In Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, civil war seems to be starting - tear-bombs and gunshots were heard in the city. According to official data, the number of victims of the unrest that has begun is 16 people, and the story of the confrontation of two Venezuelan presidents - approved by the Constitution and self-proclaimed - will end with peace and harmony. It would be strange to think that the United States, risking to recognize the legitimate president of the 35-year-old National Assembly leader, Juan Guaido, did not thoroughly prepare for a coup d'état.
The quick and easy suppression of the insurgency should in no way be another failure for the United States after similar fiasco in Syria and Turkey, where the Americans failed to effect a regime change. Such immediate support by seven Latin American states of the White House’s decision to “change regime” in Caracas suggests that the action was prepared in advance by the US national security team, that is, the Bolton and Pompeo departments.
So far, Trump showed his amazing love of peace to mankind by announcing a “withdrawal of troops” from Syria (which, by the way, has not begun) and throwing hints of readiness to withdraw from NATO in narrow circles (this news in The New York Times, most likely , was a conscious disinformation of both supporters and opponents of the US president), two people responsible for foreign policy in Washington seemed to be secretly preparing to give their president a “little victorious revolution” in Latin America.
It should be recognized that this "revolution", and it is in Venezuela, that Trump is now more than welcome. Victory insurgency in this country seems more than likely. The Maduro regime is weak and unstable: the economic situation is hopeless, inflation is growing at a tremendous pace, and the most modest estimates have made a million people a migration outflow from the country in recent years. The left wave in Latin America, which had once seriously frightened the right-wing circles in the USA and, on the contrary, breathed new life into the world socialist movement, has clearly subsided, which is especially noticeable in Brazil that has recovered greatly. On the scene, in addition to Venezuela, while there are only three countries where the left idea still dominates - Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba. All these countries recently John Bolton ranked as the “dictatorial trio” of the New World.
Last year, Mexico joined the left camp, where the leader of the National Revival Movement, Lopez Obrador, won the presidential election. Of course, neither Venezuela nor Mexico can be called dictatorships - opposition parties are openly acting here, and, as we see in current events, they are even able to win a majority in parliament. Venezuela, rather, is akin to Yanukovychiv Ukraine - a country, reputedly mired in corruption, the leader of which, despite its nice slogans, is nonetheless completely devoid of charismatic appeal.
However, it was the military coup he suppressed in 2002, supported by the Americans, who gave his predecessor Hugo Chavez a special charisma. If Maduro keeps, one cannot exclude that he will gain charisma.
Meanwhile, there are serious reasons to believe that the Americans will not allow him to hold on. Even if the army remains loyal to Maduro and the internal opposition is crushed, I would not rule out a scenario of US intervention in one form or another in a civil conflict in Venezuela. Trump is now urgently needed reason to declare a state of emergency on the southern US border. If a state of emergency is declared, according to the law of 1976, this will allow the White House to use the Pentagon’s financial reserves to build a wall on the border with Mexico itself, which has already taken an opposite position to Trump on the situation in Venezuela.
This damned wall itself has turned into an absolutely unsolvable, but at the same time critically significant problem for American domestic policy: neither Trump nor the Democrats in the House of Representatives can retreat from their positions. Congressmen are even ready to allocate to the president the $ 5.7 million requested by him to maintain security at the border with Mexico, but only on condition that this money does not go to the construction of an “amoral” wall. Trump, too, can not give up without losing face and stop the so-called shatdaun, which entails non-payment of salaries of 800 thousand civil servants.
The speaker of the lower house of congress, Nancy Pelosi, addressed a letter to Trump, in which she proposed to postpone the president’s annual address to the nation until the shatdaun was canceled. The motive for canceling a previously sent invitation is the impossibility of ensuring the president’s security at the time he visits Capitol Hill. Security personnel who do not receive a salary may perform their work poorly. Trump, of course, ridiculed this motivation, but Pelosi agreed with the proposal and refused to give a speech in Congress.
I think all the experts have already understood that a state of emergency is inevitable, and a civil war in Venezuela with the connection of the American marines to it may serve as a convincing argument for its announcement. And who, in fact, will object? The Democratic Party, quite obviously, will split on the question of Venezuela, and even if the left anti-interventionist circles, currently represented by Congressman from the 2nd District of Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard, set the tone, it will also play in favor of Trump - well, they say look at the disgrace the opposition party, which recently accused me of national treason.
And if this party holds on to centrist, in fact liberal, interventionist positions, then it is difficult to imagine that it will be able to withstand Trump, who followed the glorious path of his predecessors, with full conviction and zeal.
People like the Republican senator from Florida Marco Rubio will unequivocally support any forceful actions against the Maduro regime. The neocons will again approach the presidential throne. And the position of temporary fellow travelers from among the paleocons and libertarians will not be so significant, all the more so Maduro is not a hero of their novel. Their voice on the conservative channel Fox News - journalist Tucker Carlson - has already pointed out that Venezuelan history differs from Middle Eastern history: there are far and alien affairs, and here we are talking about a reflection of Chinese expansion into the South American underbelly.
So Bolton, I think, calculated everything correctly. Trump overthrows the unpleasant regime in a strategically significant country, brilliantly comes out of shatdaun, disgraces his implacable opponents, splits the enemy's camp, and at the same time quarrels a bit with Russia and China, discouraging all accusations of sympathizing with "dictators" and not sympathizing with the cause of democracy. Venezuelan history is the very case when morality decisively diverges from cynical calculation, but when deceit and arbitrariness, alas, can bring real political dividends.
Will there be a new left-wing protest wave in protest against the next American-style coup, capable of blocking this whole right bank that brought such figures as Trump and Bolsonar to the political surface? As I have already said, the “deviation” of the Democratic Party, which is already happening, cannot be ruled out, but it can hardly hold onto consistently anti-interventionist positions. Any anti-interventionist force, whether it comes from the right or the left, will be forced to justify itself, as Trump does, that it does not hold other people's and alien interests to America. And it is easiest to disprove these suspicions with the help of the next “small and victorious” one.
So if only the Americans do not face heroic resistance in Venezuela, nothing threatens Trump-Bolton’s cunning plan. The only thing that makes this story look somewhat ironic is the thought of the rake being attacked by President Trump, proclaiming the leader of parliament as head of state. If in history morality always triumphed over untruth and any act of a politician, following the logic of Kant, would become the basis of universal law, Trump, having denied Maduro, would also remove himself from the post. Who knows how his conflict with Nancy Pelosi will develop further? But, alas, the story does not always look like a moral story and cunningly thoughtful atrocity here does not always lead to punishment. Everything can get away with Bolton, Pompeo and Trump himself, but let's hope that this time the good power intervenes and the whole undertaking ends in a loud fiasco.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.