After a series of strikes in the last few days, and more than two decades of attempted coups (in 2002, 2019, and 2020), warfare, sanctions, and a “Maximum Pressure Campaign,” the United States has just toppled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Maduro and his wife are standing trial for “narco-terrorism” charges, a cover to extend the War on Terror without congressional authorization, in New York, with members of his security team, along with several civilians, dead.

Far-right hardliner María Corina Machado, the leader of the opposition who has longstanding ties to the White House and even went on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast to justify a coup based on oil wealth, was expected to be put in power. She promised to implement a vision of deep privatization under “Popular Capitalism,” modeled on Augusto Pinochet, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan. However, President Donald Trump has said she “doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country,” with Vice President Delcy Rodriguez assuming the presidency, governing alongside the cabinet members remaining alive. With a CIA-imposed power vacuum and so many lingering questions, it is unclear who will govern in the near future.

In a sweeping slash, the coup took the air out of the revolutionary fervor that had carried the spirit of the Venezuelan free people since Simón Bolívar’s stunning victory against the Spanish in New Granada in 1811.

The US is now a mafia state, where oligarchs and extremists run foreign policy.

This coup is also a nod to the Kirkpatrick Doctrine, named after Reagan’s United Nations Ambassador and close foreign policy adviser, Jeane Kirkpatrick, who decreed that the US should support right-wing authoritarian or fascist regimes over democratically elected left-wing governments so long as they remain pro-capitalist and geopolitically aligned with Washington.

Meanwhile, Machado’s family were oligarchs, she helped briefly put an oligarch into power through a coup against Chávez in 2002, and she is still expected to govern following the edicts of the American oligarchical class.

The 48-hour 2002 coup, it is worth mentioning, produced the Carmona Decree, which dissolved the National Assembly, suspended the Constitution, purged democratic institutions, and appointed an oligarch-dictator, Pedro Carmona, openly revealing the anti-democratic nature of Venezuela’s far-right opposition when backed by Washington. It was never a fight for democracy and freedom, then or now.

The Trump administration just committed one of the greatest crimes in its history, in violation of democracy, sovereignty, and international laws, including Articles 1 and 2 of the Charter of the United Nations (which, by the way, was written primarily by the United States). This is a regime, not a democracy, led by a war president.

This is not about drugs; the US has created many of the very drug cartels it is fighting, while the president embraces and pardons drug traffickers like former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a US court of helping traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States, killing more Americans than on 9/11.

This coup, and the preceding drone strikes, were likely directed by the same CIA that, during the Cold War, worked directly with drug traffickers to advance US geopolitical goals, most infamously facilitating the flow of narcotics through Los Angeles, devastating Black communities with heroin and crack, while the proceeds were used to arm the Contras in Nicaragua, who committed atrocious war crimes.

It was also the same CIA that helped prop up the brutal far-right paramilitaries in Colombia, borne out of a war against left-wing guerrillas, paramilitaries which are now among the largest cocaine traffickers on Earth and committed various crimes against humanity including the False Positives Scandal.

There is no evidence for any of the claims the administration has been making on its drug strikes, and all evidence points to the dead being fishermen, blown up in international waters, another war crime. Even if they were traffickers, Trump has cajoled traffickers who kiss the ring and add to his family's billions.

It would have taken the small motorboats at least 10 refuelings to get to US shores; they were never going to the US. And should pharmaceutical company CEOs, or street-drug peddlers, get killed by missiles in Manhattan? This is ridiculous on its face.

This coup is also the death blow to the liberal order the US helped create with the Allies after the Second World War.

The administration is claiming that everyone is celebrating this coup, but support for this war is nil, both among Americans and Venezuelans. Western media coverage has overwhelmingly elevated Venezuelans who support the US-backed coup not because they are representative, but because they are disproportionately wealthy, urban, English-speaking, and........

© Common Dreams