Venezuela’s opposition put together a ‘serious plan.’ For now, it appears to have failed.
Moon of Alabama, May 1 2019
After the failed coup attempt in Venezuela at least some people recognize the reality that its government has significant support. The coups failure necessitates a new policy. Unfortunately John Bolton is the man in charge of it. He is likely to push for a war. Pindo media, especially cable TV, is clearly working in favor of ‘regime change’ in Venezuela. They even avoid to call the intended coup a coup. Many Pindo journalists who regularly write on South America are extremely biased and have no qualms to lie. Consider this by Anthony Faiola and Mariana Zuñiga in today’s WaPo:
Now watch this drone clip of the described rally.
One can also compare the WaPo take to the (similar biased) NYT account, which at least gets some facts straight:
Across town in central Caracas, thousands of Mr. Maduro’s supporters dressed in red marched along the main highway toward the presidential palace. Most appeared to be retirees or public sector workers. Many were brought in from across the country by public buses that stretched for miles on the side of the highway. It was one of the biggest pro-government demonstrations in Caracas in months, underlining the government’s desire to portray strength and tenacity after the failed uprising.
To get a good picture of the situation in Venezuela and the upcoming new policies one has to combine many sources. Some media and reporters are simply much better than others. A few point how embarrassingly Tuesday’s coup attempt and the crazy White House plans failed. Bloomberg writes:
It was a ploy that from its outset felt like a long shot. Before dawn Tuesday, Juan Guaido, flanked by his political mentor Leopoldo Lopez and a handful of soldiers who had broken ranks, issued a message to Venezuela and the world: The time to topple Nicolas Maduro’s authoritarian regime was right now. The whole episode was so bizarre, with Guaido seemingly lacking the military might to have any chance at all, that it was hard to understand the day’s events.
AP’s Matt Lee and Ben Fox have a similar fair take:
For the third time this year, the big moment in Venezuela has turned into a bust.Trump administration officials had expected that Wednesday might turn out to be the beginning of the end for President Nicolas Maduro with senior government figures withdrawing support and the opposition launching a mass uprising with military backing. Or at least that’s what the administration had been led to believe. But the promised defections didn’t happen, the military uprising never materialized and Maduro still appeared to be firmly in command of the South American nation. Trump officials were back to complaining about the support Venezuela receives from Cuba and Russia while issuing vague warnings of military action.
The Trump administration and its Venezuelan puppets clearly got snookered by the Maduro government. Senior Venezuelan boxtops pretended they were ready to hand over power to Guaidó to push him towards some embarrassing action. The Trump gang fell for it (Spanish, machine translation) and the Venezuelan officials surely had a good laugh:
Chavez senior boxtops negotiating with the opposition the departure of Venezuelan Pres Maduro have “turned off their cell phones” and do not respond, revealed in an interview with Efe the Pindo envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams. “I’ve found that many of them have turned off their cell phones,” Abrams acknowledged.
The larger Latin America strategy behind the ‘regime change’ attempt in Venezuela necessitates an escalation:
The removal of Maduro was supposed to be the precursor of a domino effect that would later tumble the dictatorships in Cuba and Nicaragua. Current and former boxtops acknowledge that a failed uprising would cripple the opposition and undermine the administration’s top priority in the hemisphere. A senior admin boxtop said: “It’s now or never. Everyone realizes it both on the Pindo side and the Venezuela side. How ugly this gets remains to be seen. But everyone sees this as the final frontier to bring down Maduro.”
The plan to use economic pressure, loud bluster and a hapless crony to unseat the Venezuelan government can no longer be valid. According to the WaPo:
With the situation on the ground still uncertain, Trump’s top national security aides, including Pompeo, Bolton and Shanahan, who canceled a trip to Europe to work on Venezuela, huddled at the White House to discuss possible options.
David Smilde, a Tulane University professor and expert on Venezuela, said:
The entire episode should lead to a round of reflection within the opposition and their supporters in the Pindo government regarding how to address this crisis. It is clear the pressure-collapse scenario they have been working with has run its course.
