Crisis in Venezuela: An Analysis of the United States’ Interference

As the crisis in Venezuela escalates uncontrollably for the people, the politicians are in the centre of legitimising themselves as the president of the country. Current president Nicolas Maduro has recently rejected an ultimatum by the European Union to hold a snap elections in the country stating that he would not “cave in to pressure” from those calling for his departure.  The European Union issued the ultimatum as the Juan Guaido, the head of Venezuela’s opposition-led National Assembly, declared himself as the country’s interim president . Many European countries such as the UK, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark have all recognised Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela. Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium have said they will recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as president if Maduro failed to announce elections.

In addition to that, the biggest support for Juan Guaido is definitely from the United States as President Donald Trump has recognized and endorsed Juan Guaido as the president of Venezuela. Even Ireland has followed a number of other EU countries in recognising Juan Guaido as interim President of Venezuela.  Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said he supports Mr Guaido, the leader of the legislature, “in order for him to call for free, fair and democratic presidential elections”.  The United Nations however has rejected Juan Guaido, as the interim president. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres responded to a letter written by Guaido seeking humanitarian aid to Venezuela. Guterres reiterated his concern about the impact of the current Venezuelan crisis on the people but however, in regards to Guaido’s request for humanitarian aid, the secretary-general requested to communicate with the Government of Venezuela, which is headed by President Nicolas Maduro . This directly meant that the United Nations are in support of the current government and president Nicolas Maduro.

Nicolas Maduro was sworn as the president on 10th January 2019 after he was re-elected in May 2018 by getting 67.7 % of the vote. This means that by law he is the legitimate leader of Venezuela. In addition to that, the country’s main opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), boycotted the election and that basically paved way for Maduro to be re-elected as the president. While many are now recalling for elections, why didn’t the MUD participate in the elections in the first place? They claimed that the elections was rigged in favour of Maduro but the fact that they did not contest shows that they are incapable to be in power and incompetent to run the country. Now there is Juan Guaido from the Voluntad Popular (VP), (Popular Will Party) who declared himself as the president. He was sworn in as leader of the National Assembly and de facto leader of the opposition early in January, at a time when not many in Venezuela had heard of him. It is said that at least 80% of the population in Venezuela have not heard of Juan Guaido. Thus the National Assembly basically elected a president without an electoral mandate which makes unlawful because there is a democratic process for a reason.

Another issue that should be taken into serious consideration in this Venezuelan political crisis is the involvement of the United States. It seems that as though the situation in Venezuela is a question of human rights, democracy and freedom that is built upon only by the National Assembly via the opposition although in reality that the whole move of making Juan Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela was engineered, organized and financed by the United States along with a small group of countries from Latin America and Europe. This definitely shouldn’t come as a surprise as the United States has had a long history of intervening and overthrowing leftist governments in Latin America for many years. Among a few examples are the 1954 US Intervention in Guatemala, 1964 US intervention in Brazil, 1973 US intervention in Chile, 1976 US intervention in Argentina and many others. All these interventions by the United States were coup d’états that were sponsored and engineered by the United States military by supporting right wing leaders or political parties.

The situation in Venezuela is a little different as the United States are not using military intervention yet but are engineering what many media outlets would not call which is a soft coup d’état through Juan Guaido. While many refrain from the word coup, in reality that is the situation in Venezuela at the moment because Juan Guaido is trying to seize power illegally and unlawfully. In addition, the United States seem to be using a similar tactic that was used when they intervened in both Chile and Iraq respectively in 1973 and 2003 by trying to destabilise the economy of Venezuela through economic sanctions before deciding to intervene or invade via military. This is because a destabilised economy would indeed give the United States a strong reason to invade or intervene Venezuela if needed. This was definitely the case in Iraq. Sometimes sanctions that are often used on countries are an act of war because it hurts the most poor and vulnerable sectors of a country’s population. Moreover sanctions are also genocidal and one example is in Iraq when almost 500,000 babies lost their lives due to the sanctions carried out by the United States. A similar trend is being seen in Venezuela as the US-led sanctions has cost the Venezuelan economy at least 6 million USD and this has indeed weakened the country and also the population.

Recently on 29January 2019, the United States has also announced that a new round of sanctions will block almost 7 billions USD in Venezuelan assets. These sanctions that are being carried out by the United States are actually against Venezuela’s state owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA).  As a result, all property and interests in property of PdVSA subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons generally are prohibited from engaging in transactions with the company. The opposition in Venezuela approves the confiscation of the 7 billion USD as it is seen by them as securing assets although in reality it is actually an international theft. As the PdVSA, is an important source of income to Venezuela and while the United States are actually aware of it, the sanctions are a clear indication that the United States are trying to cut off every last source of income available to Venezuela to weakened their economy even more.

Besides that, just like in Iraq the United States would also want to get their hands on Venezuela’s oil via Juan Guaido because it is impossible that the United States are oblivious that Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. An additional evidence that the opposition parties in Venezuela are aligning themselves to the United States is the fact that the National Assembly in Venezuela is beginning a process of appointing new board of directors for PdVSA to transfer the controls of Venezuela’s foreign accounts. It is clear that the National Assembly in Venezuela headed by Juan Guaido are not positioning themselves of running the country on behalf of the 30 million Venezuelan people but are instead only invested in securing power and position as well as allowing the United States to intervene in their country’s internal affairs.

The United States are definitely turning Venezuela into their colony and their actions are a demonstration that represents the greatest threat to peace and regional stability of Latin America as a whole. As it is now their custom, they threaten other countries through extortion and coercion so that these countries will recognize a puppet president, which would allow them to take full control of that particular country and exert their continuous influence for years to come. We have seen a similar trend carried by the United States in countries such as Iraq, Iran, and Libya that has led to the devastating effects that remains till this day. This is bound to happen in Venezuela if the opposition leaders led by Juan Guaido are not cautious in aligning themselves wholly to the United States. Although President Nicolas Maduro has not proven himself in leading Venezuela forward, but it has to be understood that US-led sanctions since the Obama Administration has had a huge influence the Venezuelan crisis.

The opposition parties in Venezuela should have shown their will to fight for the interest of the people by not boycotting the election in May last year because the boycott basically meant that they betrayed the people of Venezuela. Personally I am not a Maduro sympathizer but I believe in that a leader should be elected through a democratic electoral process and I also denounce foreign intervention into the internal affairs of a particular country because often times history have shown that a third party intervention by the United States has always brought more negative impacts instead of positive ones. For this reason, I would be on Maduro’s side and would urge other countries to recognise him as the legitimate leader of Venezuela because recognising Juan Guaido would mean recognising the United States colonialism against Venezeula.

Aaron Denison
Aaron Denison
Aaron Denison Deivasagayam is currently a Doctoral Candidate at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan. His main research interests cover Malaysian and Japanese politics, regionalism in the EU, ASEAN and the Pacific Islands and international relations of East Asia.