Dr Bhoe Tewarie

It is not just the un­cer­tain­ty of a mil­i­tary that has lost its stran­gle hold, and the un­pre­dictabil­i­ty of mili­tias who have lost their pow­er, but al­so the eco­nom­ic hard­ship ex­ac­er­bat­ed by au­thor­i­tar­i­an dic­ta­tor­ship, and the pres­ence of ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions such as Hezbol­lah, not for­get­ting the se­vere eco­nom­ic sanc­tions by the US and mas­sive cor­rup­tion, as well as the high ex­pec­ta­tions that a change of gov­ern­ment will un­leash in a long ex­pec­tant pop­u­la­tion.

Re­mem­ber, the tran­si­tion is sup­posed to be from a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship to democ­ra­cy. How do you get that right? I think this is the re­al dilem­ma of Don­ald Trump, Mar­co Ru­bio and the US gov­ern­ment. They do not want the re­moval of Nico­las Maduro to turn in­to an un­holy mess in Venezuela and they want guar­an­tees for US in­vestors in the oil in­dus­try and for the flow of oil from Venezuela to else­where by US choice.

So, the US is work­ing with el­e­ments of the Maduro dic­ta­tor­ship now to main­tain peace and sta­bil­i­ty and to avoid so­cial and po­lit­i­cal chaos. But it is al­so tak­ing over the oil in­dus­try, still un­der sanc­tion, not just to op­ti­mise it but to get Ira­ni­ans and Cubans, who have been help­ing to keep a de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­dus­try go­ing, to­tal­ly out.

It is a com­plex sit­u­a­tion to man­age if your de­sire is to min­imise blood­shed. Be­cause a bloody war in Venezuela will lead to a mas­sive re­bel­lion against the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­side the US, across the west­ern hemi­sphere and in coun­tries across the world. More­over, the MA­GA base on whom Trump con­tin­ues to re­ly for strength and lever­age will ex­plode. And a bloody re­bel­lion against US pres­ence from any quar­ter in Venezuela can lead to ex­tend­ed oc­cu­pa­tion of that coun­try, which is our neigh­bour.

To the peo­ple of Venezuela who want­ed change, Maduro is gone but there is no change be­cause the Maduro regime is still in­tact now. The Amer­i­cans seemed to have been pre­cise and clin­i­cal in tak­ing out Maduro and in tar­get­ing mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tions.

So far, re­ports sug­gest that about 80 peo­ple, most­ly mil­i­tary sup­port to Maduro, have been killed. And Maduro and his wife were not ex­e­cut­ed.

The ob­jec­tions to what the US has done in and around Venezuela since Pres­i­dent Trump came to of­fice have mer­it. Se­ri­ous le­gal ques­tions have been raised about the blow­ing up of boats al­leged­ly trans­port­ing drugs. Se­ri­ous is­sues of al­leged “war crimes” have been raised about the ex­e­cu­tion of in­di­vid­u­als seek­ing to be res­cued from boats that were blown up by US mil­i­tary fire. The role of the CIA with­in Venezuela, the mas­sive de­ploy­ment of air and sea mil­i­tary, build­ing up to a “max­i­mum pres­sure” block­ade, the ob­jec­tive of regime change and the vi­o­la­tion of Venezuela’s sov­er­eign space to ar­rest Maduro in the dead of night have all been ques­tioned. Not to men­tion Trump’s rein­vig­o­rat­ing the Mon­roe Doc­trine and its com­pan­ion piece, the Roo­sevelt Corol­lary.

And ac­qui­si­tions may in­crease, al­le­ga­tions may ex­pand as Pres­i­dent Trump pur­sues an Amer­i­ca first strat­e­gy which is at once ide­o­log­i­cal and geopo­lit­i­cal, tar­get­ing drugs, ter­ror­ism and nar­co gang­ster crime in this hemi­sphere, be­gin­ning with a chok­ing of Cu­ba by with­hold­ing the flow of Venezue­lan oil, US in­ter­fer­ence in pend­ing elec­tions in Hon­duras and Co­lum­bia, and ul­ti­mate­ly ac­tion against Nicaragua, which has am­bi­tions to build a port larg­er than Pana­ma with sup­port from Chi­na.

The truth is that we do not know how all of this will un­fold. Pres­i­dent Trump has is­sued a se­ries of threats to a va­ri­ety of coun­tries from Green­land (Den­mark) down.

The Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as gath­er­ing, which Trinidad and To­ba­go has host­ed be­fore, due to take place in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, was post­poned from 2025 to some­time in No­vem­ber 2026. This will be Trump’s first op­por­tu­ni­ty to lead the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as as the US Pres­i­dent. He would want to an­nounce a pol­i­cy for the Amer­i­c­as and a per­spec­tive on the Amer­i­c­as then. What sit­u­a­tion will Venezuela, which was not in­vit­ed to the last Sum­mit, be in? What will be the sit­u­a­tion of Cu­ba, which was al­so not in­vit­ed? What will be Nicaragua’s sit­u­a­tion? That coun­try was left out at the last Sum­mit as well.

The Sum­mit will be tak­ing place in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, where the US is now es­tab­lish­ing a mil­i­tary base. The DR shares an is­land and, there­fore, a land bor­der with Haiti. Haiti, a Cari­com coun­try, is the most gang­ster-rid­den coun­try in the hemi­sphere, whose Tran­si­tion Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil comes to an end on Feb­ru­ary 7th. What hap­pens af­ter that is un­pre­dictable.