Washington’s Playbook for Bringing Down ‘Dictators’ is Being Used in Venezuela

Darko Lazar

Venezuela is back in the headlines. The Latin American country is once again on the receiving end of some heavy blows from the neoliberal, globalist centers of power - and, of course, their media outlets.

The socialist government in Caracas is attempting to preserve both its sovereignty and its own system of values at all costs. But these are sins that Washington seldom forgives.

The latest wave of anti-government protests, fueled by an unprecedented political and economic crisis, resulted in the deaths of over a dozen people.

The driving force behind the unrest is an unconscionable degree of foreign pressure, both in the form of an economic embargo, and a US-backed opposition. And Washington is not exactly working very hard to hide its fingerprints.

Last week, the US State Department issued a statement warning that the "international community" would join in any response to the "criminal repression of peaceful democratic activity".

According to the embattled Bolivarian leader, the wheels have already been set in motion.

"The State Department has given the green light, the approval for a coup process to intervene in Venezuela," President Nicolas Maduro said.

Latin American expert Isaac Bigio agrees, pointing to a coup d'état against Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez fifteen years prior, as well as Washington's more recent track record in the region.

"There is a history of real coup d'états against the current government. On the other hand, the US supported parliamentary coups in Paraguay, in Honduras and now in Brazil... so there is a serious risk of a coup in Venezuela," Bigio says.

Fortunately for those bankrolling the protection of "peaceful democratic activity" in Venezuela, the South American state is flushed with natural recourses, which means that their investment has the potential to come with quite a payoff.

As is often the case, the U.S. conveniently finds oil whenever it goes scouring the globe for what it deems are dictators. In the case of Venezuela, it's a real goldmine - the South American state boasts the world's largest oil reserves.

Why is Venezuela poor?

Much of the world now understands why the Saudi king who presides over a state that stones its own people to death in public squares enjoys the warm embrace of the west, while the Venezuelan president, who uses oil revenues to provide free education and construct thousands of homes for the poor, is threatened with aggression and removal.

Perhaps, the neoliberal ideologues find nothing particularly human about the Saudis being stoned to death, so there is no need to raise a fuss about human rights violations in the kingdom. Or perhaps there is nothing particularly human about Venezuela's poor, so it's only natural to accuse its socialist government of violating the human rights of oil executives by undermining their ability to amass fortunes.

Meanwhile, the neoliberal Venezuelan opposition - with the help of the mainstream media - does not blame the country's economic ills on the crippling embargo imposed by the U.S. and its satellites, but rather on Maduro's ‘socialist projects'.

The same opposition is not only calling for the economic bombardment to continue, but for it to be intensified.

Last week, the head of the opposition-held National Assembly, Julio Borges, sent more than a dozen letters to major banks, asking them to not carry out transactions with the Caracas government, in order to block the state from being able to obtain financing.

Political commentator and Latin American expert, Javier Farje, explains that, "the purpose of the opposition in the Assembly is to bring down President Maduro, and they are trying to boycott the few economic achievements that the government could have.

"They tried to pass legislation, which would ban the government from establishing joint ventures between the state-owned oil company and Russian companies. These joint ventures would help the Venezuelan economy tackle the problem of low oil prices. The Assembly wanted to block that without realizing that the very same poor people they claim they want to liberate would be affected by this measure," Farje adds.

As a result Venezuela, which should be wealthier than the Arab monarchies given its vast oil reserves, is looking at a 1,660% inflation rate by year's end.

These gloomy statistics and dire predictions are then beamed around the globe, and again blamed on the socialist system - instead of Washington's foreign agenda, which has a habit of tearing down socialist governments with the help of useful local idiots.

The Gene Sharp project
Gene Sharp is most commonly described as the world's leading academic on ‘non-violent action'.
In layman's terms, Sharp uses a theory of power, which is based on a division between rulers and subjects, and on the withdrawal of consent as the main avenue for effecting political change.

His methods have served as the ideological underpinnings of movements behind the world's ‘color revolutions'.

But in many of the affected countries, including Ukraine, Syria and Libya, so-called ‘peaceful protests' were gradually transformed into urban, guerilla-style insurgencies with the aim of provoking the security apparatus and destabilizing the state.

Recently, the ruling United Socialist Party claimed that Venezuela has been the target of this kind of hybrid warfare for quite some time.

In line with Sharp's teachings, the first phase of this war involved discrediting Maduro's authority, that of his inner circle, and his followers.

By using manipulative slogans like ‘Maduro is not Chavez', the opposition attempted to paint a picture of a president that didn't really know what he was doing and gave rise to an economic catastrophe.

Simultaneously, secret operations were launched along the Venezuelan-Colombian border, largely aimed at weakening the country's local currency.

The ensuing environment of discontent was quickly elevated to civil unrest. In Venezuela, the line between the public's dissatisfaction with the state and terrorist actions was almost immediately blurred. The connection between the two began to manifest itself in the form of arson attacks on residential buildings, destruction of public property and attacks on state organs by well-organized, urban guerilla groups.

The anti-government protesters and terrorist operations have something else in common - foreign backers. Behind the protests and the violence are players with very clear geopolitical objectives, waiting to come in and pick up the pieces.

Today, Venezuela is in the fourth stage of the operation. The leadership in Caracas is fully aware of the fact that the latest unrest is only setting the stage for a final blow to the state.

This phase is most commonly referred to as ‘controlled chaos'. The term is used as a euphemism for large battles that often result in civil war and foreign interventions.

Al-Ahed News