PENTAGON BRACING FOR A SNAP OFFENSIVE AGAINST VENEZUELA
Nil Nikandrov
en.fondsk.ru
18.02.2010
The US SOUTHCOM electronic surveillance base has been functioning
in Aruba for several years. One day, an individual looking like a
typical American, wearing shorts, a Hawaii shirt, and sunglasses,
walked into it effortlessly and started roaming around. The US marines
must have been too tired of the heat and assumed he actually was one
of their countrymen – the base has been hosting numbers of visitors
from the US recently amid the preparations for serious operations
against Venezuela.
The visitor moved across the site with its standard blocks, glanced
at the impressively proportioned radar and froze by the door to a
large room with four giant screens in it. The screens were showing
the contours of Venezuela’s Tachira and Zulia states and the locations
of military installations, tank parks, aerodromes, and army bases as
well as Venezuela’s industrial infrastructure including oil fields,
refineries, pipelines, and plants. Even a brief look made it clear
that the Caribbean coast and the west of Venezuela were under permanent
surveillance from the base.
The Western media say noting about the buildup of the US surveillance
activity at Aruba and Curacao bases and generally filter away any
information concerning the US espionage targeting Venezuela. The
US intelligence services are spying on the country from Columbia,
Puerto-Rica, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Washington wants to know everything about Venezuela’s military
capabilities and mobilization plans, to assess the level of loyalty
to the government in the ranks of the country’s officer corps and
the combat readiness of its armed forces, and to find out to what
extent those are prepared to engage in long-term "asymmetric"
guerrilla warfare.
The US was alarmed by H. Chavez’s statement that the seizure of
Venezuela’s oil fields and refineries would be prevented at any cost in
the case of US aggression. Did he mean blowing up the infrastructures?
Pentagon planners are no less worried over the potential strengthening
of leftist guerrilla fronts in Columbia and their mushrooming in the
Latin American countries currently hosting US military bases. The CIA
and NSA regarded it as a cause for concern that leftist groups emerged
in Mexico, the traditional backyard of the US. Mexican guerrillas have
already claimed responsibility for several acts of sabotage at oil
pipeline networks. In fact, Mexico’s Chiapas state has been de facto
controlled for years by the guerrilla groups led by the legendary
Subcommandante Marcos who clearly would not opt for neutrality in
case the US attacks Venezuela, the country which contributed a lot
to the Indian cause in Latin America.
No doubt, any aggressive steps taken by the US would trigger overall
radicalization across the continent. It is already obvious that the
comeback of the right in several Latin American countries and the
reversion to the ruthless liberal economic course that ensued are
meeting with widespread opposition and that the rise of new populist
regimes in the region is only a matter of time. Mexico and Peru,
the countries where F. Calderon and A. Garcia were propelled to
power by the US financial and propaganda support regardless of how
the poorest strata of the populations felt about the developments,
are the prime candidates.
There will be no chance to contain the spread of populism reflecting
mass discontent with poverty and with the prosperity being limited
to a small cohort of "efficient asset-holders" in the settings of the
ongoing economic crisis. As in the epoch when Latin America was – with
the US democratic blessing – run by cruel dictators, it is going to
take bloodshed to impede the onslaught of populism in the region. Will
the greedy operators of the XXI century world order with its permanent
predatory privatizations and asset seizures dare to order shooting at
the furious crowds of disillusioned people? After the very first shot,
nations will have the moral right to respond to force with force.
This is the reason why Obama’s Administration needs to get rid of
Chavez already in 2010 – it regards Venezuela as the epicenter of
Anti-Americanism in the western hemisphere. Washington hopes that the
demise of Chavez’s regime would set in motion a cascade of likewise
falls of the regimes it believes he has helped to come into being. At
the moment, the global propaganda campaign backing the preparations
for an aggression against Venezuela is at full swing.
