RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The United States is increasing its military presence off the coast of Venezuela. US President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that “additional destroyers, warships, planes and helicopters, coast guard vessels and surveillance aircraft” will be deployed in the Caribbean Sea.
According to the US government these are to be used in the fight against transnational drug trafficking. As the New York Times reports, this is one of the largest US military operations in the region in 30 years. Special forces are also being deployed on the ground.
The announcement came less than a week after the US judicial authorities had charged Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and other leaders of involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering.
In an unprecedented move, the US government also issued a bounty of US$15 million for information or actions leading to Maduro’s capture and trial.
The indictment must be considered in the context of strong political tensions between the USA and Venezuela.
The USA has been trying for years to overthrow Venezuela’s elected government, most recently by openly supporting and diplomatically recognizing opposition politician Juan Guaidó as the country’s “interim president” and by calling on Venezuela’s army to overthrow the Maduro government.
President Trump and other senior government officials have also repeatedly threatened to force a change of government in Venezuela through a “military option”.
Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry reacted to the military threat with a sharp statement. The statement describes the “slander and threats” against Venezuela as a “desperate attempt” to “divert attention from the tragic humanitarian crisis” that the US is experiencing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Venezuelan government also points out that Colombia, as an “ally and close partner” of the US, plays a far greater role in the production and trafficking of drugs than Venezuela.
Recently, the US non-governmental organization Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) also stated that Venezuela is “not a primary transit country for cocaine to the US”. It based this conclusion on data provided by the US government itself.
Asked about the military “anti-drug operation”, Mauricio Claver Carone, the Latin America adviser to the US National Security Council, said in a interview that it represented “a further encirclement of the Maduro regime”.
The latter should now seize the opportunities offered to him: “They are generous, they are feasible and they can be implemented in a spirit of cooperation,” said Claver Carone, referring to the “framework for a peaceful democratic transition in Venezuela” proposed by the Trump government.
Addressing the Venezuelan President, he went on to say: “If you are looking for confrontation, I don’t know what model you are analyzing, because none of them will have a happy ending”. Trump had always stressed that “all the options are on the table”, stressed the US President’s advisor.
The “Framework for a Peaceful Democratic Transition in Venezuela” proposed by the US State Department earlier this week provides for Maduro to resign in favor of a five-member “Council of State” to be appointed jointly by the ruling and opposition blocs in parliament.
The interim government would be responsible for calling new presidential and parliamentary elections “in six to twelve months”. Venezuela’s government rejected this as “patronizing”.
The US military operation has also met with criticism from Cuba and Russia. It threatens peace in the region, according to Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez.
The deployment of warships off the coast and the presence of special troops near Venezuela’s borders “under the deceptive pretext of fighting drug trafficking” violated Latin America’s status as a peace zone and posed a serious threat of war, he said.
Maria Zajarova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, accused Washington of trying to exploit the situation of the coronavirus pandemic in order to “deliver a final blow to Venezuela”.
She said the US had launched this major operation against alleged drug traffickers, which now include Venezuelan politicians, even though “their beloved Colombia is the largest producer and distributor of narcotics in the world. This would defy all logic”.
The concept of a coup in Venezuela is apparently “still firmly anchored in the minds of many politicians in the United States,” she said at a press conference on Thursday.
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