Venezuela is not a poor country. In 1998, it was one of the leading OPEC members, producing 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. Although Caracas largely failed to take advantage of its former oil boom by diversifying its oil-dependent economy, it was the combination of lower oil prices and US-led sanctions that pushed the once relatively thriving South American country onto its knees.

In December 2018, former US President Donald Trump imposed severe sanctions on Venezuela, cutting off oil imports from the country, which stood at around 200,000 barrels per day. The US managed to replace Venezuelan oil with supplies from elsewhere as crude oil prices fell as low as $40 per barrel.

The timing of Trump’s move was meant to ravage, if not entirely destroy, the Venezuelan economy in order to exact political concessions, or worse. The decision to choke off Venezuela further in December of that year was timed perfectly as the global oil crisis had reached its zenith in the previous month.

Venezuela was already struggling with US-led sanctions, regional isolation, political instability, hyperinflation and, subsequently, extreme poverty. The US government’s move was meant to be the final push that surely, as many US Republicans and some Democrats concluded, would end the rule of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The South American country has long accused the US of pursuing regime change in Caracas, based on allegations that the socialist Maduro government had won the 2018 elections through fraud. With no further ado, Washington determined that Juan Guaidò, who was then Venezuela’s opposition leader and president of the National Assembly, should be installed as the new president.

Since then, US foreign policy in South America has centred largely on isolating Venezuela and, by extension, weakening the socialist governments in Cuba and elsewhere in the region. In 2017, for example, the US evacuated its embassy in the Cuban capital, Havana, claiming that its staff members were being targeted by “sonic attacks”, through a supposed form of high-frequency microwave radiation. Although such claims were never substantiated, they allowed Washington to pull back on the positive diplomatic gestures towards Cuba that were carried out by the Barack Obama administration, starting in 2016.

The inflation rate in Venezuela continued to worsen, reaching 686.4 per cent last year, according to Bloomberg. As a result, the majority of Venezuelans continue to live below the extreme poverty line.

The government in Caracas, however, somehow survived for different reasons according to which political analyst you believe. In Venezuela itself, much credence is given to the country’s socialist values, the resilience of the people and to the Bolivarian movement. The anti-Maduro forces in the US, based mostly in Florida, blame Maduro’s survival on Washington’s lack of resolve. A third factor, which is often overlooked, is Russia.

In 2019, Russia sent hundreds of military specialists, technicians and soldiers to Caracas in various official guises. The presence of the Russian military helped ease fears that pro-Washington forces in Venezuela were preparing a military coup. Equally important, Russia’s strong trade ties, loans and more, were instrumental in helping Venezuela escape complete bankruptcy and circumvent some of the US sanctions.

Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union decades ago, Russia has remained largely committed to the USSR’s geopolitical legacy. Moscow’s strong relations with socialist nations in South America are a testament to this fact. The US, on the other hand, has done little to redefine its troubled relationships with South America, as if little has changed since the time of the hegemonic 1823 Monroe Doctrine.

Now, it seems that the US is about to pay for its past miscalculations. Unsurprisingly, the pro-Russia bloc in South America is expressing strong solidarity with Moscow following the latter’s intervention in Ukraine and the subsequent US and Western sanctions. Wary of the developing energy crisis and the danger of having Russian allies within a largely US-dominated region, Washington is attempting, albeit clumsily, to reverse some of its previous missteps. On 3 March, it decided to re-open the US Embassy in Havana and, two days later, a US delegation arrived in Venezuela.

Now that Russia’s moves in Eastern Europe have ignited a new “Great Game”, Venezuela, Cuba and others find themselves at its heart, despite being thousands of miles away. Even though some in Washington are willing to reconsider their long-standing policy against the socialist bloc in South America, the US mission is rife with obstacles. Oddly, the biggest of these on the US path to South America is neither Caracas, Havana nor even Moscow, but the powerful and influential lobbies and pressure groups in Washington and Florida.

