{"id":127633,"date":"2019-02-11T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T12:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=127633"},"modified":"2019-02-07T10:48:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T10:48:26","slug":"venezuela-u-s-a-s-68th-regime-change-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/02\/venezuela-u-s-a-s-68th-regime-change-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela: U.S.A.\u2019s 68th Regime Change Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

6 Feb 2019 – <\/em>In his masterpiece,\u00a0Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II<\/a>, William Blum, who died in December 2018, wrote chapter-length accounts of 55 U.S. regime change operations against countries around the world, from China (1945-1960s) to Haiti (1986-1994).\u00a0 Noam Chomsky\u2019s blurb on the back of the latest edition says simply, \u201cFar and away the best book on the topic.\u201d We agree. If you have not read it, please do. It will give you a clearer context for what is happening in Venezuela today, and a better understanding of the world you are living in.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Since Killing Hope was published in 1995, the U.S. has conducted at least 13 more regime change operations, several of which are still active: Yugoslavia; Afghanistan; Iraq; the 3rd U.S. invasion of Haiti since WWII; Somalia; Honduras; Libya; Syria; Ukraine; Yemen; Iran; Nicaragua; and now Venezuela.<\/p>\n

William Blum noted that the U.S. generally prefers what its planners call \u201clow intensity conflict\u201d over full-scale wars. Only in periods of supreme overconfidence has it launched its most devastating and disastrous wars, from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq.\u00a0 After its war of mass destruction in Iraq, the U.S. reverted to \u201clow intensity conflict\u201d under Obama\u2019s doctrine of covert and proxy war.<\/p>\n

Obama conducted even\u00a0heavier bombing than Bush II<\/a>, and deployed\u00a0U.S. special operations forces<\/a>\u00a0to 150 countries all over the world, but he made sure that nearly all the bleeding and dying was done by Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Libyans, Ukrainians, Yemenis and others, not by Americans.\u00a0 What U.S. planners mean by \u201clow intensity conflict\u201d is that it is less intense for Americans.<\/p>\n

President Ghani of Afghanistan recently revealed that a staggering 45,000 Afghan security forces have been killed since he took office in 2014, compared with\u00a0only 72 U.S. and NATO troops<\/a>. \u201cIt shows who has been doing the fighting,\u201d Ghani caustically remarked. This disparity is common to every current U.S. war.<\/p>\n

This does not mean that the U.S. is any less committed to trying to overthrowing governments that reject and resist\u00a0U.S. imperial sovereignty<\/a>, especially if those countries contain vast oil reserves. It\u2019s no coincidence that two of the main targets of current U.S. regime change operations are Iran and Venezuela, two of the four countries with the largest liquid oil reserves in the world (the others being Saudi Arabia and Iraq).<\/p>\n

In practice, \u201clow intensity conflict\u201d involves four tools of regime change: sanctions or economic warfare; propaganda or\u00a0\u201cinformation warfare\u201d<\/a>; covert and proxy war; and aerial bombardment. In Venezuela, the U.S. has used the first and second, with the third and fourth now \u201con the table\u201d since the first two have created chaos but so far not toppled the government.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government has been opposed to Venezuela\u2019s socialist revolution since the time Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998. Unbeknownst to most Americans, Chavez was well loved by poor and working class Venezuelans for his extraordinary array of social programs that lifted millions out of poverty. Between 1996 and 2010, the level of extreme\u00a0poverty plummete<\/a>d from 40% to 7%. The government also substantially\u00a0improved healthcare and education<\/a>, cutting infant mortality by half, reducing the malnutrition rate from 21% to 5% of the population and eliminating illiteracy. These changes gave Venezuela the lowest level of inequality in the region, based on its\u00a0Gini coefficient<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since Chavez\u2019 death in 2013, Venezuela has descended into an economic crisis stemming from a combination of government mismanagement, corruption, sabotage and the precipitous fall in the price of oil. The oil industry provides 95% of Venezuela\u2019s exports, so the first thing Venezuela needed when prices crashed in 2014 was international financing to cover huge shortfalls in the budgets of both the government and the national oil company. The strategic objective of U.S. sanctions is to exacerbate the economic crisis by denying Venezuela access to the U.S.-dominated international financial system to roll over existing debt and obtain new financing.<\/p>\n

The blocking of Citgo\u2019s funds in the U.S. also deprives Venezuela of a billion dollars per year in revenue that it previously received from the export, refining and retail sale of gasoline to American drivers. Canadian economist Joe Emersberger has calculated that the new sanctions Trump unleashed in 2017\u00a0cost Venezuela $6 billion<\/a>\u00a0in just their first year. In sum, U.S. sanctions are designed to\u00a0\u201cmake the economy scream\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in Venezuela, exactly as President Nixon described the goal of U.S. sanctions against Chile after its people elected Salvador Allende in 1970.<\/p>\n

