TeleSUR interviews political scientist Eduardo Meneses to offer his analysis into the threat of U.S. invasion to Venezuela, the strong support of the people to Pres. Maduro and the international condemnation of U.S. actions. teleSUR
00:00Let's get back on context on what is happening in Venezuela as the National Bolivarian Militia Enlistment Day continues in the country that started yesterday and continues this Sunday.
00:09And to go over the details and the importance of what is happening, let's invite political scientist Eduardo Meneses to have his inputs on what is happening right now in Venezuela.
00:18Welcome, Eduardo, from the south.
00:22Thank you very much for the communication. It's a pleasure to be here.
00:25It's a pleasure as well. Eduardo, from a political point of view, what is your take on what is happening right now in Venezuela following the deployment of U.S. military Navy assets in the Caribbean and of the recent threats and the increase of the award, the money that is being put for the head of the president, Nicolas Maduro, which completely goes against any kind of international norm?
00:51Well, I think that the first thing we need to acknowledge is that this is not an isolated thing that is going on.
01:02I mean, the United States have been implementing these kind of threats in their geopolitical strategy for years, for decades.
01:12And in the last months, we have seen exactly the same way of acting, for example, against Russia in trying to make any kind of pressures in the negotiation of the ceasefire that has been discussing, that has been in the middle of a lot of discussions in the last months.
01:31We have seen the same kind of things. We have seen the same kind of things. We have seen the same kind of strategies, deploying some military forces near China, also trying to increase the tension between China and the conflict that's going on historically with Taiwan.
01:52So this is not an isolated thing. What it is new is that we have been seeing for months now how there's a narrative that's being built around the drug cartels by Trump saying that this is one of the main external threats to the U.S.
02:12This is the same kind of threats, when they are speaking about Iran, for example. And what they are doing right now is after months of building that strategy, now they are threatening to have an actual military intervention.
02:30Well, there are many things to say here. First, there is not an actual confirmation of how many military forces were deployed.
02:39This has been mainly communication, upside up communication for the moment. We do not have clarity about how many actual military forces have been deployed.
02:51But mainly this is another way of deepening this threat and threatens the diplomacy against all the progressive governments in Latin America.
03:04We have seen that with Maduro. We have seen that with Maduro. We have seen the same kind of things with Brazil, which is other strategies because not military deployment, but is economic war that's being held against Lula, supporting Bolsonaro.
03:18We have seen the same kind of approaches when it comes to Ecuador and asking Ecuador to put some military bases in its own territory.
03:27So we have seen this as a consistent strategy from the U.S. in the last years, and that has been increased clearly with the presidency of Donald Trump.
03:38Do you think, Eduardo, that these actions follow the successful operations that security forces in Venezuela have achieved in dismantling terrorist plots and advice that it has against drug trafficking that they have proven to have a high success rate with the seizure and the destruction of many drugs and places where the drugs were being used for transportation?
04:00Do you believe that maybe this was a way to put pressure on Venezuela to see if it could cement more division in the country to try to instill fear in the population?
04:10But that has completely backfired because now we're seeing over this weekend how people are going by the thousands from all sectors of Venezuela to express their willingness to protect the homeland and to express their condemnation to any kind of foreign interference.
04:25Yeah, definitely.
04:26Yeah, definitely.
04:27I mean, we can mention that there are two examples of how this strategy have failed in the past.
04:37And I mean, the people of Venezuela can clearly see this just looking backwards.
04:44The first example is what have been the results of all the interventions, the military interventions backed by the U.S. in the Middle East when we see countries like Libya,
04:54we see countries like Syria, we know what is the result of this kind of interventions.
04:59And very recently we have seen also a defeat of the U.S. strategy in Iran when there was all the attack by the Israeli occupation forces against Iran.
05:12And then the U.S. intervened directly bombing nuclear facilities, which is, by the way, totally prohibited by the international law.
05:21In fact, they did not achieve a victory, a military victory in Iran.
05:26Iran was the one who backed, there was a retaliation, a defensive retaliation from Iran.
05:35They showed that it was not possible for the Iranian people to just accept what are all the conditions that the U.S. are trying to impose to the Iranian people.
05:47And that was a success because they could not defeat the Iranian forces.
05:51In fact, it was all the contrary that happened.
05:53So in a certain way, the people from all the Global South, and in particular Venezuela, have been seen all these historical processes.
06:02They know what it means for a country to open to a military intervention from the U.S.
06:08They know perfectly in the case of Venezuela that the only interest that the U.S. have in Venezuela is the Venezuelan petroleum.
06:15There's no interest in democracy.
06:17There's no interest in fighting drug cartels.
06:20We have to say, by the way, that a lot of the drug cartels have been coordinated historically by undercover operations of the DEA.
06:29And we know that by many of the documentation that have been done during the last decades.
06:35And the people of Venezuela know that they cannot open their country to an intervention of the U.S.
06:42And by the way, the triumph, the military triumph of Iran also showed that a country which is ready to defend themselves with thousands of peoples that you mentioned just right now that have been mobilized.
06:57There have been a mobilization for the defense of the country.
07:02It's not easy even for the United States or any other imperial forces to defeat this kind of opposition.
07:09That's why we are seeing this mobilization right now.
07:12Eduardo, from a regional and international point of view, how important it is the support for the Venezuelan growing and its people and the condemnation to these U.S. actions.
07:23We saw many countries condemn the movement of the U.S.
07:26and we also saw regional blocs like Alba TCP condemn these movements and the commitment that they have expressed to continue to preserve the area, Latin American and Caribbean, as a son of peace.
07:36So what is the importance of all these international actors in these kind of events?
07:41Well, we need to highlight one thing is that we are in a historical moment that we could say that started with the war in Ukraine, where definitely the loss of hegemonic forces of the United States and the European allies of the United States have been translated into a military strategy to try to maintain these hegemonic forces.
08:08It started with Ukraine and Russia, but then the genocide in Palestine has reached a new level of this strategy. Why?
08:20Because all that has been happening for more than almost two years in Palestine show how the United States and the allies of the United States, the European countries and some other global North countries,
08:35are totally ready to destroy any part of the international law institutions, international law principles in order to maintain their global power.
08:49So right now, when we see the exact same strategy starting to show in Latin America, it's obvious that all the countries that do not want to have an escalation of war,
09:04do not want to have an escalation of imperial aggressions in mainly the global South countries when they are seeking resources.
09:11They are in the same voices uniting together to condemn all these strategies, the strategy of threatening Venezuela, threatening Maduro, threatening any government by this kind of means, which are totally in the violation of international law.
09:28And that's exactly what we're seeing right now with ALBATSPE, with SELECT, that also proclaim Latin America as a peace zone.
09:35And we are seeing that even countries that are not totally politically aligned with necessarily Venezuela or some other countries, they understand that it's in the common interest to maintain a strategy of peace,
09:51peace, where diplomacy is the main tool to resolve any kind of geopolitical conflict.
09:58And it's not war, because war is only going to try to continue perpetrating all the imperialist aggressions that we have seen in the last decades.
10:09Thank you very much, Eduardo, for your input.
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