Republican Senator Rick Scott from Illinois, was quoted in Politico as saying, “The only thing the Biden admin should be discussing with Maduro is the time of his resignation.” While Scott’s views are shared by many top US officials, on this occasion the vagaries of American politicians may have little impact on their country’s foreign policy. For once, the Venezuelan government commands centre stage.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

We all hated the images from the Washington Capitol a few days ago, and we heard words like ‘sedition,’ ‘terrorism,’ and ‘coup.’ Democrats were quick to point fingers at Republicans, rightly so. However, like Republicans, Democrats have also supported this kind of unrest, for decades, in foreign countries. It’s overdue for us to reflect on our hypocrisy. If we hate something for ourselves, we shouldn’t like it for others. It’s an easy principle, and as most Americans are Christians, they can read about it in the Bible. If we don’t like what unfolded in our capital, we should not produce these scenes in foreign capitals.

Let’s take John F. Kennedy, one of the Democrats’ most beloved presidents. When in 1959 Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba, there is good evidence that he sought an amenable relationship with the U.S. However, he also pursued economic independence, and Washington saw this as an affront against U.S. businesses in Cuba and across Latin America. Kennedy insisted, “We can’t go on living with this Castro cancer for ten years more.” Clandestine operations were launched to kill Castro. With them failing, Kennedy authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion, leading to several hundred deaths and imprisonments. Not only was this an absolute moral fiasco, it was also a tremendous strategic failure as Castro was squarely played into Moscow’s orbit.

Let’s take Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the Republicans’ most beloved presidents. A few years before the Bay of Pigs, Eisenhower presided over another coup, this time in Iran. In 1950, Mohammed Mosaddegh became the prime minister of a democratically oriented government. Washington leaders feared that Mossadegh would restrict U.S. and British control of the Middle Eastern oil industry. In early 1953, $1 million was transmitted to the CIA station in Tehran to be used “in any way that would bring about the fall of Mosaddeq.” American operatives then orchestrated the mob-driven and violent fall of Mossadegh, which led to rule of the Shah who was previously described as “unscrupulous.” Yet, he fell in line with perceived U.S. interests.

Eisenhower wrote later in his diary, “Another recent development that we helped bring about was … the elimination of Mossadegh. The things we did were ‘covert.’… I listened to [our agent’s] detailed report and it seemed more like a dime novel than an historical fact.” Yet, it was an historical fact, and it brought ongoing authoritarian rule over the Iranian people. Again, not only was this an absolute moral failure, but this episode was also the catalyst for the conflictual relations between the U.S. and Iran that remain today.

Unfortunately, these are only two of so many examples. Some years ago, the New York Times acknowledged, “Since the end of World War II, the United States … has installed or toppled leaders on every continent, secretly supported political parties of close allies …, fomented coups, spread false rumors, bribed political figures and spent countless billions of dollars to sway public opinion.” These inclinations continue in America’s interventionist foreign policy establishment. All too often, the consequences are injustice to people in foreign countries and a tarnished image of the U.S. with all the consequences that this brings.

A few days ago, in regards to the assault on the Washington Capitol, the Venezuelan government stated, “With this unfortunate episode, the United States is suffering the same thing that it has generated in other countries with its policies of aggression.” There’s some truth to this statement, but the full truth is that the attack on the Capitol is nothing in comparison to what U.S. operations have caused in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Many Americans won’t like to hear this as they prefer a virtuous image of their country in world affairs. Then, however, they have no moral right to complain about the state of our own republic.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

PBS NewsHour: “Insurrection at Capitol draws condemnation across the globe”

Will the militant Trump administration attempt to board these vessels and steal their oil, to provoke Iran again and interfere with the Biden team’s plan to restore the 2015 nuclear deal?

The Trump administration seized four Iranian oil tankers in the Caribbean in August and sold off the oil, despite these actions being illegal in the international law of the sea. Bill Barr’s Department of Justice got $40 million for their act of piracy. The tankers’ owners, based in Oman, the UK and the UAE, have sued over the seizure. Barr responded by sanctioning two of them.

Although the Bloomberg reporters blame Venezuela’s need for these imports solely on the administration of Nicolas Maduro, this is somewhat unfair. No doubt Maduro is authoritarian and a poor administrator of affairs, and bears some of the blame.