Venezuela’s leading analyst Diaz Rangel said the media grands have
unleashed a new round of a carefully coordinated propaganda war
against Chavez and his socioeconomic alternative known as the XXI
century socialism. The liberal media keep holding that no alternative
to capitalism deserves to exist and unabashedly denies Chavez the
right to social innovation.
Rangel criticized Newsweek, Associated Press, and BBC for bias and
downright lies in covering Venezuela. Their projection is that Chavez
would be displaced already this year by the military (that is, the
Venezuelan military, but assisted by their US and Columbian "peers"),
that his socialist experiment will collapse, and that thus the county
will overcome "disorder and chaos". Evidence of bias in Western media
abounds: they never report pro-Chavez rallies attended by thousands
of people, pretend not to know about his stable 59-60% support rating
(which the West claims to reach only 45-48%), and avoid mentioning the
implementation of a range of social missions in Venezuela including
social residence construction.
Instead, the West never stops airing its list of grievances concerning
Venezuela. Allegations are made that Chavez uses petrodollars to
support terrorists and supplies weaponry to Mexican and Columbian
guerrilla groups, where Russian-made Kalashnikov assault rifles have
recently been confiscated. Western media maintain that Chavez is the
key figure behind all Latin American drug cartels, though it is an
open secret that the US Drug Enforcement Administration is the actual
number one player in the business in the region.
Until 2000, the US propaganda used to portray Cuba as the worst
evil in Latin America and called for its isolation and eventual
elimination. The strengthening of Venezuela’s positions, its
endeavors in the framework of the ALBA integration project and calls
for upgrading it to include a military alliance, as well as other
Venezuelan initiatives unacceptable to Washington led the US to
declare Venezuela the center of evil.
Since the very inauguration of Chavez the Western media have kept
talking about chaos in Venezuela, the divisions in the Venezuelan
army, etc. Statements concerning the army could contain an element of
truth till the 2002 attempted coup during which a bunch of US-trained
officers managed to displace Chavez for 72 hours and intended to
kill him on the CIA order. Since then, the Venezuelan army has
been reorganized and at present the majority of its officers uphold
revolutionary-nationalist views. To ensure control over the country’s
armed forces, the Venezuelan government pays the officers relatively
high salaries and provides housing and medical care for them and their
families. The army appreciates the government’s efforts to modernize
the country’s defense potential, which is done largely with the help
of Russia. Nevertheless, the illusion that Venezuela is weak in the
military sense is so widespread that Obama’s Administration expects
to rout Chavez’s defiant regime in a snap offensive. The corresponding
plan is akin to those Germany had at the early phase of World War II –
the US will rely on Venezuelan fifth column, Columbian ultra-right
paramilitary groups, and its own special forces which are already
launching raids in Venezuela’s border regions.
The infrastructure for the aggression is ready. The Pentagon seized
every opportunity to set up military bases along the Venezuelan
borders. Washington sent a heavily armed expedition corps, an aircraft
carrier, and several warships to Haiti using the recent earthquake
as a pretext, thus effectively securing another military base in the
Caribbean. Experts suppose that the military group now based in Haiti
can be used by the Pentagon to prevent Cuba from helping Venezuela
in case it comes under the US attack. Chavez and the Castro brothers
spoke a number of times about their common military obligations.
Venezuela will hold parliamentary elections in September, 2010 during
which the opposition is going to compete with desperation. Chavez
already addressed the nation with the statement indicating that loss
of control over parliament would be a catastrophe for the Bolivarian
regime. In the run-up to the elections, its foreign and domestic
foes are resorting to the standard set of instruments including the
scenarios of color revolutions and the Honduran coup as well as to
calls for military intervention against Venezuela.
The coup in Honduras is by no means bloodless – simply the killing
of supporters of the overthrown M. Zelaya are disguised as ordinary
street crimes. As for the scale of repressions awaiting Venezuela in
the case of a successful coup – they evade imagination.