Who Runs Venezuela?

 Who Runs Venezuela?

Jim Kavanagh

First and most important thing: The abduction of the head of state of Venezuela and his wife by U.S. armed forces is a crime in every sense. It flouts black-letter international law and universally held principles of international relations. It is a blatant act of imperialist arrogance, with no credible pretense of justification other than “might makes right.” It is the ethical imperative of every citizen of the world—and especially of every citizen and politician of the United States—to denounce this act and demand the immediate, unconditional release and return to their homeland of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores.

Anyone—especially any politician—who claims to oppose this abduction by the Trump administration but refuses to demand the immediate, unconditional release of the two abductees is just a virtue-signalling American imperialist, complicit in the crime

https://x.com/JeffSchuhrke/status/2007648246030839878?s=20

Ditto for any politician who claims to oppose this crime, or who makes a show of proclaiming that U.S. soldiers must disobey illegal orders, but does not use all the power of his/her office to impeach and bring charges against the president and every executive officer who issued, and every service member who carried out, this illegal order.

Not gonna happen, of course, because no Republican or Democrat objects to the substantive crime, which is SOP for U.S. imperialism. (See Noriega, Aristide, etc.) Democratic Senator Jack Reed says we “have to commend” our  armed forces for conducting an operation that was "well conceived and courageously executed." They object, at most, to the procedural misdemeanor—OMG, you shot that guy without getting a permit for the gun!—and to the rhetorical transgression of not adorning the blatant, cop-of-the-world, might-makes-right thuggery in sufficient “freedom, democracy, and human rights” bling.

Peter Bagge

It’s not hard to recognize the crime that's already been committed. More difficult, at this point, Is trying to determine what the ongoing fruits of that crime are going to be for the Trump administration. What the hell have they accomplished with this abduction? What the hell do they think they've accomplished with this abduction? What the hell do they think they will accomplish with this abduction?

It's not hard to see what Donald Trump thinks he has accomplished. He thinks he has taken control of the Venezuelan oil industry and of the Venezuelan polity tout court. He thinks “we”—he, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and their minions—now “run” the country of Venezuela. He thinks operation “Absolute Resolve,” at his direction, was “one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history…an assault like people have not seen since World War II.” He thinks it thoroughly intimidated the government of Venezuela and left it and the whole of Latin America in his thrall. He thinks the world has learned the lesson that the Monroe Doctrine with Trump Corollary—per Hegseth, ridiculously renamed the Donroe Doctrine—is in force, with the United States now having final control over the resources, wealth, trade partners, and paths of development of every country in the Western Hemisphere.

Which is kind of strange, since the only concrete result is the detention of President Maduro and Flores. Maduro’s Vice-President, Delcy Rodriguez, a staunch Chavista and socialist, has now taken over as Acting President, and the entire PSUV government and military apparatus is still in place and pledging to resist American “colonization” and continue the Chavista program.  There are millions of furious people protesting in the streets of Caracas, demanding the release of their president, and many, many armed Venezuelans in the Bolivarian Militia and paramilitary networks known as colectivos, who have no intention of allowing Pete Hegseth of any of his minions to run their lives. Right now, there’s nary a minion in sight in Caracas.

Donald Trump, ignorant bully that he is, who thought he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, probably does think he’s such a tough guy that the punch he’s landed and the threats he’s made will scare away the kind of resistance that’s emerged to every such regime-change operation undertaken by previous, less-omnipotent, presidents.

It’s hard to imagine, though, that other, less narcissistically delusional, members of his administration don’t understand the inevitable trap they’ve gotten themselves into: The present United States government cannot manage its own country, cannot provide jobs, housing, healthcare, education, or a manufacturing industry for its own citizens—who are, by the way, fed up with, and voted precisely against, the government wasting so much energy, lives, and money on such doomed regime-change adventures. It is not going to be able to manage another large country of ~30 million people who will resist American colonial subjugation, fighting in the mountains and jungles if necessary, joined by comrades from long-standing revolutionary groups from other countries also itching to fight Yankee invaders.