The fact is, however, that crude petroleum is fairly useless. It has to be refined into gasoline or diesel in order to be useful in burning for fuel in vehicles (the most common way it is consumed). Moreover, heavy or “sour” crude with high amounts of sulfur needs special refineries and requires the use of natural gas concentrates as diluents. Venezuela used to ship sour crude to the US for refining, but can no longer do so because of Trump sanctions. The South American oil giant has its own refineries, as well, but Venezuela does not have its own natural gas, and it used to import the natgas concentrates from — guess who? — the United States. No more.

Guess who has massive fields of natural gas and who can thus easily make natural gas concentrates for the Venezuelan refineries? You guessed it: Iran. Plus Iran can just export gasoline that it has already refined to Venezuela, given that the country will need time to build more local refineries before it can ramp back up its gasoline production in light of the US embargo.

Iran is also apparently offering to transport Venezuelan crude in its ships to be refined abroad (possibly China).

Since August Iranian ships have managed to make it to Venezuela without being pirated by the Trump administration, by keeping their transponders off. But each of these export journeys is now an adventure, since Trump seems to have seen that Tom Hanks movie about the Somali pirates and decided he wants the US to play Somali pirate in the Caribbean.

The odious Elliott Abrams, warmonger-in-chief and old-time supporter of nun-killing right wing death squads in Central America, is now in charge of Iran and Venezuela for Trump and is warning propagandistically against Iran sending missiles to Venezuela (for which there is no evidence at all). Abrams is a known liar who was convicted of lying to Congress. Having these people in power for another month and a half is like walking on grenades.

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Bonus Video:

Lahore Mirror: “Iran sends biggest ever fleet of oil tankers to Venezuela bypassing US sanctions”

Trump had four Iranian oil tankers seized in August, alleging that they were heading for Venezuela. The problem? There is no basis in international law for the seizures, which are therefore mere piracy and outright grand larceny. The owners of the vessels have filed suit in a Washington, D.C. district court.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea states, “All States enjoy the traditional freedoms of navigation, overflight, scientific research and fishing on the high seas; they are obliged to adopt, or cooperate with other States in adopting, measures to manage and conserve living resources.”

The Iranian vessels were on the high seas and enjoy the freedom of navigation. The UN Security Council had admittedly put sanctions on Iran 2007-2015, but these were lifted with the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the “Iran nuclear deal” by Iran and by the five permanent members of the UNSC plus Germany.

Trump does not have a legal leg to stand on.

Iran has not been deterred from developing its ties with Venezuela, in a bid to undermine Trump’s economic war on that country.

Bloomberg reports that Iran secretly offloaded a large shipment of South Pars natural gas condensate at the port of Jose on Saturday. Venezuela has some oil that is heavy with sulphur or other impurities, but which can be made more attractive to buyers, and can more easily be refined into gasoline, if it is blended with condensates, which act as diluents. Venezuela does not produce its own natural gas condensates, and plans of Russia’s Rosneft to drill for natural gas offshore were halted by threats of US sanctions. Venezuela used to buy diluents from the US before Trump stopped that trade.

This Iranian tanker likely avoided Trump piracy by switching off its shipboard Automatic Identification System, or AIS, so that US signals intelligence could not easily locate it.*

In fact, Reuters reports that three more tankers are on their way from Iran to Venezuela, this time carrying refined gasoline. Venezuela is facing gasoline shortages, in part because of its inability to import US condensates. The Iranian vessels are avoiding US electronic espionage and piracy by going around the Cape of Good hope and keeping their AIS off.

Venezuela may be paying for some of this Iranian help with barter. It is shipping aluminum to Iran, for instance.

Not only is Iran confronting Trump over his blockade of Tehran and Caracas, but so is Turkey. Ankara is supposedly a NATO ally of the US, but President Tayyip Erdogan has a strong anti-imperialist rhetoric that often sounds a good deal like that of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.

Parsi is afraid that Trump will begin trying to seize Iranian vessels in the Mideast Gulf itself, and that this piracy will be aimed at eliciting the sort of response from Iran that could justify US strikes on that country. The purpose would be to ramp up US patriotism ahead of the November election and attempt to get the US public on Trump’s side as a war president.

One thing you can say about the Trump crew, is that you can’t rule anything out.

*An earlier version of this post confused the AIS with GPS, which is passive.

