A US Navy Destroyer Just Entered Venezuelan Waters. Is Trump Trying to Start
a War?
The USS Nitze is conducting what the US military is calling a freedom of
navigation operation
contesting an excessive maritime claim by Venezuela.
by Alan Macleod
June 24th, 2020
By Alan Macleod
Heightening already increased tensions with the country, a Navy destroyer,
the USS Nitze, entered Venezuelan waters yesterday, conducting what the
military is calling a freedom of navigation operation in the Caribbean.
The Nitze, according to Southern Commands official twitter account, was
contesting an excessive maritime claim by Venezuela. The U.S. Navy ship
lawfully navigated an area the illegitimate Maduro regime falsely claims
control over. In addition to the Nitze, an American military Boeing RC-135W
reconnaissance aircraft was also spotted in the area. In an official
statement, Admiral Craig Faller, head of Southern Command, said that the
move was carried out in order to increase regional peace and stability. The
United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international
law allows, preserving the rights, freedoms and lawful use of the sea and
airspace guaranteed to all nations, he added.
The warship got to nearly 12 nautical miles from the coast where, last
month, a botched invasion led by ex-Green Berets was foiled. The team hoped
to shoot their way to the presidential palace, capture President Maduro, and
replace him with U.S.-backed politician Juan Guaidó. Washington has been
trying to overthrow the democratically elected government since the election
of Maduros predecessor Hugo Chavez in 1998. Former White House national
security adviser John Boltons new book, The Room Where it Happened,
alleges that Trump said it would be cool to invade Venezuela as the
country was really part of the United States, but that he had lost
patience with Guaidó, who has now tried to oust Maduro six times, each with
U.S. backing, each with less success than the last one. After his failures,
Bolton alleges, Trump labeled Guaidó the Beto ORourke of Venezuela for
his vacuous weakness, comparing him to the strong Maduro.
MintPress spoke with independent journalist and Navy veteran Ariel Fornari
today, who said that the military currently lacks the strength to truly
bully Venezuela, considering its overreach in the Pacific, attempting to
confront China. Southern Commands purported freedom of navigation
operations inside Venezuelas exclusive economic zone but outside its 12
nautical miles territorial limits, is another spurious show of force
attempts by the U.S. meant more to show the flag as opposed to a strategic
naval presence in the region, he added, arguing that yesterdays incident
was more a symbolic show of force meant to assuage the imperial designs
within the Trump regime rather than a substantive challenge to the Maduro
government.
While the U.S. has supported an array of coup attempts over the past twenty
years, it has never gone through with any invasions, despite Trumps
repeated insistence that a military option was on the table. This is
primarily because, as Fornari explained, they have not been able to
influence the countrys military leaders, who preside over well-equipped and
loyal armed forces. Instead, Washington has attempted to strangle Venezuela
through sanctions, which have devastated the economy, blocking off virtually
all foreign trade, including in oil, its primary commodity. Only a handful
of countries, including China, Cuba and Russia, have broken the unilateral
embargo. This has led to crippling shortages of certain foods, medicines,
and other essential products. An American Special Rapporteur to the UN,
Alfred de Zayas, visited the country, comparing the sanctions to a medieval
siege, declaring Trump guilty of crimes against humanity, and estimated that
over 100,000 Venezuelans have died as a result. Jeb Sprague, Research
Associate at the University of California, Riverside and author of
Globalizing the Caribbean: Political Economy, Social Change, and the
Transnational Capitalist Class, described the tactic as death by 1000
cuts, and a new type of hybrid warfare. The whole point of this, Sprague
told MintPress, is to create confusion, divisions, and chaos in Venezuela
and generate an impossible situation where the government has shrinking
options and can more easily make mistakes or be forced to react in a rushed
manner.
Washington has quietly been gearing up for the possibility of a full-scale
invasion for over a decade. In 2008, the U.S. resurrected the Fourth Fleet,
liquidated in 1950, specifically to deal with the wave of anti-imperialist
governments in Latin America. The military has also dramatically increased
its presence on Curaçao, an island just to the north of Venezuela, and in
2006 carried out a wargame there simulating an invasion of the country to
capture a leader called Hugo Le Grand.
In 2018, Admiral James Stavridis, former head of Southern Command, wrote an
article in Bloomberg celebrating Jair Bolsonaros dubious election victory
in Brazil, commenting that, if they can only break Venezuela, the U.S. will
have achieved a clean sweep in Latin America. Others, like Senator Lindsey
Graham (R-SC), have argued that the U.S. must intervene in Venezuela the
way we did in Grenada, in 1983 when marines invaded the island and
overthrew the countrys anti-imperialist prime minister Maurice Bishop.
While yesterdays incident appears to have passed without escalation,
sending even more warships to Venezuelas borders is a clear provocation
that could escalate into a hot war. Sprague noted that There is a long
history of this, of the Navy being used to pressure adversaries. In 1898,
the U.S. used the highly suspicious destruction of the U.S.S. Maine to
intervene in the Spanish-American War, invading and occupying Cuba, while in
1964, it lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify ramping up war
with Vietnam. The USS Nitze is named after Paul Nitze, Deputy Secretary of
Defense under Lyndon B. Johnson, responsible for planning and carrying out
the Vietnam War, the casualties of which the Vietnamese government estimates
at around 3.4 million. In 2016, the ship was involved in a similar incident
off the coast of Iran, where it was chased away by four Iranian patrol
craft. Fortunately, it appears that, as with Iran, this new incident has not
escalated the conflict, no thanks to the U.S
