The Venezuela domino

The United States, Canada and Europe are relentlessly attacking the legitimate, democratically elected Venezuelan government that represents the hitherto marginalized, impoverished, traditionally abandoned popular classes. It is a worldwide campaign to demonize Nicolás Maduro repeating ad nauseam that he is a dictator, without any evidence and despite free elections. It is similar to the “weapons of mass destruction” canard that opened the way to the devastation of Iraq. For example, social media sends out more than 3,600 false news on Venezuela daily.

It’s a curious dictatorship that, in 20 years of the Bolivarian government, has held 23 elections for president, governors, and municipal representatives and in which the governing party has been defeated three times. And it is one of very few democracies that has a constitutional procedure for removing an elected president or governor.

The US and its allies are backing the fascist forces in Venezuela – the upper-class elites that governed with impunity and now lead the opposition. Since the start of the last century this comprador class overwhelmingly benefitted from Venezuela’s oil revenue bounty. Until the election of Hugo Chávez as president in 1999, the Venezuelan state was the instrument of domination by the upper classes over the lower classes, just as Marx described. It preserved the concentration of economic and political power typical of a capitalist state but contrary to real democracy.

Now there is a class struggle being fought in Venezuela. It is evident, it is inevitable, it is irreconcilable. The Bolivarian Revolution managed to wrestle the apparatus of the state away from the governing elites and facilitated participation of the vast majority in public affairs. It is not perfect, it has problems, but it is happening, hence the loathing of the upper classes and their all-out, US supported and led, opposition to the elected government.

The US is applying a new war strategy: hybrid warfare, a combination of new technology (social media, drones and cyber-attacks) as a weapons test for their further domination of the region and other countries. Hybrid warfare, or war of the second generation, is “a military strategy, which employs political warfare and blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyber-warfare with other influencing methods, such as fake news, diplomacy, lawfare and foreign electoral intervention.”

The defeat of the US in the Vietnam War is an historic precedent that is very relevant for the situation today in Latin America. The routing of the most technologically advanced and powerful army in the world by poor but well organized and determined guerrilla fighters defending their homeland forced the US military to realize that brute force bombing and chemical warfare were not enough to hold a country when the oppressors were not supported by the people.

This caused the US military establishment to seek a different type of war, one that would make the civilian population the main focus of violence, psychological, cultural, and economic tactics: hybrid warfare. Multitude ways are now used to distort perceptions, to create general instability, fear, anxiety and dissatisfaction and ultimately provoke civil war.

The untimely and mysterious death of Hugo Chávez and the fall of international oil prices happening together spurred the US and its allies to intensify their war against Venezuela.

Excerpted from: ‘Venezuela:Disturbing Echoes of History’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org