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Bonus Video:

WION from last month: “U.S. says seized four Iranian oil tankers en route to Venezuela”

Violence erupted at the Venezuela-Colombia border over the delivery of humanitarian aid to Venezuela, killing four people and injuring 24 on Feb. 22.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that his “days are numbered,” and Trump officials reiterated that the U.S. is considering all options, including military action, to address Venezuela’s crisis.

Almost 80 percent of Venezuelans disapprove of Maduro, who was reinaugurated for a second six-year term in January after an election widely seen as fraudulent. Since taking power in 2013, he has led Venezuela into a deep economic crisis.

In late January, opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared Maduro a “usurper” and swore himself in as the country’s rightful president. More than 50 countries – including the United States, Europe and most of Latin America – want to replace Maduro’s regime with a Guaidó-led government.

Despite near global condemnation of Maduro, any U.S. intervention in Venezuela would be controversial. The United States’ long history of interfering in Latin American politics suggests that its military operations generally usher in dictatorship and civil war – not democracy.

The Cuban-US Cold War

Cuba, the focus of my history research, is a prime example of this pattern.

U.S.-Cuban relations have never recovered from President William McKinley’s intervention in Cuba’s war for independence over a century ago.

Before waging what in the U.S. is known as the Spanish-American War in 1898, McKinley promised that “the people of the island of Cuba” would be “free and independent” from Spain and that his government had no “intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said Island.”

In the end, however, Cuba’s independence from Spain meant domination by the United States.

For 60 years after the Spanish-American War, the White House made repeated military and diplomatic interventions in Cuba, supporting politicians who protected U.S. economic interests in sugar, utilities, banks or tourism and who backed American foreign policy in the Caribbean.

By 1952, when the U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista overthrew President Carlos Prío Socarrás, Cuba’s government had effectively become protectors of American businesses, according to my research. Batista had a warm relationship with both Washington, D.C. and the American organized crime groups that used to control Havana’s tourist industry.

A communist revolution led by Fidel Castro overthrew Batista’s military junta in 1959. Castro decried the “imperialist government of the United States” for turning Cuba into an “American colony.”

The Kennedy administration’s trade embargo against Cuba and the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion – in which the U.S. military trained Cuban dissidents in an attempt to unseat Castro – only pushed Cuba further into the orbit of Soviet Russia.

For the past six decades, the U.S. and Cuba have remained locked in a Cold War, with a brief thaw under President Barack Obama.

Anti-communist coups

Fearing that communism would spread across the hemisphere, the U.S. government repeatedly interfered in the politics of Latin American nations during the Cold War.

In 1954 the CIA worked with elements of the Guatemalan military to overthrow elected President Jacobo Árbenz, whom U.S. policymakers considered dangerously left-wing. Decades of dictatorship and civil war followed, killing an estimated 200,000 people.

A peace agreement in 1996 restored democracy, but Guatemala has yet to recover economically, politically or psychologically from the bloodshed.

Then there is Chile’s U.S.-supported coup d’etat. In 1973, the U.S. government covertly assisted right-wing elements of the Chilean military in overthrowing the socialist president Salvador Allende.

General Augusto Pinochet took power with the quiet financial and political support of the United States. His dictatorship, which lasted until 1990, killed tens of thousands of Chileans.

The Dominican Republic and Panama

U.S. intervention in Latin America did not start or end with the Cold War.

During World War I, the United States was concerned that Germany could use the Dominican Republic as a base of military operations. So American troops occupied the Caribbean island from 1916 to 1924.

Though the American-led administration improved the finances and infrastructure of the Dominican Republic, it also created the national guard that helped to propel Gen. Rafael Trujillo into power. His 30-year reign was savage.

President George H. W. Bush’s 1989 invasion of Panama is the rare exception when U.S. intervention in Latin American affairs actually created stability.

Most Panamanians appear to have supported the 1989 U.S. military operation to remove the corrupt and brutal military strongman Manuel Noriega.

In the years since, Panama has enjoyed comparatively peaceful elections and transfers of power.

Anti-Americanism in Latin America

On balance, though, U.S. military operations in Latin America have rarely brought democracy.

But they have created strong anti-American sentiment in the region, which leftist leaders from Fidel Castro to Hugo Chávez have adeptly harnessed to vilify their political opponents as mere U.S. puppets.