Alfred De Zayas visited Venezuela as a UN Rapporteur in 2017 and wrote an in-depth report for the UN.\u00a0 He criticized Venezuela\u2019s dependence on oil, poor governance and corruption, but he found that \u201ceconomic warfare\u201d by the U.S. and its allies were seriously exacerbating the crisis. \u201cModern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns,\u201d De Zayas wrote. \u201cTwenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees.\u201d He recommended that the International Criminal Court should investigate U.S. sanctions against Venezuela as crimes against humanity.\u00a0In a recent interview<\/a>\u00a0with the Independent newspaper in the U.K., De Zayas reiterated that U.S. sanctions are killing Venezuelans.<\/p>\n

Venezuela\u2019s economy has\u00a0shrunk by about half<\/a>\u00a0since 2014, the greatest contraction of a modern economy in peacetime. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the average Venezuelan\u00a0lost an incredible 24 lb.<\/a>\u00a0in body weight in 2017.<\/p>\n

Mr. De Zayas\u2019 successor as UN Rapporteur, Idriss Jazairy, issued\u00a0a statement on January 31st<\/a>, in which he condemned \u201ccoercion\u201d by outside powers as a \u201cviolation of all norms of international law.\u201d \u00a0\u201cSanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela,\u201d Mr. Jazairy said, \u201c\u2026precipitating an economic and humanitarian crisis\u2026is not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Venezuelans face poverty, preventable diseases, malnutrition and open threats of war by U.S. officials, those same U.S. officials and their corporate sponsors are looking at an almost irresistible gold mine if they can bring Venezuela to its knees: a fire sale of its oil industry to foreign oil companies and the privatization of many other sectors of its economy, from hydroelectric power plants to iron, aluminum and, yes, actual gold mines.\u00a0 This is not speculation. It is what\u00a0the U.S.\u2019s new puppet, Juan Guaido<\/a>, has reportedly promised his American backers if they can overthrow Venezuela\u2019s elected government and install him in the presidential palace.<\/p>\n

Oil industry sources<\/a>\u00a0have reported that Guaido has \u201cplans to introduce a new national hydrocarbons law that establishes flexible fiscal and contractual terms for projects adapted to oil prices and the oil investment cycle\u2026 A new hydrocarbons agency would be created to offer bidding rounds for projects in natural gas and conventional, heavy and extra-heavy crude.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. government claims to be acting in the best interests of the Venezuelan people, but over\u00a080 percent of Venezuelans<\/a>, including many who don\u2019t support Maduro, are opposed to the crippling economic sanctions, while 86% oppose U.S. or international military intervention.<\/p>\n

This generation of Americans has already seen how our government\u2019s endless sanctions, coups and wars have only left country after country mired in violence, poverty and chaos. As the results of these campaigns have become predictably catastrophic for the people of each country targeted, the American officials promoting and carrying them out have a higher and higher bar to meet as they try to answer the obvious question of an increasingly skeptical U.S. and international public:<\/p>\n

\u201cHow is Venezuela (or Iran or North Korea) different from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and at least 63 other countries where U.S. regime change operations have led only to long-lasting violence and chaos?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mexico, Uruguay, the Vatican and many other countries are\u00a0committed to diplomacy<\/a>\u00a0to help the people of Venezuela resolve their political differences and find a peaceful way forward. The most valuable way that the U.S. can help is to stop making the Venezuelan economy and people scream (on all sides), by lifting its sanctions and abandoning its failed and catastrophic regime change operation in Venezuela.\u00a0 But the only things that will force such a radical change in U.S. policy are public outrage, education and organizing, and international solidarity with the people of Venezuela.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Medea Benjamin<\/em> is <\/em>cofounder of CODEPINK <\/a>for Peace, and author of several books, including <\/em>Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Nicolas J. S. Davies<\/em> is a writer for <\/em>Consortium News and a researcher with CODEPINK, and the author of <\/em>Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 Feb 2019 – In his masterpiece, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, William Blum, who died Dec 2018, wrote accounts of 55 U.S. regime change operations around the world. Noam Chomsky\u2019s blurb on the back says simply, \u201cFar and away the best book on the topic.\u201d We agree. Since Killing Hope was published in 1995, the U.S. has conducted at least 13 more regime change operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":127635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}