This regime change is going to be the same disaster as Iraq, Vietnam, Libya, Syria, et. al. It’s going to be a huge net cost in lives and money and political stature for the U.S.  

And no, it is not going to bring huge compensating oil profits. The Venezuelan oil industry will be a losing proposition for American capitalist companies for many years, and cost up to $115 billion—"three times ExxonMobil and Chevron’s combined capital expenditure last year”—to get to a point where profitability might be possible. See here, here, and here (the WSJ) for the analyses of why it’s a huge and risky investment.

It's a monetarily losing proposition, and they know it.  Trump himself is now saying the U.S. may have to “subsidize efforts by energy companies to rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry as his administration seeks to convince firms to invest in the country.”  What, like Obama’s ACA subsidizes the health insurance industry? Trumpcare for the oil industry.

So, to defeat Venezuelan socialism, the U.S. government is going to spend billions of dollars in public money (increasing the horrible deficit, and all) to rebuild an industry and hand it over to… Whom? Some private interest? American capitalists, so they can profit from it? Venezuelan capitalists? The Venezuelan government itself? The USG, so it can profit from it? Looks like you have to use socialism to defeat socialism.

This is not about oil; it’s about class power. Trump himself may not understand this, but neocons like Rubio do. It’s structural American, “anti-communist,” capitalist imperialism. The prime purpose of the U.S. is not to take the oil, but to restore full power to Venezuelan capitalism—the full dictatorship of the bourgeoisie—in alliance with, and under the supervision of, U.S. capitalism.

The U.S., as Guardian of Empire, does not just plunder resources for its own sake; it maintains and manages class power throughout the world. As leader of the world capitalist empire, the job of the U.S., prior even to assuring profits of U.S. oil companies, is to assure, in every country it can, the economic and political rule of the capitalist class. That means crushing any attempt by a popular movement based in the working class to take political control of the state and economic control of the capital wealth of society. That—class power—is the main concern.

There has been a de facto situation of dual power in Venezuela that started with Chavez coming to power, and intensified with the growing political and social empowerment of the working class that Bolivarian socialism nurtured over the last twenty years. The Chavista Bolivarian movement, like its less-militant social democratic cousins, made a bet that it could advance toward socialism within a capitalist society without decisively and irreversibly taking control of the capital wealth of society. As most estimates agree, in “socialist” Venezuela, >70% of the economy is in private hands.

A dual-power situation is inherently unstable, and a resolution of that contradiction had to come. The Trump administration, following on decades of sanctions designed to cripple the economy, is now trying to end that contradiction and restore full economic power to capital and imperialism. Trump has called the bet Trump has called the bet: Forward to socialism—which will require equally decisive, forcible action by the Chavistas—or backward to pre-Chavez fascism—all at once or in U.S.-orchestrated stages.

Everybody now has to play their hand to win. And everybody is afraid to. The Venezuelans know they don’t have the military cards to defeat a full-on U.S. attack. But—and the Chavistas have to know they hold and aggressively play this card—the Americans know that a full-on military attack, whatever its short-term successes, would end up in disaster. The Trump administration is, and should be, as afraid of such an attack as is Venezuela.

Indeed, the Trump administration has demonstrated that fear with the one-night, “bloody nose” abduction that carefully avoided a full military attack, and with their admission that Nobelist Maria Corina Machado and the comprador opposition she represents do not have enough support or competence to take over the country.

Per Rubio, they don’t want regime change (i.e., they do not want to undertake the dangerous task of overthrowing the regime by military force), they want to change how the regime acts (i.e., they want to effect regime change by changing how the regime acts). They want the regime to overthrow itself.

The Trump administration is a bully that wants, and is convinced it can, get Venezuela to surrender without actually fighting. The Venezuelan government, the Bolivarian socialist movement, has to decide how it’s going to respond to that.

