have argued for the region to be ‘nuclear-free’ and a ‘Zone of Peace‘, yet this has always been contradicted by the fact that so many identify with the West and are located in the US geopolitical sphere. The most vocal exceptions are Cuba (since the 1959 revolution), and Grenada (from 1979 to 1983 under the short-lived government of Maurice Bishop).
Over recent decades, many Caribbean political parties have shifted away from their disparate ideological roots. Instead, they have moved towards promoting economic models emphasizing exports and tourism. Many state elites, with the support of supranational institutions, have sought to focus on creating conditions that attract transnational corporate investors. While participants in ALBA partially promote an alternative developmental stream, they also must regularly juggle close relationships with big business.
US seeking to widen the gulf between Caribbean states
In July 1973, four of the newly independent and leading sovereign states in the English-speaking Caribbean – Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago – all signed on to the Treaty of Chaguaramas. In later years, the other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) states would sign on. Among the provisions of the established treaty, the states are expected to coordinate their foreign policies on matters of regional and international import.
Moving in the exact opposite direction, Trump met with five Caribbean leaders at Mar-a-Lago in South Florida in March 2019. US secretary of state Mike Pompeo later met with Caribbean officials in Kingston, Jamaica in January 2020.
The meetings signaled US attempts to intensify geopolitical divisions. One Reutersheadline read bluntly: Trump dangles investment to Caribbean leaders who back Venezuela’s Guaido.
By signing on to US policy undermining Venezuela, and supporting the interventionist demands of the heavily US-funded OAS (Organization of American States), divisions in the region have been further widened. For Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Saint Lucia, it may even constitute a violation of Article 12 and Article 16 of the Treaty of Chaguaramas, for which they are signatories.
Divisions have occurred in the past. The 1983 US invasion of Grenada was one of the more divisive matters in the region, with some states such as Trinidad and Tobago opposing the attack. Another divisive event was the 1996-1997 Shiprider Agreement. Caribbean countries split over allowing Washington to have the ability to sail into their territorial waters freely, with the US coastguard allowed to interdict vessels. Another split occurred when cruise company lobbyists defeated an effort to create a common head-tax in the region, successfully playing the islands off of one another.
On the other hand, the region has, over time, come together to oppose the US blockade on Cuba. Havana provides a large number of scholarships for students as well as technical and agriculture assistance. For decades, it has built up a lot of goodwill in the region.
Among the general population in the Caribbean, there is also a great deal of historical memory around the role of foreign intervention, with the demand for colonial reparations being widely popular.
In another example of unity, following the 2004 coup in Haiti, CARICOM denounced the US removal of the country’s elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. However, after the US and France advised CARICOM against raising the issue at the UN Security Council, Caribbean officials withdrew in silence. Aristide was allowed to enter Jamaica briefly, but after US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and other US officials objected, he soon returned to his exile in Africa.
Importantly, the leaders of Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and other states in the region did not attend Trump and Pompeo’s recent meetings.
The officials of CARICOM member states sometimes act according to how they perceive themselves to be affected by high-handed US geopolitical policies. They don’t like to be pushed around as ‘small island development states’, and are broadly skeptical of military intervention but are not necessarily unified on this point.
What’s happening now, though, is that US policymakers in a more concerted manner are seeking to widen the gulf between Caribbean states. Some Caribbean officials have more capacity for resilience, while others see only benefits in closer ties with Washington, which can undoubtedly help them with corporate investors. Many interests and pressures exist for siding with the deadly US policy in Venezuela.
Attending the Mar-a-lago meeting with Pompeo were the heads of government of the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia, and the heads of state of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, all having cut ties with Venezuela’s elected government and recognizing Juan Guaidó. The same countries attended the Kingston meeting, with the addition of Belize and Saint Kitts and Nevis. Aside from Trinidad/Tobago and Guyana, the official ‘head of state’ of most former British Caribbean colonies is still Queen Elizabeth II.
Structural crises at home
Governments joining Trump’s Caribbean strategy face deep problems at home.
Haiti’s president Jovenel Moïse, for example, governs without parliament after failing to hold elections, and is suffering a crisis of legitimacy that threatens to topple him from office. US support is a lynchpin for his political survival.
Dominican president Danilo Medina, meanwhile, is facing the largest protests in memory in the country, as he is accused of massive corruption and attempting to steal the February municipal elections. The Punta Catalina power plant Odebrecht scandal alone may total upwards of $1bn, a huge scandal for Medina’s government.
Jamaica’s government, continuing to suffer under large-scale structural adjustment debt, has been promised various deals from US officials. This helped compel the country’s withdrawal from Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program. Venezuela itself faced mounting barriers to maintaining it.
The Bahamas, meanwhile, has long been a virtual US colony, with the island used as a tax haven platform for transnational capital. The archipelago has also been battered under the climate crisis in the form of the recent devastating hurricane Dorian.
