The New Dark Age

28 March 2019 — Internationalist 360°

The distant and sometimes evasive treatment of the international media with respect to the figure of Juan Guaidó, has made evident his erosion. Two months after having proclaimed himself “president of the Republic”, the deputy for the state of Vargas, invested by the United States and the Western media industry as a consensus figure with the capacity to rearticulate anti-Chávezism in a common agenda, has failed to crystallize the forced exit of the constitutional government of Venezuela.

The expectation that this would be achieved through an express coup pushed from anti-Chávez factions in the FANB has been followed by disenchantment. This is what Carlos Blanco, advisor to the far-right party Vente Venezuela, said in an opinion article on March 27: “Afterwards, all the tales of the universe can be told, but the idea was that on or around February 23rd humanitarian aid would come in, the Military High Command would be broken and Maduro would leave. That was the offer that was understood. And it failed”.

What Carlos Blanco, an influential commentator for the most politicized sector of the opposition, said were not empty words. After Guaidó announced the beginning of the so-called “Operation Liberty”, convening at the same time a drill for April 6, networks blazed in criticism and accusations against him for continuing to prolong the long-awaited final coup against Chavismo.

But that opposition supporters believe that this “final coup” will bring about the imminent and total fall of Chavismo is the consequence of a mismanagement of political and communications strategy on the part of the local anti-Chavista leadership and Washington. Raising the expectations of regime change when the position of force is not solid enough to concretize them, has generated a wave of disappointment in the last hours.

The crisis of the opposition parties as a result of the cannibalization of Washington, that dragged its main leaders into two failed colour revolutions (2014 and 2017), has given way to a phenomenon as strange as it is delirious: the only remaining functional party for anti-Chávez is the social network Twitter, in the face of the planned destruction of the few structures of political-electoral participation that were left alive, with Voluntad Popular being the final result of that process.

The mercenary and coup party, an appendix of the neoconservatives, planned for this phase of regime change.

The ultra-Venezuelan sectors, a minority in the polls and in organizational presence, but well connected with powerful circles in the United States (for example María Corina Machado’s close relationship with Senator Marco Rubio), use this social network as a mechanism of agitation to pressure Guaidó. According to them, the opinion in Twitter in favour of intervention is being expressed by the whole country. This is where the deliriousness of the matter lies.

Being historical adversaries of the traditional parties that currently hold legislative power quotas, they expect Guaidó, under article 187 (numeral 11), to demand a foreign military intervention, preferably American. They imposed on him a backward chronometer that charts the lifetime of his own leadership. They possess the power of Twitter’s savage tweets that opposition leaders fear so much.

Guaidó crisis is the latest chapter in the irregular war

The failure of the February 23 “humanitarian aid” operation forced Washington to recalibrate its plans for aggression against Venezuela. The next step was a cyber attack against the Guri hydroelectric plant (an accusation by the Venezuelan government backed by Forbes magazine) in the state of Bolivar on the night of March 7.

The forceful manoeuver, which left the country without electricity for several days, extending its harmful effects to water supply and oil production, reanimated the figure of Juan Guaidó for a moment. It provided him with a reason to revive the need to exit Maduro.

At the same time, an irregular low-intensity war plot made its way in silence. The head of Juan Guaidó’s office and a militant of Voluntad Popular, Roberto Marrero, was arrested by Venezuelan authorities after heading up a plan to bring in mercenary cells recruited in Central America, which would commit sabotage of public services and selective assassinations against Chavista leaders. (Read more about Marrero’s arrest by clicking here).

The source of financing for this operation came from the theft of the country’s oil assets, specifically from the Refidomsa refinery located in the Dominican Republic, in which Venezuela’s state-owned subsidiary PDV Caribe holds 49% of the shares.

The manager of Rosneft’s legal department in Venezuela, Juan Planchart, who in turn is a cousin of Juan Guaidó’s mother, was the financial agent that would manage the fraudulent sale of this refinery, cutting off a billion dollars that would be used to guarantee the plan’s effectiveness. To expand on Planchart’s corruption scheme and Popular Will click here.

