Venezuela: Clash of Empires

Geo-politics predominantly explains why Trump wants Maduro out and Guaidó in. Venezuela borders on the Caribbean Sea. Caracas is only 1,368 miles from Miami. The U.S. regards the Caribbean as its lake. The U.S. doesn’t want its underbelly to be a soft spot vulnerable to the intrusions of foreign empires.

As long as Venezuela was safe for U.S. investment and trade, the U.S. was dominant in that country. Under the wreckage produced by the policies of Chavez and Maduro, which drove American interests out of the country, Venezuela became an opportunity for the intervention of two distant empires: Russia and China. They moved in as the U.S. moved out, and that foothold spells risks of further advances and even military bases. It also spells trouble for surrounding countries in which the U.S. empire has further interests.

Venezuela is to the U.S. something like Ukraine is to Russia and the South China Sea and Taiwan are to China. The U.S. stirs up Russia and China by impinging too greatly on their empires at their borders; and they stir up the U.S. by raising their presence in nearby places like Cuba and Venezuela. Russia has historically been vulnerable to attacks from eastern Europe and vice versa. China is vulnerable to attacks from Japan. The U.S. was vulnerable to Soviet missiles in Cuba. The U.S. is vulnerable to mass migrations from its south. Its system is not designed to handle that possibility. It’s also vulnerable to political movements within the country that favor mass migrations.

None of this justifies the simmering coup with U.S. support that’s occurring in Venezuela. To explain geopolitically why the U.S. wants a different Venezuela regime is not to say that it can get it or knows how to go about getting it. The past record of the empire in Haiti, Cuba, Vietnam, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan is a record of failures, with immense losses of American lives, blood and treasure.

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12:53 pm on February 4, 2019