There can be no mistaking the reality that the Trump administration in the United States is ‘going for the jugular’ against the administration of President Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela. In the process of literally laying siege to the Venezuelan economy Washington has ordered US oil companies operating in the country to leave – the last one being Chevron which is due to leave in December – and frightened off non-American companies with shipping and other interests in the country, with threats of sanctions.
In effect, the US has seized Venezuela’s economy by the jugular, strangling its foreign earnings and cutting off the country’s economic lifeline.
As has been the practice whenever a ‘delinquent’ regime is marked for punishment by Washington, the high officials of the offending country are targeted individually. Back in March, the US Department of Justice had listed Maduro and fourteen other current and former Venezuelan officials whom Washington had ‘charged’ with “narco-terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking, and other criminal charges.” Maduro himself had been accused of “allegedly” partnering “with the FARC to use cocaine as a weapon to ‘flood’ the United States.” Those kinds of charges levelled at out-of-favour senior officials of countries in the hemisphere are not unknown to the US’ foreign policy strategy.
It is no secret that Venezuela has slipped from being, alongside Brazil, a powerhouse in the hemisphere, its oil wealth coupled with its exalted status as the country possessing the largest volumes of oil reserves anywhere in the world, to a country that has become commonplace for forced migration. In the confrontation between the respective administrations in Washington and Caracas, ordinary Venezuelans have become pawns in a ‘game’ which, for the time being at least, appears to have no end.
Mindful themselves of the prospect of US reprisals, countries both within and without the hemisphere have been ‘feeding’ Venezuela with the proverbial ‘long spoon’, some, like Guyana, providing sanctuary to its forced migrants but none risking any sort of robust verbal pushback against the Trump administration.
Students of US foreign policy will of course be intimate with the historic inconsistencies in the US’ approach to separating its foes from its friends. From the Cold War era to this day, Washington’s ‘vital interests’- rationale for making those choices – have not changed. Maduro is the successor to the now deceased firebrand Hugo Chavez and that alone is sufficient to keep him on Washington’s to-do list.
It matters not one iota that America’s faceoff with the Maduro administration is costing lives, dispersing families into exile and laying waste to what was once one of the wealthiest countries in the hemisphere.
The last thing that Washington would want, of course, is to inadvertently forge a strong alliance between Caracas and Teheran though that is precisely what could happen if, as Iran has already said, it will respond to further requests for support from Venezuela.
Could the US’ determination to remove President Maduro from office trigger a new confrontation in the hemisphere?