Fully aware of how unforgivably little my Yankee ass has to lose, and also aware that it’s not just a privileged Yankee position, I gotta say: I think the worst thing Venezuela can do is adopt, and display, the attitude that the most important thing for it to do is to avoid the fight.

There’s a debate about whether some traitorous element within the Venezuelan government or military colluded with the USG to make such a quick, efficient snatch of Maduro and Flores.

Some argue that “no country on the planet has the preparation or the capacity at present to prevent the overwhelming and brutal force of a US special operation such as the one conducted,” and there’s no need to speculate about betrayal. Others—many more—argue that a contingent of low-flying, slow-moving helicopters could not have transited Caracas, penetrated a military base, executed the presidential guard, and grabbed Maduro and his wife without suffering a single casualty or loss of equipment, if there had not been some kind of collusion within the Venezuelan military. Delcy Rodriguez’s alternating combative and “mutually respectful” statements have even fed suspicion about her and her family’s role.

It's important to emphasize that this is all speculation. The “no country could have prevented this” position is theoretically possible, though I strongly think that someone (I doubt Delcy) with military authority must have betrayed Maduro. I also understand that it’s to the imperialists’ benefit to have everyone believe there are traitors at the table, creating suspicion, confusion, and division. Either Delcy. or one, or a few of the generals have already sold out or—classic psyop—Rubio is trying to persuade them they might as well because he’s putting that story out anyway.

That’s why it’s important to get the answer and end the speculation. The accurate and credible account of how that abduction was possible must be given, and if there was one or more traitors, s/he/they must be identified and punished. Not vigorously pursuing the truth of how the president of the nation was abducted—any “Let’s look forward, not backward” attitude—would be highly suspicious. We shall see.

But independent of, and at least as concerning as, any betrayal regarding the Maduro abduction last week, is the possibility of implicit surrender via accommodation going forward. Fear (of military attack or of more“impossible to prevent” abductions or assassinations) can be as sinister as outright betrayal. There is real danger that, in a process driven by fear, through a series of sincerely anguished, arguably non-capitulatory decisions (“Just agree to let this person take charge of that agency.”), the current Venezuelan leadership will succumb to a regime of metastasizing “cooperation” that will inexorably erode Chavismo.

Delcy Rodruguez, who, AP remarks. “some have likened…to a sort of Venezuelan Deng Xiaoping ,” says, on the one hand:  “There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros… we will never again be a colony of any empire,” and, on the other hand: “We want a relationship of mutual respect with the U.S…We extend an invitation to the U.S. government to work together on a cooperative agenda.”

Meanwhile, here's what the Trump administration says it expects Delcy to do:   

https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2008746444652421346?s=20

If the government of Venezuela accedes to any of this, let alone enters into some spreading “cooperative agenda” based on the terms set by Donald Trump—well, then, pace Delcy, Venezuela would become, effectively, a colony of the U.S. empire. How can there be a “mutually respectful” relationship with a regime that has kidnapped and holds captive your president and his wife? Any self-respecting Venezuelan leadership would condition any discussion—let alone “cooperative agenda”—with the U.S. on the immediate, unconditional release of Maduro and Flores.

Should the Venezuelan leadership enter into a discussion of Trump’s terms without such a condition, either because the fix is in or because they’re afraid, it will have effectively accepted the abduction of the president and be on the path to abandoning the Chavismo socialist project, and at every subsequent step it will be harder to turn back.

That wouldn't put an end to resistance, but it would introduce divisions that would complicate it immensely. Would it not be necessary to restrain popular mobilization or disarm the collectivos in order to facilitate a “cooperative agenda” with the U.S. while it holds Maduro? Any attempt to do so would trigger a civil war in the Venezuelan working class—exactly what the U.S. and the Venezuelan comprador class need.

