Venezuela Coup Attempt Part of US Plan to Remake Latin America

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on January 31, 2019 by Yves Smith

The Wall Street Journal has just published an important, disheartening story, U.S. Push to Oust Venezuela’s Maduro Marks First Shot in Plan to Reshape Latin America. The Trump Administration has apparently decided to embark on a large-scale interventionist campaign to reverse supposed undue influence of Russia, China, and Iran in Latin America. Venezuela and Cuba are the first targets, and Nicaragua is next on the list. John Bolton, in too obvious a nod to Bush’s “axis of evil” has called them the “troika of tyranny”.

One would think the fact that our “remake the world in our image” plans worked out so well in the Middle East might curb US adventurism. And it isn’t just that we made a mess of Iraq, failed to break Iran, and failed to install new regimes in Afghanistan and Syria. The New American Century types are deep in denial that this geopolitical tussle not only cost the US greatly in terms of treasure, but it also wound up considerably enhancing Russia’s standing.

Consider another bad outcome from US war-making in the Middle East: the rise of the radical right in Europe. American nation-breaking had produced a flood of refugees trying to enter Europe. In a misguided show of humanitarianism, European countries welcomed the over one million migrants that arrived in 2015, with the upsurge due mainly to the civil war in Syria. Angela Merkel in particular backed the idea of taking in the refugees, in part because German has a lower-than-replacement birth rate, and Syrian has a high level of public education. However, the EU members had patchy and generally poor programs for helping the migrants assimilate and find jobs. The result was what one hard core left wing political scientist who has spent a considerable amount of time in Germany calls “Merkelization”: a rise of nativist right wing parties like AfD in response to large-scale, poorly-managed migrant inflows.

Consider how this tendency might play into US nation-breaking near our borer. Many readers have pointed out that the “caravans” from Central America are heavily populated with people from countries like Honduras that our tender ministrations have made much worse. My colleague was warning of Merkelization of the US even before the US launched its coup attempt, that it is one thing to have an immigration process that is generous towards asylum-seekers, and quite another to have open borders when political and economic conditions in countries to the South are unlikely to get better.

More:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/01/venezuela-coup-attempt-part-of-us-plan-to-remake-latin-america.html

[alwaysinasnit]

1. K&R

[DetlefK]

2. Are we going to just ignore that Maduro is ruling Venzuela as a dictator due to a coup?

Stacking the Supreme Court with lackies?
Abuse of the government's media-power in the 2016 election?
Election-fraud in 2017 AND in 2018?

But now as the US is no longer willing to tolerate Maduro's putsch, now all of a sudden people CARE about putsches?
WHERE WERE THESE PEOPLE 3 YEARS AGO?

[GatoGordo]

3. They howl about coups, yet

yesterday, Chavismo celebrated their (failed) coup attempt from February 4, 1992. And they are infinitely proud of it.

The irony alone......