After indicting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro along with other 14 former and present officials on alleged narco-terrorism charges on 26 March, the US State Department proposed to 'hold a vote in Venezuela' in six to twelve months in a bid to create an interim government in the Latin American country. Then, the US beefed up its naval presence in the Caribbean, near the Venezuelan shores, under the pretext of a wider “anti-narcotics” operation in the region which became the largest military deployment since the US invasion of Panama in 1989, according to the Associated Press.
#COVID19 will not stop the @DeptofDefense from protecting the American people from illegal drugs. At the direction of the @POTUS, additional U.S. ships, aircraft, and security forces are underway to disrupt narcotics trafficking. pic.twitter.com/BFTbxqcFGn
— @EsperDoD (@EsperDoD) April 1, 2020
Caracas denounced the US attempts to meddle in Venezuela's domestic political affairs and ordered the mobilisation of artillery in the country’s strategic areas in order to ensure the security of the state.
"Interim Gov't" Would Have Come in Handy to Trump
"Trump's aggression against Venezuela is still in the psychological warfare phase (psywar), where you use all sorts of military, economic, political, media and cultural pressures to demoralise the enemy and strengthen the resolve of your allies," explains Dr. Heinz Dieterich, director of the Centre for Transition Sciences (CTS) at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City, and coordinator at the World Advanced Research Project (WARP). "The objective of this phase is regime change in Caracas, where Trump wants to install a neocolonial government (beholden) to Washington´s interests", he stresses.
The creation of the so-called interim government in Venezuela "would come in handy for Trump, as a boost for the November election and to help distract from his foreign policy debacles in North Korea, Iran and Ukraine, as well as his unbelievable incompetence in dealing with the coronavirus," according to the professor.
While the US is proceeding with tough economic sanctions against the Latin American country, the direct military intervention by the Southern Command is unlikely at the moment since all major military concentrations are almost impossible because of the COVID-19 threat, Dr. Dieterich observes.
"For example, the traditional US intervention forces are the ten carrier strike groups the Navy has," according to the academic. "Four of them have been threatening China for the last years in the South Pacific. At the moment, there is no military danger, because the coronavirus took them all out."
![Trump is Waging Psy-War Against Venezuela, Seeking to Demoralise Its Leadership & People, Prof Warns Trump is Waging Psy-War Against Venezuela, Seeking to Demoralise Its Leadership & People, Prof Warns - Sputnik International](https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/107903/64/1079036409_0:0:3043:2048_600x0_80_0_0_2a259aefd106457cc587eed203148d4f.jpg)
How the US is 'Asphyxiating' Venezuela
In addition to sanctions imposed on Venezuelan officials and the country's oil industry, Washington is cutting off any funding to the South American state. After handing control of Venezuela's holdings in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and federally insured banks to the country's self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido, the US also facilitated Guaido's takeover of Venezuelan public companies operating outside the country. Still, there's no open record shedding light on how the so-called "interim president" is handling the country's resources.
Thus, in mid-April 2020, Guaido-aligned lawmakers "authorised" the transfer of estimated $342 million in blocked funds from a Venezuelan Central Bank account with Citibank to a US Federal Reserve account with the tacit approval of the Trump administration.
And that's not all, Dr. Heinz Dieterich highlights.
"Just a few days ago, the powerful transnational oil corporation Halliburton, whose CEO in the past was former US vice president Richard Cheney, ceased operations in Venezuela," he says. "The same happened with the Spanish Repsol. And Trump rejects all calls to ease economic sanctions in the midst of the pandemic, in union with the International Monetary Fund, that has rejected credit requests from Maduro."
This "inhuman" approach appears to be working in the eyes of the US government as street protests and looting are on the rise in Venezuela, he notes.
"The shortages of gasoline and food, together with rising food prices and an uncontrollable hyper-inflation make the situation for the people unbearable," the professor observes. "Commodities are basically priced in dollars, but the people are being paid in bolivares, which devalue by the day".
The instability in the energy market and temporary falls of some benchmarks below zero has exacerbated the situation even further: "Since Maduro won't accept the US offer, the economic situation will get worse, eventually," the academic foresees.
"Venezuela´s sovereignty is therefore in danger, because only a country united behind its leadership and a powerful economy, military and national identity, can resist an aggressive imperial superpower like the United States," Dr. Dieterich warns.