The administration is somewhat split about which direction to take. The neocon hawks, Bolton, Pompeo, Abrams and Rubio, are looking for war, while their boss and the Pentagon are against launching one. Trump wants the votes of the millions of Cuba hawks in Florida, but he has no interest in launching a long war. The Pentagon knows that an invasion of Venezuela would lead to another decades long struggle:
Trump has shown little willingness to plunge into Venezuela, according to current and former aides. The president has occasionally mused to others that Bolton wants to get him into wars. Two advisers who have discussed Venezuela with him said Trump often brings up Florida politics, and his golf club in Doral, when talking about the subject. Both said Trump was unlikely to authorize any sort of long-term military action there. At the same time, aides said he has given Bolton wide purview over Venezuela.
Giving Bolton purview over anything is a mistake. He is a vicious and ruthless bureaucrat who knows how to get his way. Bolton is pressing the Pentagon for military options:
As he has pushed for a more aggressive policy, Bolton has angered some within and outside the White House. Even before Tuesday’s events, his staff clashed with Joint Chiefs Vice-chairman, AF Gen Paul Selva, during a meeting to address the ongoing Venezuelan crisis, according to several sources. Selva was giving an update last week on the Pentagon’s view and making the case against a risky escalation by Pindostan when Bolton aides including Mauricio Claver-Carone, Western Hemisphere director at the NSC, repeatedly interrupted and asked for military options, according to the officials. A senior admin boxtop said Bolton’s staff was dissatisfied with Selva, who they felt had not presented sufficient military options for Venezuela as expected. Selva believed the confrontational style of Bolton’s staff was out of line.
Claver-Carone is part of the anti-Cuban gang within the Trump administration. It is not the first time that Bolton and the Pentagon clash. A recent New Yorker portrait of Bolton, sympathetic to him and falling for some of his spin, reports of a similar situation in Apr 2018 after the fake ‘chemical attack’ in Syria:
When Bolton asked the Pentagon for options, Mattis gave only one, a limited strike with cruise missiles. Bolton was furious, a person familiar with his thinking told me: “Mattis is an obstructionist. He seemed to forget that it was the President who was elected.” After some modifications, Trump authorized the attack, but Bolton wanted more. He believed that Pindostan needed a more enduring military presence in Syria.
The portrait includes other takes that are relevant here. Bolton has a history of disregarding or exaggerating intelligence when the reality contradicts his spin:
In May 2002, he spoke at the Heritage Foundation, where he accused the Cuban government of developing an ambitious CBW program and of collaborating with such pariah states as Libya and Iran. As he prepared to give similar testimony to Congress, Christian Westermann, an analyst at the State Dept’s internal intelligence bureau, told him that the bureau’s information did not support such a view. Bolton, according to several sources, threatened to fire him. Westermann later testified: “He got very red in the face, and shaking his finger at me, he explained to me that I was acting way beyond my position for someone who worked for him. I told him I didn’t work for him.” Bolton began excluding Westermann’s supervisor from daily briefings and after an unsuccessful attempt to fire him, tried to transfer him to another office. In 2003, as he prepared testimony for an appearance before Congress, he described Syria’s efforts to produce CBNW as an urgent threat, assessment that intelligence agencies thought was exaggerated. A bitter internal debate ensued. The accusations endangered the Syrian government’s cooperation in hunting suspected terrorists. Lawrence Wilkerson told me: “We were getting some of our best, if not our best, intelligence on AQ from Damascus.” Deputy Sec State Richard Armitage took Bolton aside and “told him to shut up,” Wilkerson said. Tony Blinken, who was the staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told me that the members began to reconsider as they examined Bolton’s work in the State Dept. Blinken told me: “We saw a pattern of Mr Bolton trying to manipulate intelligence to justify his views. If it had happened once, maybe. But it came up multiple times, and always it was the same underlying issue: he would stake out a position and then, if the intelligence didn’t support it, he would try to exaggerate the intelligence and marginalize the officials who had produced it.”
