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U.S. President Donald Trump delivered his latest loud, clear and direct threat to Venezuela on the same day that Venezuelans posted a very strong message of defiance to him.
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As he delivered his first speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 19, tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets in Caracas to tell him to keep his hands off their country — and their elected President.
Naturally, the two messages were quite different: Trump talked war while Venezuelans walked for peace. But in the end, the voice of peace was loudest.
Trump's repeated threats against Venezuela — however phrased or coined — have not found favor even from Washington's strongest allies in Latin America.
Ahead of his speech, he dined with four South American presidents opposed to Caracas, but they warned him that U.S. military intervention in Venezuela would be a most unpopular decision across the entire continent.
Washington's ten closest anti-Venezuela allies at the Organization of American States, OAS, promised to meet while in New York to further their U.S.-inspired plot against the administration of President Nicolas Maduro.
But even while the real threats and plots must never be ignored or underestimated, nor can the size and strength of Venezuela's international support.
A 4-day international solidarity event in Caracas held September 16-19 drew nearly 250 delegates from 60 countries across the globe, who reaffirmed the friendship and support of their people — and in some cases their parties and governments.
Bolivian President Evo Morales, the brother of Hugo Chavez (Adan Chavez) and the son of the legendary Congolese President Patrice Lumumba (Ronald Lumumba) joined the long list of voices of reason opposing violence against Venezuela and advocating world peace.
Trump's oft-demonstrated proclivity to hear only what he wants to and his propensity for easy engagement of selective amnesia will have ensured that in the days leading to his U.N. address, he neither heard nor cared about Venezuela's demands that he respect its sovereignty.
But by attacking Iran, North Korea and Venezuela as he did, he also inadvertently put Latin America on the General Assembly's agenda, effectively drawing attention to not only his warmongering language, but also to Washington's unjust and indefensible, ongoing hostile actions, including sanctions aimed at economically strangling Venezuela.
The serious plight of millions of Latin American and Caribbean people currently facing a series of costly natural disasters turning them into environmental and climate refugees was never a top agenda item at this year’s U.N. summit of world leaders.
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Instead, the Western powers paid more attention to topics that more directly concern them (such as “nuclear proliferation,” “refugee” and “immigration” crises and the so-called “war on terror”).
But Trump's unilateral declarations of war against three sovereign and independent nations drew immediate attention to the fact that during the same week, his administration approved a US$700 million military budget — at a time when the world is begging for peace, not only in the Middle East, but also on the Korean Peninsula.
Trump's undisguised threats of war are consistent with the fact that out of the last 240 wars fought in this world, the U.S. has led or been involved in 201.
Such a record is shameful, but it's also one that the generals in Washington will gladly boast to boost their relentless efforts to fully further vitalize the U.S. military industrial complex.
After 16 years of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, ongoing U.S. arms supplies to anti-Syria elements and continuing sales to their NATO allies pursuing a revival of the Cold War in Europe, the generals in Washington are staging war games in Europe, as well as in Korean land and air space.
After Trump authorized use of the so-called “Mother Of All Bombs” on Afghanistan, the planners, designers and executioners of U.S. military policy are preparing to further militarize space and build more foreign U.S. military bases to deploy more U.S. troops abroad.
Trump's words of war and threats of intervention — however implied — must not be taken lightly.
But any external military intervention in Venezuela will also constitute a real danger to nations near and far that are or feel equally threatened by Trump’s acute bellicosity.
Here too, if and when other nations were to join Venezuela to help defend its sovereignty, that can surely open the way for a multinational armed conflict the world hardly needs at this time.
Trump's repeated threats against Iran, North Korea and Venezuela clearly violate the U.N. Charter, which promotes peaceful relations between nations and outlaws external threats against member-states.
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Washington’s reckless record of invading countries (big and small, near and far) that pursue paths not dictated by the White House has also always eventually returned to haunt it.
For example, an interesting Aug. 9, 2017 Washington Post article revealed that North Korea's Founding Leader Kim Il Sung’s decision to pursue nuclear power was driven by U.S. President Ronald Reagan's decision to invade tiny Grenada in October 1983.
Today, Kim's grandson leads a missile-powered DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) that has become a nuclear-sized headache for Washington.
In pursuit of “regime change” wherever governments don’t bow to his regime’s dictates, Trump is putting the entire world at risk.
The wild words of the U.S. Commander in Chief have renewed world concern that the U.S. again has a president with his hands on nuclear buttons who also has a demonstrated propensity to first attack, then talk.
Trump knows the costly consequences of war, but he is yet not willing to give peace a chance.
However, the recent international solidarity conference in Caracas clearly demonstrated that people everywhere — on all five continents and across all seven seas — are globally opposed to the U.S. president's near-maniacal obsession with insisting on dictating to other countries not willing to bow to his dictates.
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