Although in the operation the main staff of Voluntad Popular (from Leopoldo López to Freddy Guevara and Juan Guaidó himself) were involved, it seemed to be the intellectual authorship of Elliott Abrams, a proven expert in creating mercenary armies to carry out prolonged wars of attrition. The case of Nicaragua, widely reported by MV.

Logically, the window of opportunity to employ these mercenary combatants was the new electric sabotage of March 25, which makes the early detection efforts of the Venezuelan state assume a higher strategic value for the peace and stability of Venezuela.

The so-called “Operation Freedom”, promoted by Guaidó as a new “D-Day”, had a mercenary and sabotage component as its operating structure, before which Guaidó could reconsider its role in the context of the present situation. To become a kind of peace gendarme in a country plagued by outbreaks of irregular conflict and civil war induced by the United States. The prior step to pre-emptive intervention for the “cessation of usurpation”.

But the deconstruction on an operational scale of this irregular war manoeuvre also increases the negative balance of the figure of Guaidó two months after his self-proclamation, because as time goes by his “interim” erodes his credibility as he does not have effective control of the State’s institutions and its main lever of stability: the FANB.

Plan B for the “humanitarian aid” operation did not turn out as expected either, as long as the idea of a direct, unilateral or consensual military intervention in the style of a “coalition of the willing” continues to be contested by the majority of the international community, including those who support the figure of Guaidó. And the fact is that as long as the “president in charge” does not achieve the “cessation of usurpation,” it would seem that the United States only has the option of military force to attempt to crystallize Maduro’s forced exit.

Arrival of Russian military and the Mueller report

Within the framework of military cooperation agreements with Russia, 99 military personnel and 35 tons equipment from the Eurasian nation arrived at Venezuela’s Maiquetía airport, in an Antonov An-124 and a Ilyushin Il-62 passenger aircraft, both from the Russian Air Force, under the command of Vasily Tonkoshkurov, head of the Main Command of the Russian Ground Forces.

This occurred in the midst of perhaps the most important geopolitical event so far in 2019: Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller concluded that Russia did not intervene to alter the 2016 presidential election results in Trump’s favour.

Immediately upon the arrival of the Russian military, in the midst of the conclusion of the Mueller report that nullifies Russophobia as a foreign policy weapon, the alarms went off in Washington.

Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Marco Rubio and Mike Pence questioned the fact and assured that they would not stand idly by. The Cold War discourse quickly made its presence felt to justify greater pressure on Venezuela under the Monroe Doctrine.

Specifically, the head of U.S. diplomacy, Mike Pompeo, contacted Russian diplomat Sergey Lavrov, who was told that Russia should “cease its destructive behaviour. Hours after this happened, a major fire in the transformers of the Guri hydroelectric plant again collapsed the electricity supply in most of the country.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman María Zajárova said the presence of Russian military personnel in Venezuela is in keeping with the Venezuelan constitution. Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the Foreign Relations Committee of the upper house of the Russian Parliament, criticized the fact that the United States demanded the exit of the military, questioning Washington’s extensive military presence in different regions of the planet.

Later, President Donald Trump, along with Fabiana Rosales, Juan Guaidó’s wife, insisted in the oval office that “Russia has to leave” Venezuela, closing the arc of statements by the U.S. administration that aggressively criticized military cooperation between Russia and Venezuela.

Also the Lima Group, and the OAS countries themselves, echoed this line of argument, portraying the situation as a “violation of sovereignty,” because the arrival of the military was not approved by Guaidó, who also denounced Russia.

Washington saw in this action a challenge to the Monroe Doctrine, once again resurrected to justify the geopolitical dominance of the United States over the continent and over China and Russia, which following the globalization process of the last two decades have emerged as partners with an increasingly important presence.

