US invasion of Venezuela: A warning to every ‘insubordinate’ leader

Isidoros Karderinis

The kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro constitutes not only a military intervention in a sovereign and independent country in violation of the principles of international law.

It also constitutes a clear warning to the entire planet, a warning to every ‘insubordinate’ leader of any country.

On 3 January, during a press conference on the military operation and abduction of Maduro, US President Donald Trump issued a veiled threat against Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

At the same time, the US president hinted that Cuba could be a topic of discussion within the context of broader US policy in the region, highlighting Washington’s ability to expand its focus beyond Venezuela.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio even said that the Cuban government should be worried after Maduro’s arrest. Specifically, he said: “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”

The history of the US is characterised by extensive imperialist interventions in other countries.

There have been hundreds of interventions since 1776, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on 4 July, declaring the independence of the 13 American colonies from the British Empire. This event marked the official founding of the US.

Who can forget the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, when about 1,400 anti-Fidel Castro fighters, trained and financed by the CIA, attempted to overthrow Castro’s regime. The operation failed, resulting in significant casualties on each side.

“If Allende should win the election in Chile, and then you have Castro in Cuba, what you will in effect have in Latin America is a Red sandwich, and eventually it will all be Red,” Richard Nixon feared, his fear soon confirmed by the election results.

So, in the face of this unpleasant reality for the US, a solution had to be found. On the morning of 11 September 1973, a military coup took place under the army head Gen Augusto Pinochet, with the support of the US and Brazil, whose military regime was completely friendly and cooperative with the US.

The coup plotters, after first surrounding and bombing the Presidential Palace, then stormed it. Allende and his close associates were killed, after fierce resistance.

The US also invaded Panama in mid-December 1989 during the presidency of George W Bush. The purpose of the military invasion was to oust Panama’s de facto leader, Gen Manuel Noriega, who was accused by US authorities of extortion and drug trafficking.

So, if one is looking for a historical parallel where the US arrested a de facto leader of a country and transferred him to the US for trial, the Noriega case is the most characteristic. And this happened after a regular military invasion – in the context of a coordinated armed intervention, and certainly not during ‘normal’ peace time.

Noriega managed to escape and took refuge in the Vatican’s embassy in Panama City, the country’s capital, where he remained for 11 days.

There, he was subjected to relentless psychological warfare in order to surrender. The US military set up a horrible, deafening wall of sound outside the embassy. A fleet of Humvees with loudspeakers constantly played hard rock and occasionally heavy metal music – for example, “Panama” by the heavy metal singers Van Halen was played.

The Holy See rightly complained to Bush, and the musical war ended after three days. By 3 January 1990, the general had agreed to surrender.

But what are the deeper reasons for the US military invasion of Venezuela and the pursuit of overthrowing the insubordinate existing regime?

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, amounting to about 301 billion barrels as of 2021. For comparison, leading oil producing countries have smaller reserves. Specifically, Saudi Arabia has about 267 billion barrels and Kuwait has 102 billion barrels.

At the same time, the country’s proven natural gas reserves exceeded 5.6 trillion cubic meters in 2021. In the Western Hemisphere, only the US had more reserves.

Also, Venezuela’s total iron ore reserves are estimated at 4.5 billion tons, the second largest after Brazil.

Venezuela also has some of the largest reserves of bauxite in the world, a mineral used to produce aluminium. The country’s total bauxite reserves amount to 950 million tons.

Clearly, to any objective observer, the US covets Venezuela’s wealth-producing resources. These are resources that they cannot get their hands on with the existing regime, a political and military partner and ally of Moscow, Beijing and Tehran and the main supplier of oil to China, whose control is drying up the flow.

The solution for the US, in order to secure primacy in the relentless international competition, is the overthrow of the existing Venezuelan regime and the emergence of a president and a government that is absolutely friendly and serviceable. Whether such a thing is legal and democratic, does not concern the US leaders at all.

The leaders of any country are overthrown only by their people, that is, by popular uprisings and revolutions, as has happened in various countries in the past. They are not overthrown by the military intervention of another country, a foreign power.

Therefore, the US military invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro should be absolutely condemned by democratic and free-thinking people around the world.

Isidoros Karderinis is a journalist and foreign press correspondent accredited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Greece. He is a regular member of the Greek Foreign Press Correspondents’ Association, novelist, poet and lyricist.

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