Now Bolton is again selling koolaid:
He argued that Venezuela was dangerous, because it was allowing Russia to gain a foothold in the region. He said that there were twenty thousand Cubans in Venezuela who served as “surrogates for the Russians.” There were also at least a hundred Russian soldiers and mercenaries on the ground, helping Maduro stay in power. He said: “To get the Russians out, you have to change the regime.”
What Bolton says about the Cubans contradicts the intelligence he receives:
One area where the White House has been at odds with the CIA is the agency’s assessment of Cuban participation and support for the Maduro government. Bolton and Pompeo have consistently criticized Cuba for its support for the Venezuelan government, but the CIA has concluded that Cuba is far less involved and its support has been far less important than senior admin boxtops believe, according to a former boxtop.
Unfortunately Bolton is now in a position where he has much control over Trump:
Aides have found that detailed briefings provoke his impatience. Graphics and bullet points work better, and relatable photographs better still. A senior admin boxtop told me: “Bolton gets to the point very fast. He’s very brief and the President appreciates that.” Groombridge, the former aide, said: “John is thinking: ‘To the extent I can modify or mollify the President’s actions, I will.’ He is truly a patriot, but I wonder how he goes into work every day, because deep in his heart he believes the President is a moron.” There’s no permanent Sec Def, no DHS Sec, no UN Ambassador. With Trump’s natsec team thus depleted, Bolton would have extraordinary latitude in a crisis. Hundt said: “John understands that you have to get the elected leader the approval of the audience that matters. As long as Trump’s base is still applauding, then Bolton can do whatever he wants.” For Bolton, it is ultimately a question of sovereignty. He said: “The Monroe Doctrine is alive and well. It’s our hemisphere. The doctrine is a prohibition against outside powers interceding in Latin America. That doesn’t mean armed force. That’s the Roosevelt Corollary. I haven’t invoked that yet, but all options are on the table.”
The long-abandoned Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the equally long-abandoned Monroe Doctrine:
Theodore Roosevelt stated that in keeping with the Monroe Doctrine, Pindostan was justified in exercising “international police power” to put an end to chronic unrest or wrongdoing in the Western Hemisphere. While the Monroe Doctrine had sought to prevent European intervention, the Roosevelt Corollary was used to justify Pindo intervention throughout the hemisphere.
It seems clear that John Bolton, the Stache as Pat Lang christened him, will wage war on Venezuela if he sees no other way to get the Chavistas out of the way and its oil under Pindo control.
Trump already recognizes that Bolton is pushing him into that direction. Tuesday’s failed coup episode hopefully taught him that the plans, promises and claims Bolton makes, are prone to fail and to lead to embarrassment. The Pindo creeple do not want another war. All Latin-American countries are against launching one. There will be resistance in both parties against waging war. Unlike Joe Biden, some Demagogs are against an intervention, at least for now:
Those options should not include the military, said Rep Eliot Engel, who was briefed by Pompeo and Bolton on the situation. Engel, who recently visited Venezuelan refugees on the Colombia border and believes Maduro should go, said Congress has too often gone along with military adventures abroad. He said: “I think the days when Pindostan can intervene and send in the Marines are over and should be over.”
Engel is not alone:
Bob Menendez, senior Demagog of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged caution and said events Tuesday suggested the desired outcome might not be achievable in the short term. He warned military intervention could be counterproductive, an opinion shared by regional allies, saying: “It would be a huge mistake for the Trump administration to miscalculate and undermine this burgeoning democratic movement with a military intervention involving Pindo troops.”
Trump’s best option is to simply put the issue aside. There are enough other issues he can bluster about. But he must also order his aides, and the CIA, to leave Venezuela alone. He might otherwise wake up and be told that Venezuela sunk the Maine or that Maduro attacked Pindo war ships in the Caribbean Sea. Bolton will have no qualms about creating such a stunt. He is a dangerous man and should be fired.
Venezuela’s opposition put together a ‘serious plan.’ For now, it appears to have failed.