And in a certain sense the word challenge fits on this occasion. The United States insists that “all options are on the table”, making a dangerous nod to the military option, in the face of which the disembarkation of the Russian military implies a deterrent action that not only hinders the possibility of military intervention, but further obscures Washington as the only geopolitical actor that can have a presence in Latin America.

Now, according to Trump, “all options are on the table” for Russia to leave Venezuela. Remember: this is the words of the president of a powerful nation with ten military bases on the continent that have brought little security and prosperity in their long history. The neoconservatives in charge of the White House took advantage of the situation to increase their warmongering rhetoric and to recompose the anti-Russian narrative that was weakened by the conclusion of the Mueller report. However, they tried to project as a threat and a danger something which is not in any sense a threat: the military, financial and energy cooperation of Russia and Venezuela has been in the process of consolidation for 10 years, which has resulted in Venezuela having a defensive system, made up of ZU-23 anti-aircraft guns, Buk-2M, Pechora-2M and S-300 missile systems, which hinders military aggression attempts.

Evidently, behind the ideological discourse of the Monroe Doctrine is the declaration of the real purposes of Washington’s geopolitical agenda on Venezuela: the change of regime that will allow it to reconquer its immense energy resources, thereby halting its decline on a global scale, for which it is necessary to remove Russia as Venezuela’s oil and military partner.

With this, in their foreign policy calculation, they would definitively close the Latin American front, recovering the geopolitical balance after Syria’s defeat. For them, it would mean taking revenge against the Russians. Reversing their crisis of hegemony.

In this sense, the “presence of Russia” was not only used at a narrative level to delimit the conflict in its real sphere: geopolitics. Where Guaidó has little to do, see, or express an opinion.

RuSsophobia, the final reason: closing notes

In retrospect, after the failure of 23 February the use of ” humanitarian aid ” as a method of intervention was weakened, especially in the narrative hook to justify it. A new attempt by the United States in this direction would be burdened by the lack of credibility following the New York Times report, which revealed how the anti-Chávez mercenaries in Cúcuta burned trucks that, moreover, did not carry “humanitarian aid”.

Along the same lines, plan B to indirectly attack the national electrical system to make way for an irregular low-intensity war that would lead the country to a state of unrest and anarchy, was also ineffective due to the detection capacity of the Venezuelan state.

On this topic, Venezuelan diplomacy has been wise in promptly denouncing before international bodies the paramilitary intervention plans that the United States has been considering.

For its part, CNN ‘s (and previously Bloomberg‘s) revelation of how the United States was aware of the frustrated assassination of August 4, means that any mercenary-oriented maneuver is quickly associated with Washington. Such a cost of public opinion that they wish to avoid.

On a national scale, understanding that, in the case of Guaidó and Voluntad Popular, the absence of a breakdown of the FANB that generates the conditions of chaos for an intervention, or the departure of Maduro after an express military coup, reduces its credibility at the international level, distancing it from the international media and also from those who, under pressure from Washington, support its “interim”.

Political costs are beginning to be measured, and many circumstantial allies do not want to see their prestige compromised by backing a “government” that does not govern. The decision of the nerve center of the European Union, Germany, not to recognize Guaidó’s envoy as ambassador to his country, is a clear example of this.

The partial closure of the planned intervention highways has forced the war against Venezuela to focus on “getting the Russians out of Venezuela”. In the hierarchy of U.S. discourse, the central problem now is not so much the “humanitarian crisis” as Russia’s support for Maduro’s “regime”.

Russiaophobia thus imposes itself, for the convenience of the moment, as the last minute resource to justify actions against Venezuela, seeking to project that beyond what Mueller said, “Russia continues to be a threat”, no longer in the United States but in its most immediate sphere of influence and rearguard, where the Bolivarian nation occupies a critical place.

Meanwhile, the country is trying to recover from another massive blackout and return to its daily life.

And there, the United States continues to expand its visibility as a direct perpetrator, while trying to convince the nation that the “real threat” to the country, and the reason for its beleaguered daily life, is Putin.

Translation by Internationalist 360°