First Thoughts on Venezuela

 

 

Lautaro Rivara
January 3rd (original en castellano)

Some tentative and urgent reflections on the United States' military aggression against Venezuela (and I will be updating them).

1) Trump DOES NOT HAVE political, military, or territorial control in Venezuela. There was no large-scale military invasion for the moment, but rather a "kinetic action" aimed at kidnapping a sitting president and using him as a tool of pressure and eventual bargaining chip. Even the total military assets deployed in recent months in the Greater Caribbean are insufficient to take control, let alone the rugged and vast Venezuelan geography, or even the capital, Caracas, and its immense and organized working-class neighborhoods (to put the scale into perspective, the invasion of tiny Panama in 1989 required the mobilization of more than 30,000 troops). In short, the bombings and attacks against military infrastructure were the operational cover for what imperial jargon euphemistically calls an "extraction."

2) I believe—and this is, of course, a hypothesis—that the main objective was not, and is not, to seize the country by force, but rather to decapitate the political leadership of the process and induce a significant fracture within the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, something the United States and the local opposition have attempted unsuccessfully for over 20 years. The Achilles' heel of imperial aggression against Venezuela is the absence of an endogenous vassal force, with firepower and mass mobilization capacity, capable of proclaiming something resembling a "legitimate" national rebellion against the "tyranny," thus providing a pseudo-democratic alibi for the aggression. VENEZUELA IS NOT SYRIA, neither in this nor in many other respects. There is nothing even remotely comparable to the HTS (Helicopters of Terrorism), and political-military-territorial unity in Venezuela and our region is generally much stronger than in other reference scenarios in West Asia.

3) This explains why Trump has threatened another round of attacks, and why we cannot rule out the possibility that this could escalate into a full-scale invasion in the coming hours or days, especially if the region and the "international community" fail to take any effective deterrent action, whether diplomatic, economic, or military. If the objective was to incite a large-scale military rebellion, a popular uprising (or a combination of both), and this did not occur for whatever reason, it is natural to expect that armed pressure on the chain of command will intensify and that the Pentagon will seek to compensate militarily for what it is not achieving, in principle, politically: the unconditional surrender of its enemy.

4) This explains a paradoxical but incontrovertible truth. In this strange geopolitical chess game, the United States checkmated the king (captured Maduro), but that did not mean it won the game. For the moment (everything could change from now on), the control of Caracas and the country by loyal state forces is total, or at least that's what I can conclude after speaking with several dozen Venezuelans in different parts of the capital and the country, in various roles and capacities. There are no clashes between military factions, no attempts at rebellion, and no "guarimbas" of any kind (2026 is not 2014 or 2017). The only mobilizations, on foot or by motorcycle, are coming from within the Chavista camp, although of course this is not 2002 either (when the coup and Chávez's reinstatement occurred). Considering the gravity of the circumstances, a relative calm prevails, with the exception of the obvious lines of families waiting to stock up on food in the face of this uncertainty.

5) Proof of all the above, and especially of the weakness of the imperialist home front, is that instead of announcing a "legitimate president," Trump once again belittled María Corina Machado, whom he publicly deemed incompetent to lead the country. For this reason, he announced that the United States would, for the time being, oversee the "transition." We cannot rule out the possibility that the invading force might attempt to seize control of oil wells and infrastructure to finance the operation and begin what could be a long and unpredictable strategy of territorial balkanization, as has frequently occurred in other theaters of operation (although, again, Latin America is not West Asia). Let us remember that, according to the "Trump corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, Venezuela's strategic resources belong to the United States by virtue of the nationalizations of the 1970s and the beginning of this century.

6) It may seem inappropriate to kick a man when he's down, but we cannot fail to mention that this aggression was prepared and announced for months in full view of the world, and that most actors (governmental, multilateral, media, intellectual, etc.) chose to turn a deaf ear to the drums of war beating in the Greater Caribbean. There is still time to rectify the mistakes and correct the misinterpretations, but this requires decisive and forceful action on all fronts, particularly from the other countries that were also threatened today with the Damocles' sword of intervention: Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Cuba, and others. As so many of us have maintained (even though we were labeled pessimists, conspiracy theorists, or outdated), this never had anything to do with democracy, human rights, cartels, or the fight against drug trafficking, but rather with the relaunch of the most blatant and bellicose imperial geopolitics, the geopolitical domination of our region, and the colonial plunder of our natural resources. One example suffices: Trump's press conference today, which will surely be forever etched in the annals of infamy and cynicism.

 

 

Source: https://x.com/LautaroRivara/status/2007527927664218333