As for Belize, another country highly susceptible to pressure from powerful Western states, it was recently reported that one sixth of the country’s total landmass was being used by the British military for jungle warfare training. Belize has also faced annexation threats from Guatemala in the past.
US ‘national security’ strategy and the imperial frontier
Sanctioning and attacking Venezuela through hybrid warfare, some US policymakers and thinktanks now openly plan for a violent escalation targeting the country. With a far-right government in Brazil and US military bases and proxies in Colombia, Washington has helped inflame a hostile situation on the country’s borders.
This has extended to the US tightening the screws on Cuba and Nicaragua, the recent ousting of Bolivia’s elected government, and even a short-lived attempt by the highly interventionist OAS secretary general Luis Almagro to undermine CARICOM and ALBA-member state Dominica.
By late 2017, seeking to halt any kind of compromise with Cuba, Trump’s administration began to claim that Cuba had targeted US embassy staff in Havana with a ‘sonic weapons attack’. Recordings of the ‘sonic attack’, as CNN later reported, were thought to be the mating calls of a loud cricket species.
The US Helms-Burton Act that targets Cuba, meanwhile, is being strengthened. Third parties doing business on the island may face more lawsuits that increase risks for investors. Cruise ship lines and many charter and direct flights have also been blocked from traveling to Cuba, while inward remittance flows to the island have been made much more difficult. Furthermore, the Trump administration is reportedly carrying out new plans to attack the island’s medical services, one of the most vibrant parts of its economy.
Whatever one’s view on Nicaragua’s 2018 violence carried out by some police and government and opposition supporters, US and EU sanctions are not the answer. They’re having a growing impact on the small Central American country beyond individuals: increasing risk calculations for businesses investing in the country, slowing and hurting the likelihood for loans to be refinanced, and – over time – it will make it harder for the country’s diaspora to wire money to family members. Meanwhile, the US congress has expanded funding to influence Nicaraguan civil society.
The end goal of Washington’s NICA Act and EU sanctions is not to promote peace, but rather to push for a draconian neoliberal solution. This is highlighted by Luis Almagro’s recent call for Nicaragua to be ‘strangled‘ through sanctions and other means.
All of this provides evidence of the illegality of waging economic warfare in peacetime.
Pressure on Trinidad and Suriname, deepening ties with Guyana and the Dutch Caribbean
Guyana, a country where roughly two thirds of the citizens live in poverty, has etched a new deal with Exxon that is expected to transform the country into a major oil producer within the global energy sector.
US military activities, meanwhile, have increased inside Guyana; however, such ‘lily pad’ or training exercises occur in many parts of the region. This reflects just how deeply integrated the region is into the US orbit.
In recent weeks, tensions inside Guyana appear to have boiled to the surface as its two main parties compete for leverage. Socially-constructed ethnic differences have historically been amplified, weaponized, and exploited to control political outcomes in the country.
Here it’s important to note the historical formation of Guyana, and the US role in pressuring Winston Churchill to militarily intervene in British Guiana in 1953, overthrowing its first elected prime minister Cheddi Jagan.
New oil discoveries in Surinam may also dramatically alter its political economy in due course. Its authorities have come under pressure to end friendly ties with Venezuela. However, in recent weeks the regional left-wing media outlet teleSUR has expanded its broadcasts in Suriname, a member of ALBA.
Trinidad and Tobago, which sought to honor a new liquified natural gas pipeline deal it made with Caracas, was pressured in February to end the project. Media reports indicate it was halted by Washington’s sanctions and US-based transnationals active in Trinidad’s energy sector.
A cat and mouse game has also played out with Venezuela’s national oil and gas company PDVSA and its contracted third-party oil vessels facing seizure and new pressures through the US sanction regime. This has caused a scramble, with diplomatic crises occurring between Venezuela and the ABC islands, which host a growing array of US southward-aimed operations.
Geopolitics in the globalizing Caribbean
Peace was never a defining feature of US ‘national security’ strategy. The US pursuit of global supremacy includes misrepresenting the world as naturally chaotic and dependent on US leadership. Ultimately, this strategy includes sowing discord, ramping up regime change, and keeping the world unstable. In bringing about political transitions, US policymakers and their allies use the most sophisticated forms of soft power and, at times, backed up by force – as exemplified by the coups in Haiti, Honduras and, most recently, Bolivia.
Challenging this juggernaut requires local, regional, and global efforts and new transnational forms of popular organizing, alongside fundamental changes inside the US where peace, cooperation, and respect for international law need to be advocated for, not shunned.
We been fucking with them since Hugo Chávez told Bush Jr to go fuck himself, I remember when we where on patrol off their coast doing circles for two weeks pulled into Aruba for 4 days and did circles off the coast for 2 more weeks just to fuck with them. No big secret the government wants that oil.
Largest known oil reserves in the world
What you mean?
I didn't know this!