Experts Say Even Average Venezuelans Critical of Maduro Won’t Back Regime Change |
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President Donald Trump has escalated threats against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in recent weeks, and reports now say the Trump administration is preparing for the days after a potential Maduro overthrow.
What might happen in such a scenario? In November, Michael Crowley at The New York Times pursued this question by reminding readers that, during Trump’s first term, U.S. officials were asked to run a war game to examine what Venezuela in a post-Maduro era would look like. According to Douglas Farah, a national security consultant who specializes in Latin America, the war game showed that the overthrow of Maduro would yield “chaos for a sustained period of time with no possibility of ending it.” Crowley, at his end, adds that the results of the exercise note that “chaos and violence were likely to erupt within Venezuela, as military units, rival political factions and even jungle-based guerrilla groups jockeyed for control of the oil-rich country.”
Currently, no such chaos has erupted in Venezuela despite at least 95 people having been killed by the United States military in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific as of December 16. Although the White House has repeatedly alleged that those targeted have been involved in smuggling narcotics into the U.S. mainland, the Trump administration has yet to produce any evidence to support its claims.
At least 95 people have been killed by the United States military in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific.
At the end of November, Trump took to social media, stating: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.” And on December 10, Trump told journalists that the U.S. had recently “seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually.” The Venezuelan government condemned the seizure as “blatant theft and an act of international piracy.”
With the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier group in the Caribbean Sea in November, and media reports indicating that there are now 15,000 U.S. troops in the region and approximately 5,000 personnel at bases in Puerto Rico, there are two likely outcomes: Trump is either bluffing to see if the Venezuelan military will carry out a coup against Maduro, or worse, is actually planning for the U.S. to attack Venezuela militarily. Meanwhile, a recent poll conducted by CBS News concluded that 70 percent of people in the United States are opposed to the Trump administration taking military action against Venezuela.
Inside Venezuela, the people Truthout spoke to for this article said that, while they are certainly following the crisis, most people are continuing with their daily lives. According to Fanny Chacón Sánchez, a 39-year-old mother of two who works for a government bank, “the way [the] international media portray things on social networks looks like a completely different reality.” Chacón notes that although the U.S. Navy’s actions are on people’s minds, this is “just another chapter of the illegal blockade we already know” that “suffocate[s] us” — a reference to the U.S. economic sanctions on Venezuela which commenced in 2005.
Living in a state-built apartment, which she is paying off at affordable rates........