Support for the U.S. government is lower now than it has been in decades. Just 35 percent of Argentines, 39 percent of Chileans and 45 percent of Venezuelans view the U.S. favorably, according to the Pew Research Center.

President Maduro, too, has used anti-imperialist rhetoric. He denounces U.S. sanctions and other efforts to isolate his regime as a “gringo plot.”

A safer way to restore democracy

This history explains why a U.S. intervention in Venezuela would be viewed with skepticism. Though Maduro is unpopular, 65 percent of Venezuelans oppose any foreign military operation to remove Maduro, according to recent polling.

Rather than plan yet another coup d’etat, I believe U.S. efforts in Venezuela should support the work of the Lima Group, a coalition of 12 Latin American countries, including Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil, plus Canada.

The Lima Group has ruled out military force in Venezuela. Its pressure campaign to force him out peacefully has included diplomatically isolating his regime and asking Venezuela’s soldiers to pledge loyalty to Guaidó.

A negotiated settlement leading to Maduro’s voluntary departure from office is their ultimate goal.

Regional diplomacy is much slower than foreign intervention. But it avoids further bloodshed and reduces the role of anti-Americanism in Venezuela’s crisis.

It may also open a new chapter in the history of U.S.-Latin American relations – one in which the U.S. takes its lead from the region, and not the other way around.

Joseph J. Gonzalez, Associate Professor, Global Studies, Appalachian State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Leer en español.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Aljazeera English: US, Russia rival bids for UN action in Venezuela blocked l Al Jazeera English

As the major media presents it, the US is altruistically rushing to feed a people in economic crisis. And, of course, our government knows what is best for the Venezuelan people (just as we did for Afghani, Iraqi and Vietnamese peoples). Yet, photos of mass rallies reveal that millions of darker-skinned – indigenous and mixed-race Venezuelans, of poorer classes support their elected president, while smaller number of white descendants of early Spanish colonizers back the US-selected and designated new president, a legislator named Juan Guiado. Our troops and aid anywhere near Venezuela smell like regime change.

How to make sense of this?

First, let’s acknowledge a major contradiction at the heart of our Trojan horse of “humanitarian aid” at the Venezuelan border. Trump has fixated on pulling the US out of UN treaties, UN agencies, maybe NATO, Syria and Afghanistan, with the mantra that we need to stop fixing the world. Why then stir up a new conflict in South America? If we want to give aid, give it through the Red Cross, already in Venezuela.

Second, what menace is Venezuela to us? None at all, but as with Cuba, the US government is struck apoplectic by socialism, as if it is a threat to our national security. Well maybe it is, if we consider national security in its truest sense of human well-being and security. Venezuela, like Cuba and the social democrat countries of Europe, dramatically lowered child poverty, infant mortality, illiteracy, and homelessness when compared to the wealthier US. Here youth poverty, infant mortality, incarceration, income inequality and obesity are highest of all the developed countries.

Further, if the Trump administration cares so about the looming economic crisis in Venezuela and the growing need for food and medications, why have they assisted Saudi Arabia in its war on Yemen, which has generated the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Why have they left Puerto Rico to wither and waste away from the devastation of Hurricane Maria? Why have they callously separated migrant children fleeing violence in Central American from their parents? And why has our government compounded its crushing economic sanctions on Venezuela, while offering crumbs in humanitarian aid.

Finally, it’s not possible to dissociate our intrusion into Venezuelan politics from oil, given that country has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Have we learned nothing from our war in Iraq and the CIA-induced overthrow in 1953 of the democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, after he nationalized Iran’s oil?

The arc of U.S. militarism across the 20^th century and into the 21^st is neither moral nor does it bend toward justice. At each end of this ongoing arc, the words of two military veterans of U.S. foreign wars distill and corroborate the US history of imperial reach. Brigadier General Smedley Butler, born in 1881, began his career as a teenage Marine combat soldier assigned to Cuba and Puerto Rico during the US invasion of those islands. He fought next in the US war in the Philippines, ostensibly against Spanish imperialism but ultimately against the Philippine revolution for independence. He gained the highest rank and a host of medals during subsequent US occupations and military interventions in Central America and the Caribbean, popularly known as the Banana Wars.

