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01:09It produces only about barely 1% of world output, but that can be scaled up if the sort of outdated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