Color me cantankerous, but I can’t think of anything better for Venezuela to do than to ignore all of Trump’s delusions and demands.  You’re still in control of the Venezuelan polity. Act like it! Make clear that if they want to take control from you, they will have to fight for it. Refuse any discussions until and unless Maduro and Flores are released; keep yourself, them, and the world focused on the illegitimacy and inadmissibility of their abduction; maintain the unity of the country as a force of armed resistance; increase military preparedness as much as possible; ask for help from all countries interested in joining your front-line defense of “international niceties” like, you know, Westphalian Sovereignty, that have been in place since the 17^th century; continue to develop your economy any way you want and trade and do business with anyone you want.

What’s Trump going to do? Abduct someone else? Assassinate someone? Presumably—you had better!—you’ve increased your security. Besides, you can fight back against that. There are thousands of U.S. diplomats, military, and politicians all over the world that Venezuela can kidnap and/or assassinate in retaliation, with complete justification. Is the U. S. going to bomb you? Yes, they can destroy a lot of your country. But you can figure out a way to make them take casualties, down a plane or hit a ship, and force them to keep their expensive armada off your coast and decide which country’s ships they’re going to risk challenging—and they’re still not running your country.

If they try an invasion, and you’ve kept your army and armed working class united in defiance, it will be a disaster for them. And still, if you’re not running the country for them, who are they going to put in charge? They have no answer for that. It’s Iraq all over again.

 Hell, you could walk out of Caracas and dare them to send people in to take over the administration of the government and oil industry without your cooperation, warning that whoever they send will be the targets of resistance actions. Who are they going to send? Trump’s favorite dynamic duo, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, who couldn’t run a coffee shop? Some other of today’s American capitalists, who can manage a hedge fund or a real-estate grift, but don’t know from an actual industry? Which oil company executive who does know is going to want to risk billions of dollars, and their own lives, rebuilding and managing facilities that are constantly under attack and won’t be profitable for a long time?

Fact is, they can hurt you, but they cannot win a war against you, and they cannot run the country.

If they try to do any of that, they will achieve nothing, and do enormous damage to themselves. And if they have half a brain, they know that. What they think they can do, and are acting as if it’s already done, is to get you to run the country for them.

Despite what Donald Trump may think, and want us to think, today, Delcy Rodriguez and her leadership team run Venezuela. And they have complete control over whether they will run it for Trump or remain defiant. As of today, I really do not know what they will decide about that. But we shall soon see.

Meanwhile, with Trump and Stephen Miller demonstrating a clinically psychopathic lack of elementary social conscience—the culmination of the anti-social capitalist personality disorder rampant in the U.S.—it is doubtful that there is half a brain’s worth of political intelligence in the Trump administration. They are dangerously delusional.

The rest of the world had better make a real, including military, alliance of defiance with Venezuela. Venezuela needs ships from all countries defying the naval blockade, with MANPAD-armed crews and military escort where possible, daring the U.S. to attack them all. It needs China or whoever wants to make deals with the actual government in place to do things like reconstruct its oil industry infrastructure, daring the U.S. to try and stop them.  It needs missiles that can down planes and sink ships, and it needs the will to use them.

Today, in an incredibly provocative maneuver, the U.S. military boarded and seized a Russian tanker. I hope that will encourage Russia to explicitly join an alliance of defiance.

I hope, and think, China understands that the other main purpose of the US attack on Venezuela, besides putting an end to any “socialistic” project in the Western Hemisphere (yup, Cuba’s next), is to put an end to such mutually beneficial Chinese-LatAm projects as the Peruvian seaport and the trans-South America railroad—to stop China or anyone else from helping Latin American, as they are helping Africa, develop independently of American constraints.

BRICS is the target as much as Maduro. If Russia and China accept the Trump administration controlling and excluding them from Venezuela, they will be accepting the U.S. controlling and excluding them from the social and economic development of half the world.

Fact is, the U.S. only has the control that Venezuela and the rest of the world give it. It is not Donald Trump, but Rodriguez, Putin, Xi, and any other world leaders who want to preserve “international niceties,” who are going to decide who runs Venezuela. We shall see what they do.

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