An
internal government document reveals tactics of “economic warfare”
and “financial weapons” the US is using against Venezuela in the
name of “furthering capitalism.”
by
Ben Norton
Part
1
Venezuela
has suffered from an economic crisis in recent years, and while the
US government and corporate media outlets have blamed this hardship
solely on the ruling socialist party, internal US government
documents acknowledge that Washington has been using what it clearly
describes as “financial weapons” to wage “economic warfare”
on the oil-rich South American nation.
The
quiet admission confirms what Caracas’ government has said for
years: The United States is waging an economic war on Venezuela, the
country with the world’s largest oil reserves.
Crippling
sanctions imposed by the Donald Trump administration have bled
Venezuela of billions of dollars.
The
first United Nations rapporteur to visit the nation in two decades,
legal expert Alfred de Zayas, told The Independent that the
devastating international sanctions on Venezuela are illegal and
could potentially be a crime against humanity.
Professor
Steve Ellner, a leading scholar of Venezuela’s politics who has
lived and taught in the country for decades, explained in an
interview on Moderate Rebels that the sanctions have
economically isolated Caracas: “The fear of retaliation on the
part of the Trump administration has pressured the world economic
community to lay off the Venezuelan economy. This amounts practically
to a blockade of Venezuela.”
In early
2019, the Trump administration dug the knife deeper. On January 23,
the US government initiated a political coup in Venezuela by
recognizing the unelected right-wing opposition leader Juan Guaidó
as supposed “interim president.”
Guaidó,
who was unknown to a staggering 81 percent of Venezuelans according
to a January poll, has tried to usurp the legitimate government of
President Nicolás Maduro, who was re-elected in a 2018 presidential
election that was voluntarily boycotted by the US-backed opposition.
This
ongoing coup attempt is the culmination of a two-decade long US
destabilization campaign aimed at shattering Venezuela’s Bolivarian
Revolution. Caracas has long described this campaign as one of
economic warfare. And internal US government documents show that’s
exactly what it is.
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