“What we are watching is not another regional conflict”, Yanis Varoufakis, a prominent Greek economist and politician, says, “it’s fundamentally a restructuring of global economic power that will have a cascading effect on energy markets, currency systems and trade relationships for decades to come”.

Venezuela has one of the largest oil deposits in the world- 303.8 billion barrels-representing 18% of global resources. It’s more than what Saudi Arabia, Canada and Russia have, enough to tempt the imperialist power to intervene for its corporate sector, salivating to control the biggest source of cheap oil in the world. The US has deployed over 12000 troops across dozens of vessels near Venezuelan waters. The USS Gerald Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier-after Israel-is stationed in the Caribbean waters. The purpose of the blockade is not only the strangulation of Venezuela’s economy but to overthrow the revolutionary governments of Cuba and Nicaragua- the thorns in the US flesh.

Venezuela, akin to Iran and Cuba, is one of the most sanctioned countries in the world. In the 1990s, under US sanctions, its oil output collapsed from 3.5 billion barrels a day to 700,000 barrels a day. That led to the massive exodus of nearly 7.7 million Venezuelans- almost a quarter of the total population- to various countries, especially to Colombia, which has already absorbed 2.9 million Venezuelan refugees. Mexico saw a steep rise in Venezuelan migrants. Many who moved to the US because of Trump’s inhuman and atrocious policies are now suffering a terrible fate in the dungeons of El Salvador for uncommitted crimes.

The Trump administration has declared Venezuela a terrorist state and placed a bounty of $50 billion on Maduro’s head- equivalent to the bounty once placed on Osama bin Laden – in a bid to provoke the army into removing him. But as the Wall Street General admits Madero possesses the quality of a “coup- proof” president, the US has decided to invade an economically strangled country, while also imposing twenty-five % tariffs........

© Daily Times