Deposed Venezuelan President Maduro awaiting trial in New York

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The country's deposed leader Nicolas Maduro remains in a detention centre in New York, awaiting his court appearance on drugs and weapons charges. Political scientist and Director of Strategy at the US think tank 'Defence Priorities' Rajan Menon speaking on the developments in Venezuela.

Transcript

00:00Firstly, I wanted to ask, can you see any legal justification that Trump can stand on

00:06for these actions in Venezuela?

00:08No, not at all.

00:10Because if you look at the UN charter or any aspect of international law that has to do

00:16with war, there is a justification for launching war in the event that you've been attacked

00:22or are in danger of imminent attack.

00:25Neither is the case here.

00:26If anything, it was the United States that massed, if not an armada, a large number of

00:32ships, often as well as coasts, blockaded the coasts, began a kind of information warfare

00:38to destabilise the Maduro government.

00:41So no, the answer is no.

00:43What do you believe is central to this action?

00:49Well, I think there are many things going on.

00:51I think for those of us who might find this hard to believe, I think the idea of having

00:58control over Venezuela's oil reserves, it has the largest amount of proven reserves in the

01:05world.

01:06It is only, it's about 20% of proven reserves.

01:09It produces only about barely 1% of world output, but that can be scaled up if the sort of outdated

01:19infrastructure is updated.

01:21And what Trump has said is, well, we're going to run Venezuela for a while.

01:25I have no idea what that means.

01:26But then our multinational corporations will come back into Venezuela.

01:30The oil will gush.

01:32Venezuelans will make money, will make money, won't cost us anything to run Venezuela.

01:36So that's the plan, as bizarre as it sounds.

01:39That seems to be the case.

01:43What do you make of the fact that the interim president is the vice president who served

01:47under Maduro?

01:49Well, there is a president in place.

01:51And one of the things she's said is that we want, first of all, proof of Maduro's well-being.

01:57So there is a Venezuelan state in place.

02:00It is not that the state has crumbled.

02:01Now, mind you, the state hasn't served the people well economically or politically.

02:06That's not the issue here, because if that were the grounds for attacking a country, many

02:10countries could be attacked because of many countries that don't do well by their people.

02:14So there is a government in place.

02:15Now, there is an opposition leader, Maria Machado, the winner of the Nobel Prize, who many

02:22people thought would be the person who would be catapulted in to take Maduro's place.

02:27But Trump recently said that, well, she doesn't have the legitimacy, despite the fact that

02:32she dedicated part of her Nobel Prize to Trump.

02:36So we're all up in the air now about what exactly is going to happen, because there is

02:40a Venezuelan state in place.

02:42It will not see the authority of any external power.

02:45But one external power, namely Donald Trump's government, wants to now run Venezuela.

02:51It has no machinery for doing so.

02:53It has no plan for doing so.

02:55So we'll have to wait and see how this plays out.

02:59And that question of legitimacy, I mean, that speaks to the opinions of Venezuelans.

03:04What of those opinions and actions, how will they factor in here in moving forward?

03:09You know, that's a very good question.

03:11It's hard to tell.

03:12I mean, I think it's a polarized society because of the record of the Maduro government.

03:18There is a lot of opposition to it.

03:20But it's important to bear in mind that you can be a Venezuelan who is opposed to Maduro,

03:26doesn't like the government, but doesn't welcome the idea of a foreign government catapulting

03:33in, running your country, and claiming to have the right to decide who invests in your

03:39oil fields.

03:40So that's important to realize that.

03:42So there's no question that Maduro is an unpopular person.

03:47What the regime has by way of popular support is very hard to tell.

03:52It all depends, I think, on how well it endures, because once, if the state begins to unravel,

03:58then a lot of people will deserve the ship, as it were.

04:00What do you believe might be the unintended consequences of this U.S. action?

04:07Well, you know, there's an old saying in strategy, don't take the first step until you've thought

04:11about what the second step is.

04:12And I fear we've taken the first step without any plan for the second step.

04:17So there are various possibilities.

04:20One is that the regime of Maduro holds strong without him.

04:25There's a state in place and says, you know, we will resist if there is a attempt to enter

04:31Venezuela militarily.

04:33And then the ball is in Trump's court.

04:35If he decides to go forward, we're talking about a Venezuelan war with the United States.

04:39I'm not saying that's going to happen.

04:41I'm saying that that's a possibility.

04:43The second is that there will be more pressure of an economic nature put on Venezuela with the

04:49hope that the regime will give way.

04:50The problem there is that you want the disintegration of a state who, for any other entity, in this

04:57case, the United States, has the machinery to fill the void, because the result of that

05:02will be anarchy, such as we saw after the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya.

05:07The two situations are not the same.

05:09But what happened was complete mayhem because the state fell apart.

05:12No one was able to fill the vacuum.

05:14And there was a prolonged civil war.

05:16Rajan Menon, Director of Strategy at the U.S. Think Tank Defence Priorities.

05:21Great to have you with us.

05:23Thank you, General.

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