Legitimacy of US acts against Venezuela

The US has undertaken various steps for bringing regime change in Venezuela. As usual, it has been joined by some member countries of European Union. Though, the super power has failed in achieving its objective, people of Venezuela are bearing extreme distress. Does the civilized world have the slightest realization that the US actions to execute regime change in Venezuela are illegal?

In January, Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president, in a strategy orchestrated by the US to seize power from President Nicolás Maduro. In March, Guaidó announced that Operation Freedom, an organization established to overthrow the Maduro government, would take certain tactical actions beginning in April. The plan anticipated that the Venezuelan military will turn against Maduro.

This strategy was detailed in a regime change manual prepared by the US Global Development Lab, a branch of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The manual advocated the creation of rapid expeditionary development teams to partner with the CIA and US Special Forces to conduct a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations in extremis conditions.

Guaidó is funded by USAID’s sister organization, the National Endowment for Democracy, which is notorious for meddling in other countries and putting a good face on the CIA’s dirty business. The US generally opts for low-intensity conflict over full-scale wars. The low-intensity conflict involves four tools of regime change: sanctions or economic warfare; propaganda or information warfare; covert and proxy war; and aerial bombardment. In Venezuela, the US has used the first and second, with the third and fourth now on the table since the first two have created chaos but so far not toppled the government.

The sanctions imposed by the Trump administration in January had an immediate, very harsh impact on Venezuela’s economy, and on the general population, which depends on the export revenue from oil for essential imports including medicine, food, medical equipment, and other life-saving necessities. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Human Rights Watch issued a report documenting food and medicine shortages and sharp increases in disease throughout Venezuela. They characterize the situation as a humanitarian emergency and recommend a full-scale response by the United Nations Secretary General.

 The US misuse of humanitarian assistance as a cover for smuggling weapons and other non humanitarian items also has a long history in Latin American countries, Alfred De Zayas, former UN special rapporteur in Venezuela, said in an interview with AntiDiplomatico. De Zayas called out the United States for its hypocritical policy: “It is not possible to be a major cause of the economic crisis — having imposed … sanctions, financial blockades and economic war — and then mutating into a good Samaritan.”

The US is adamant at increasing the suffering of the Venezuelan people, in hopes they will rise up against Maduro. Similar approach was used by the Eisenhower administration after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. It was based on a State Department memo that proposed a line of action that makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the Fidel Castro government. The US economic blockade against Cuba continues to hurt the people but they have not overthrown their government.

Venezuela has asked for and received assistance from the United Nations, Russia, China, Turkey, India and Cuba, De Zayas reported that was humanitarian and offered in good faith and without strings attached. US aid is the fruit of the poison tree.

On April 3, Sen. Marco Rubio, who has helped lead the charge for regime change in Venezuela, introduced a bill in the Senate aimed at getting approval of US$400 million assistance for Venezuela and take steps to facilitate regime change. It would assessed the declining cohesion inside the Venezuelan military and security forces and the Maduro regime, and described the factors that would accelerate the decision making of individuals to break with the Maduro regime and recognize Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela.

At the end of March, the Russian government sent 100 troops to Venezuela. Russia’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, “Russian specialists … arrived in accordance with the clauses of a bilateral agreement on technical-military cooperation.”

In early April, Russia announced plans to install a training facility for military helicopters in Venezuela. The Trump administration is rattling its sabers at Russia. US National Security Adviser John Bolton warned that the US considers the presence of military forces from outside the Western Hemisphere a direct threat to international peace and security in the region. Russia, however, denies that its military presence in Venezuela poses a military threat. “The Russian side did not violate anything: neither the international agreements nor Venezuelan laws,” according to Zakharova.

Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza cited the hypocrisy of U.S. policy. He said “Such cynicism that a country with more than 800 military bases around the world, much of them in Latin America, and a growing military budget of more than US$700 billion, intends to interfere with the military-technical cooperation program between Russia and Venezuela.”

In late March, the US House of Representatives approved a bill called the “Russian-Venezuelan Threat Mitigation Act” to gauge Russia’s influence in Venezuela. It aimed to devise a strategy to counter threats from Russian-Venezuelan cooperation. The bill also required assessment of national security risks posed by potential Russian acquisition of CITGO’s United States energy infrastructure holdings.

To conclude the UN Charter prohibits the use or threat of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another nation. The Charter of the Organization of American States forbids any country from intervening in the external affairs of another nation. And the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees the right to self-determination.