WaPo, May 1 2019
For weeks, the Venezuelan opposition had been working on a comprehensive blueprint to finally force President Nicolás Maduro from office. Several of his top military and civilian aides were said to have been persuaded to switch sides, while others would be allowed to leave the country. There was a strong suggestion that Maduro himself would peacefully fly to Havana. A Pindo boxtop said of the opposition:
They produced a pretty full plan.
Implementation was tentatively set for Wednesday, although no date had been finalized. On Monday, the plan started to fall apart. Maduro, it seemed, had gotten wind of it, and opposition leader Juan Guaidó responded by rushing ahead. At dawn Tuesday, after alerting the State Dept, Guaidó released a video saying significant Venezuela military units were with him and that the moment had come to rise up against Maduro. But after a day of bloody protests, the government remained intact. The Trump admin publicly blamed Russia and Cuba for keeping him in place and discouraging expected high-level defections. On Wednesday, as Pindostan and Russia traded barbs, the White House held an emergency meeting of top national security aides to mull next steps. “Significant progress on defense matters” was made, a senior admin boxtop said. Throughout the day there were mixed messages about what role if any the Pentagon would play in Faschingstein’s future efforts to resolve the Venezuelan crisis. Sec State Pompeo told Fox Business Network a peaceful resolution was still desired, but added:
Military action is possible. If that’s what’s required, that’s what Pindostan will do.
Asked if the military would be used to protect Guaidó, Bolton told MSNBC:
The President has been clear and concise on this point: all options are open. We want a peaceful transfer of power. But we are not going to see Guaidó mistreated by this regime.
Top Pentagon boxtops emphasized non-military options and said they had not been given orders to pre-position troops or prepare for conflict. JCoS Dunford said in congressional testimony:
We’re obviously watching the situation very closely in Venezuela. The president’s made it clear that all options are on the table. To date, most of our actions have been diplomatic and economic.
Trump has shown little willingness to plunge into Venezuela, according to current and former aides, although he has already imposed sanctions on Cuba and threatened more. The White House said in a statement late Wednesday:
Russia must leave and renounce their support of the Maduro regime.
The president has occasionally mused to others that Bolton wants to get him into wars. Two advisers who have discussed Venezuela with him said Trump often brings up Florida politics and his golf club in Doral when talking about the subject. Both said Trump was unlikely to authorize any sort of long-term military action there. At the same time, aides said he has given Bolton wide purview over Venezuela. As he has pushed for a more aggressive policy, Bolton has angered some within and outside the White House. Even before Tuesday’s events, his staff clashed with Joint Chiefs vice-chair, AF Gen Paul Selva, during a meeting to address the ongoing Venezuelan crisis, according to several sources. Selva was giving an update last week on the Pentagon’s view and making the case against a risky escalation by Pindostan when Bolton aides including Mauricio Claver-Carone, Western Hemisphere director at the NSC, repeatedly interrupted and asked for military options, according to the sources. Selva, irritated at the interruptions and confrontational style rather than the substance of any disagreement, slammed his hand down on the table, his ring hitting the wood with a sharp crack. Bolton deputy Charles Kupperman, who was chairing the meeting, adjourned the session earlier than planned. A senior admin boxtop said Bolton’s staff was dissatisfied with Selva, who they felt had not presented sufficient military options for Venezuela as expected. Selva believed the confrontational style of Bolton’s staff was out of line. In a Wednesday interview with Hugh Hewitt, Bolton praised the head of SOUTHCOM, Adm Craig Faller, for showing “the kind of attitude we need.” Bolton said Faller had responded to the Venezuelan threat by preparing his forces, saying:
We’re on the balls of our feet and ready to go.
The comment by the general came in an interview last month with ForeignPolicy.com. Asked at a Wednesday hearing whether the Pentagon should play any role in the overthrow of the Maduro government, Faller himself emphasized the diplomatic track, saying:
Our leadership has been clear: This has to be, should be, primarily a democratic transition. We are in total support of the diplomacy, and we stand ready to support that effort.
