{"id":20239,"date":"2020-04-23T05:49:18","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T09:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=20239"},"modified":"2020-04-23T05:53:55","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T09:53:55","slug":"threatening-military-intervention-in-venezuela-during-a-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=20239","title":{"rendered":"Threatening Military Intervention in Venezuela During a Pandemic?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .<\/p>\n

An article by Medea Benjamin and Leonardo Flores in Common Dreams<\/a> (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License)<\/p>\n

Unbeknownst to most Americans\u2014and as we are grapple with this terrifying pandemic\u2014the Trump administration is currently carrying out the largest military operation in Latin America in 30 years, and has made it clear that alleged Venezuelan \u201cnarco-terrorism\u201d is the target. It\u2019s worth noting that the last deployment of similar size took place at the time of the 1989 U.S. military intervention in Panama <\/a> to remove General Manuel Noriega.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nLittoral combat ship USS Detroit off the coast of Venezuela. (Photo: US Navy\/DoD)<\/center><\/p>\n

President Trump announced the deployment at the beginning of an April 1 COVID-19 press conference.\u00a0 According to Defense Secretary Mark Esper<\/a>, \u201cincluded in this force package are Navy destroyers and littoral combat ships, Coast Guard Cutters, P.A. patrol aircraft, and elements of an Army security force assistance brigade.\u201d General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that there are \u201cthousands of sailors, Coast Guardsman, soldiers, airmen, Marines involved in this operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The announcement came a week after U.S. Attorney General William Barr unsealed an indictment against President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and 13 other current or former Venezuelan officials. The officials were accused of \u201cnarco-terrorism\u201d and millions of dollars in cash rewards were offered for information leading to their capture, including a $15 million reward for Maduro.<\/p>\n

In their remarks during the press conference, Trump administration officials made it clear that the main target of this massive military mission is, in the words of Esper, \u201cthe illegitimate Maduro regime in Venezuela\u201d that relies \u201con the profits derived from the sale of narcotics to maintain its oppressive hold on power.\u201d National Security Advisor Robert O\u2019Brian said \u201cwe will continue to execute our maximum pressure policy to counter the Maduro regime\u2019s malign activities, including drug trafficking.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

(continued in right column)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Question related to this article:<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n
\n 
\nUS war against Venezuela: How can it be prevented?<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

(continued from left column).<\/p>\n

With cities in Venezuela under lockdown and the country struggling to address a looming public health crisis and yet another economic shock, it is clear that the Trump administration sees a new opportunity to exercise \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d to try to achieve regime change. President Trump has been threatening military intervention since 2017, and this massive deployment of naval assets in the vicinity of Venezuela takes the U.S. one step closer to an armed attack. \u00a0William Brownfield, former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela and one of the architects of\u00a0the strategy to undermine the Venezuelan government<\/a>, called the deployment \u201cthe application of [Trump\u2019s] military option.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Foreign Policy<\/a>, the U.S. Defense Department opposed deploying such a great quantity of military assets to the Caribbean, especially at a time when the U.S. military is having to confront the spread of Covid-19 (as witnessed recently aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt). According to a former senior government official, Trump\u2019s decision to deploy these assets over the objections of DOD commanders was driven entirely by \u201cpolitics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0A senior official at the Pentagon told\u00a0Newsweek <\/a>\u00a0that “the premise of the operation is a surge against drug trafficking\u2014but when have you ever heard of using that type of force for drugs? (…) The underlying purpose is to pressurize the Maduro regime.” This pressure could come in the form of the U.S. Navy boarding and seizing Venezuelan oil tankers,\u00a0according to a senior Maduro government official<\/a>.\u00a0This is a valid worry, as the Pentagon has claimed\u2014without offering any evidence\u2014that drugs are trafficked \u201cusing naval vessels from Venezuela to Cuba<\/a>.\u201d Given the U.S. government\u2019s\u00a0targeting and sanction of ships that transport oil from Cuba to Venezuela<\/a>, it hardly beggars belief that Venezuelan oil tankers could be boarded by the U.S. military.<\/p>\n

As a recent\u00a0report\u00a0<\/a> by the Washington Office on Latin America reveals, the U.S. government\u2019s own data has shown that only a small fraction of Colombian cocaine shipments pass through Venezuela on their way to the U.S. According to this data, six times more cocaine transited through Guatemala than Venezuela in 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Venezuela is battling COVID-19 within its own borders, as we are doing here at home. The country is also experiencing a deep economic crisis and facing severe shortages of medical supplies, a situation that has been compounded by U.S. unilateral economic sanctions.\u00a0 President Trump has no business deploying U.S. military assets against Venezuela, a country that in no shape or form represents a threat to the security of the United States, especially not now when a pandemic is raging around the world and in our own country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY . An article by Medea Benjamin and Leonardo Flores in Common Dreams (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License) Unbeknownst to most Americans\u2014and as we are grapple with this terrifying pandemic\u2014the Trump administration is currently carrying out the largest military operation in Latin America in 30 years, and has made … Continue reading Threatening Military Intervention in Venezuela During a Pandemic?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,77,91],"tags":[20,5],"class_list":["post-20239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disarmament","category-latin-america","category-north-america","tag-latin-america","tag-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}