While the US has endorsed regime change in Venezuela and recognizes
opposition leader Juan Guaido as president, the Maduro government
remains in power. It is starting to lead to opposition figures
considering a new approach.
The opposition is now looking at a possibility previously ignored: negotiations. There are even suggestions of giving the ruling Socialist Party some posts in a transitional government to advance things along.
Some European nations were trying to facilitate such negotiations and transition weeks ago, only for the US to angrily condemn the notion, insisting that the regime change was unstoppable, and everyone needs to just accept Maduro is gone.
It’s not clear how the US will react to the opposition taking the same
approach, though the Trump Administration seems to be focused on
ensuring no Socialist Party figures remain in Venezuela’s government,
and that is likely a higher priority than an election or seeing Guaido
installed as president.
Random Guydo and his USAID Red Teams are going to save the day!!
Let’s have some music and party!!!
With yayo from CIA’s Colombia cartels.
That was quick. A longer intimidation period seemed more likely.
The walking back, though, is not a huge surprise. Bolton needed a quick surrender on the ground for this to be bloodless, not Maduro digging in deeper.
If shooting starts now, Trump wears Latino blood going into 2020.
For the life of me I don’t understand why Guaido isn’t arrested for insurrection/rebellion in service of an enemy foreign power. Guaido is the “tip of the spear” of a “mail-order war” against Venezuela. He has no protection from the police or military of the established and accepted-as-legitimate (by the other 196-50=146 non-US-flunky members of the UN) govt of Venezuela. On what theory is Maduro letting him run around free? Is it that Guaido makes himself look foolish/weak/ridiculous, a foreign stooge and clown, and thus discredits himself and the opposition? I don’t get it.
Or maybe it’s the slow burn. The Israeli’s have arrived in Brazil, courtesy of Bolsonaro. What’s that about? Pressure? Are the Israelis combat trainers? Are there arms being shipped in to the opposition? Do they plan the “peaceful demonstration” with not-so-peaceful attacks on police and military to provoke live-fire retaliation. With that followed by the formulaic “He murders his own people!!” as the justification for an R2P response?
This whole coup/regime change effort goes nowhere without the essential military action to dispose of Maduro (because Maduro, like Assad in Syria, is not going to be scared off.). Bolton/Abrams might convince Trump to deploy US airpower in support of some armed group of “patriotic rebels”, but you have to have the necessary “boots on the ground”, and no way will Trump send US troops. Normally, those “boots” would be provided by a disloyal cadre of the local military, with leadership trained at The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in Fort Benning, Georgia, formerly the US Army School of the Americas. But that’s not happening in this case because disloyal officers are long since gone and Cuban security personnel are on station and on alert. These factors combined with Bolton’s recent threats directed at the Venezuelan officer corps suggest an uphill battle getting them to turn.
Trump cannot possibly be unaware of the consequences of a slow burn coup effort ending in failure on the eve of the 2020 elections. Is Trump giving Pompeo, Bolton, and Abrams the chance to take their best shot — ie dig their own political graves — while preserving the opportunity to be the decisive and effective leader who then terminates their Neocon failure, and lays the blame on them just before the crucial election?
I know it creates a warm and fuzzy feeling for the Trump-haters to call him an idiot. But that emotional self-indulgence, pleasant as it may be, doesn’t explain what’s going on here. Trump is not an idiot.
Help me out here?
“I don’t understand why Guaido isn’t arrested for insurrection/rebellion in service of an enemy foreign power”
Possibly because he has enough support — that could be popular support, or support within the police, or support within the military, or some combination of those three — that Maduro thinks arresting him could plausibly ignite open civil war without an obvious, quick, and easy win.
Or possibly because he’s privately been threatened with US military strikes if Guaido is arrested, and believes that threat would be followed through on.
Or possibly because he’s going out of his way not to add fuel to the “Maduro is a brutal dictator” PR campaigns.
Trump doesn’t have any say in the matter. He’s just left standing there having to react like most modern day presidents have had to do.
We live in a plutocracy. You can’t vote your way out of the empire, there’s no way to put that paste back in the tube.