While the Pentagon has developed military options for Trump, it has urged caution in internal discussions regarding the use of force. One worry is that any decision to mount a unilateral Pindo military intervention would jeopardize a consensus among regional partners and allies that Guaidó will need if he manages to wrest control from Maduro. Maduro has called Guaidó a Pindo “puppet,” and Venezuelans and other Latin Americans are broadly skeptical of Pindo military intervention. At the same time, military planners traditionally worry about operations that may be limited in intent but quickly can spiral out of control. So far, the Pentagon has helped run back-end logistics for aid deliveries to Colombia for the Venezuelan people, and a Navy hospital ship sailed to neighboring Colombia to aid Venezuelan refugees. The military could step up such operations in a show of support to the Venezuelan people and regional vassals. Pindo diplomacy in Venezuela has wide bipartisan support in Congress, but it is unclear how many would back offensive military action. Sen Rick Scott has openly called for using the military, at least to deliver humanitarian aid. The administration, which has characterized the Venezuelan crisis as a national security threat, has also considered invoking the Rio Treaty, a 1947 Cold War pact with Latin American governments that allows for mutual defense. The lack of a consensus came as the administration found itself caught off-guard and disappointed by events on the ground. Boxtops continued to voice confidence that a turning point in the more than three-month-old stand-off had been reached with Guaidó’s declaration early Tuesday that “the end” had arrived. He called for troops to change sides and join massive street protests. A day later, although the Venezuelan military and Maduro’s government remained largely intact, Bolton said:
Any facile conclusion that things are going to return to ‘normal’ is completely wrong. The situation’s not sustainable.
Pindo boxtops said that Pindostan did not directly participate in the opposition’s secret negotiations with Maduro boxtops. A second senior admin boxtop said:
We were aware of the efforts, beginning about two months ago. There were times when it seemed serious, and other times not so serious.
But “the last few weeks, it was clear that they were reaching agreement” with Venezuelan Defense Secretary López, along with the head of the Maduro-appointed Supreme Court and the commander of his presidential guard, to switch sides. While not officially recognizing Guaidó, Padrino and the others were said to be ready to sign documents declaring their loyalty to the Venezuelan constitution, under which the opposition-led National Assembly had declared Maduro’s reelection last year invalid and on Jan 23 had named Guaidó interim president. Pindostan and more than 50 other countries, primarily in Latin America and Europe, have also recognized him. In exchange, the Venezuelan boxtops would keep their jobs and be integrated into the new administration. For those who might want to leave the country, Pindostan had given indirect assurances they would not be barred from doing so, and might even be allowed access to any assets stashed overseas. Admin boxtops said that over the past two weeks, they had received indications that even Maduro himself might be prepared to fly to Cuba. On Monday, the opposition and the administration received word that Maduro was aware of the plan. Early Tuesday, Guaidó appeared at a military base in eastern Caracas with a small band of armed men in military uniforms, to announce that “Operation Liberty” had begun, saying:
People of Venezuela, we will go to the street with the armed forces to continue taking the streets until we consolidate the end of the usurpation, which is already irreversible.
At about 6 am, Bolton called Trump and his own top aides to say the announcement had come. At mid-morning, Padrino appeared on live television wearing combat fatigues and body armor, surrounded by other military officers under a large portrait of Maduro. He declared the uprising an attempted coup and denounce protesters gathered in the streets. Reports of defections and government collapse, he said, were “fake news.” Seeking to undermine Maduro’s trust in those around him, the administration decided to out Padrino; Maikel Morena, the chief justice of the Supreme Court; and presidential guard commander Ivan Rafael Hernandez Dala by name, saying they had agreed to sign documents supporting the constitution. When Maduro failed to appear throughout the day, Pompeo eventually declared that he “had his plane ready” but had been dissuaded from leaving by Russia. The senior admin boxtop commented on Maduro’s behavior on Tuesday morning:
When times get tough, he has always had a plane ready. The information we had was that he was very seriously contemplating it, then the Russians said don’t leave.
The boxtop characterized Russia’s intervention as “advice,” perhaps based on a reading of how the day would unfold.
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