As Butler confessed in his iconoclastic book War Is a Racket, he was “a bully boy for American corporations,” making countries safe for U.S. capitalism. More an isolationist than anti-war, he nonetheless nailed the war profiteers – racketeers, in his unsparing lexicon – for the blood on their hands. War is the oldest, most profitable racket, he wrote – one in which billions of dollars are made for millions of lives destroyed.

Making the world “safe for democracy” was, at its core, making the world safe for war profits. Of diplomacy Butler wrote, “The State Department…is always talking about peace but thinking about war.” He proposed an “Amendment for Peace”: In essence, keep military (Army, Navy, Air Force) on the continental U.S. for purpose of defense against military invasions here.

In the 21^st century, Major Danny Sjursen, who served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan, proposes that the Department of Defense should be renamed the Department of Offense. His reasons: American troops are deployed in 70 percent of the world’s countries; American pilots are currently bombing 7 countries; and the U.S., alone among nations, has divided the six inhabited continents into six military commands. Our military operations exceed U.S. national interests and are “unmoored” from reasoned strategy and our society’s needs, he concludes.

The enlightenment of another Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, Kevin Tillman, pierces the benighted world of Washington. “As one of the soldiers who illegally invaded Iraq…I know an illegal coup/invasion when I see one…if Venezuelans believe [their president] Maduro has mismanaged the nation’s most valuable asset [oil], it is their right to seek change, but this is not a right enjoyed by Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi or Elliot Abrams.”

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Euronews: “US refuses to rule out military action to oust Venezuela’s Maduro”

By Peter Certo | January 30, 2019

For some months now, Venezuela’s socialist government has lurched through a series of escalating crises — hyperinflation, mass protests, political violence — while both the government and its opposition have flirted with authoritarianism.

It isn’t pretty — and to hear the right wing tell it, it’s the future the U.S. left wants for our own country. As if to prevent that, the Trump administration is now fomenting a coup in Venezuela.

They’ve publicly recognized an unelected opposition leader as president, discussed coup plans with Venezuela’s military, and sanctioned oil revenues the country needs to resolve its economic crisis. They’re even threatening to send U.S. troops.

They’ll tell you this about restoring “democracy” and “human rights” in the South American country. But one look at the administration officials driving the putsch perishes the thought.

Take Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who recently spoke at the United Nations calling on countries to stand “with the forces of freedom” against “the mayhem” of Venezuela’s government.

This fall, the same Pompeo shared a photo of himself beaming and shaking hands with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince — just as the prince’s order to kill and dismember a U.S. resident journalist was coming to light. The same prince is carrying on a U.S.-backed war in Yemen, where millions are starving.

Does this sound like a man who gives one fig for democracy, or against mayhem?

Or take Pompeo’s point man on Venezuela, the dreaded Elliott Abrams. Pompeo said Abrams was appointed for his “passion for the rights and liberties of all peoples.” More likely, it was Abrams’ history as Reagan’s “Secretary of Dirty Wars” (yes, that’s a real thing people called him).

A singularly villainous figure, Abrams vouched for U.S. backing of a genocidal Guatemalan regime and Salvadoran death squads in the 1980s. And when a UN report cataloged 22,000 atrocities in El Salvador, Abrams praised his administration’s “fabulous achievement” in the country.

Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress about U.S. support for Nicaragua’s brutal Contras, but that didn’t prevent him from serving in George W. Bush’s State Department — which backed not only the Iraq war but an earlier coup attempt in, you guessed it, Venezuela.

“It’s very nice to be back,” Abrams told reporters. I bet!

Finally there’s National Security Adviser John Bolton, who recently took a cute photo with the words “5,000 troops” written on a notepad. Bolton still thinks the Iraq war was a good idea, and he’d like one with Iran too. Do we think it’s bread and roses he wants for Venezuela?

For all its faults, Venezuela achieved tremendous things before the current crisis — including drastic reductions in poverty and improvements in living standards. Mismanagement and repression may have imperiled those gains, but that’s no justification at all for the U.S. getting involved. In fact, U.S. sanctions have worsened the economic crisis, and U.S. coordination with coup plotters has poisoned the country’s political environment even further.

The future of Venezuela’s revolution is for Venezuelans to decide, not us. All that can come of more intervention now is more crisis, and maybe even war.

