COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
“Venezuela crisis: Theresa May throws weight behind opposition leader Juan Guaidó “
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Response to a reader comment:
Yes, the oil is important.
But that isn't the sole motivation here, maybe not even the primary one.
America has always worked hard to protect the giant plantation system it operates in Latin America, and anyone who could even vaguely threaten that becomes an enemy. Venezuela’s Maduro is very much seen in that light.
As just one of many examples, the CIA spent years and countless millions of dollars trying to destabilize or kill Castro for the same reason. It ran an operation in the early 1960s which made Osama bin Laden's training camps in the mountains of Afghanistan resemble boy scout gatherings.
Whether a leader survives America’s covert and overt attempts to topple him depends a great deal on his status with the people of his country. Again, Castro was the key example. He was widely viewed as a hero in Cuba, and because Cuba has a substantial population, it was able to offer significant mobilized opposition to Washington, and Castro loyalists did a remarkable job of protecting him against many CIA plots, including the CIA’s use of at least one high-up insider.
This does not prove to be the case for many places undermined by covert efforts, and the CIA has a long record of “achievements” over decades in Latin America. Whether Maduro will survive the constant American assaults is largely a question of how much his domestic situation parallels that of Castro.
For various reasons, in our time, the United States has been reluctant to resort to open military invasion of such countries. “Send in the Marines” is not often heard in recent decades. America prefers to use sanctions, blockades, CIA black operations, assassination, and the cooperation of friendly interests in countries neighboring its target.
It also often secretly arms and supplies “rebels” in the same fashion as we see done in the Middle East, as with ISIS, al Nusra, and others. These "rebels" may be anything from pre-existing anti-government guerilla groups to just plain rag-tag mercenaries. The world has an inexhaustible supply of people ready to fight for something or other if they are reasonably supported and rewarded. It is just part of the human condition which an outfit like CIA exploits over and over again.
Also, as in so many places, the US does not like independent-minded leaders. You are okay so long as you toe the US policy line, even if you are a bloody tyrant. A leader’s degree of violence or tyranny has absolutely nothing to do with American opposition to a government, although you will hear it cited regularly in self-righteous, self-serving words from Washington about those it opposes.
That is a key operating principle of the American empire. It tends not to appoint, as imperial Britain did, viceroys and governors, instead allowing local rulers, however selected and maintained in power, to carry on, just so long as they do nothing to disturb American interests. In many cases, these leaders are encouraged and rewarded with bribes and privileges.
You see this principle applied with almost embarrassing openness in the Middle East where we have horrifically bloody leaders like the Saudi Crown Prince, Egypt’s Field Marshal El-Sisi, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, and others - none of them honoring either democratic or human rights. But all of them are just fine and acceptable while Syria’s Assad or Libya’s Gaddafi – men who worked to run their countries fairly well for the general people’s interests and who never caused a war but who opposed American policies – are berated as bloody monsters.
NOTE:
Just four months ago President Trump said at the UN: “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”