Instead of regime change, the U.S. — and especially progressive politicians (looking at you, Nancy Pelosi) — should back regional dialogue and diplomacy. While Democratic Party leaders appear to back Trump, a few representatives — like Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — are bravely backing a diplomatic course.

For all the right’s warnings that the left wants to “turn the U.S. into Venezuela,” we should pay careful attention to what the people who gave guns to death squads and destroyed the Middle East want to do with it. Because unlike the left, they’re already running our own country.

Via Otherwords.org

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

CGTN America: “US sanctions on Venezuela take a toll on the oil industry”

What is astonishing is that NATO member Turkey has piled on the criticism, along with the Turkish press.

It is s sign of US-Turkish relations being at their nadir.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on January 25 that he rejects the American “coup attempt” in Venezuela, according to BBC Monitoring of NTV Televsion in Istanbul.

He compared the situation in Venezuela to that in Egypt in June-July of 2013, when the Egyptian military took advantage of massive street crowds protesting the elected president Mohammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

(There isn’t actually any evidence, by the way, that the Obama administration backed the military coup, and on the contrary the US ambassador to Egypt got into trouble before the coup by warning against it publicly.)

Erdogan and his cabinet members have in the past also blamed the United States in part for the July 2015 failed military coup attempt against him in Turkey.

Ankara is also upset at the US for its role in Syria, supporting leftist Kurds there whom Turkey views as identical with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its guerrilla paramilitary. Turkey has applauded President Trump’s stated determination to withdraw US troops from eastern Syria.

The Turkish president said that democracy requires reverence for “the ballot box.”

The Trump administration recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the rightful president of Venezuela on Jan. 24.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also went on Haber TV according to BBC Monitoring and declared his opposition to US “meddling” in Venezuelan politics.

In the pro-government Turkish daily, Cumhurriyyet, a columnist wrote that the US was primarily driven by a desire to grab control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and to block the rising Moscow-Beijing sphere of influence in Venezuela.

This stance is, again, mind-boggling on the part of a NATO ally, and a sign that The organization is in decline. Article 5 of the NATO treaty requires all members to come to the aid of one who has been attacked. It is a consequential treaty. [While it would not obligate Turkey to support an actual US coup in Venezuela, the level of vituperation here is unprecedented, and comes after a year in which Erdogan has repeatedly implied that he was coming for the YPG leftist Kurdish allies of the US in Syria qnd that US troops should get out of the way or else.]* It seems Erdogan, like Trump, views it as so much kindling wood.

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Bonus video:

TRT: “President Erdogan says democracies should respect election results”

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*clarification added.

Pompeo announced the appointment of Abrams two days after Washington declared head of state Nicolas Maduro to be illegitimate and recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the interim president of crisis-plagued Venezuela.

Pompeo said that Abrams “will be a true asset to our mission to help the Venezuelan people fully restore democracy and prosperity to their country.”

Abrams told reporters in brief remarks: “This crisis in Venezuela is deep and difficult and dangerous and I can’t wait to get to work on it.”

The veteran Republican foreign policy hand took charge of Latin America policy under Reagan, clashing with human rights groups as he channeled generous US support to anti-communist forces in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

In one notorious incident, he initially dismissed the massacre of nearly 1,000 civilians by the Salvadoran army at El Mozote in 1981.

Abrams later pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal, when the Reagan administration secretly funded the Contra rebels in Nicaragua through arms sales to revolutionary Iran.

Abrams later returned as a senior adviser to president George W. Bush in charge of human rights and the Middle East.

But when Republicans returned to the White House with President Donald Trump’s election, Abrams was initially passed over as the new administration shut out critics of the unorthodox new leader.

Abrams during the 2016 election had written a piece in The Weekly Standard magazine entitled, “When You Can’t Stand Your Candidate,” in which he argued that Trump “cannot win and should not be president of the United States.”

Pompeo, one of Trump’s favorite cabinet members, assured that Abrams was on board, saying the new envoy was “eager to advance President Trump’s agenda and promote the ideals and interests of the American people.”

Pompeo said that Abrams would join him Saturday as the secretary of state heads to New York for a special UN Security Council session on Venezuela.

© Agence France-Presse

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Seattletimesdotcom: “Pompeo names Abrams to run Venezuela policy”