By Luis Manuel Aguana
There's always time to avoid
violence. I expressed that in an earlier note in September last year when the
war drums were deafening (see Military intervention or strong dissuasion, in http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_24.html). And it's true, it's always necessary to give peace
a chance. Almost six months of that have passed and the worsening of the
situation in Venezuela at all levels has been exponential, even though new
political hopes have been opened with the appearance of Juan Guaidó as the
protagonist of a new democratic epic.
But when I wrote that note, it
wasn't clear who would be driving the opposition ship. Since January 23, 2019
we already know. We already know who, based on what was expressed there, can
pick up the phone in behalf of the Venezuelans and call international 911 and
ask the continental police to take care of ending the kidnapping of which we
are victims, and expressed there the possibility of delegating that decision to
popular sovereignty.
Whether the President in Charge,
with authorization from the National Assembly via Article 187.11 of the
Constitution, requests the presence of foreign military missions in the
country, or the Venezuelan people themselves authorize it through a Popular Consultation
as I suggested at that time, giving the "owner of the house" the
opportunity to express his opinion in the face of such a serious fact for the
life of the country, we Venezuelans have the right to know what we are buying
with that and all its consequences. It's
the right thing to do.
In my last notes I have expressed
that the time has come to make that international call to the 911 of the
continental police, even if they do not answer it or tell us that they will not
answer our call. What happened on February 23 rang the bell. After seeing
humanitarian aid burn at the border, no one in their right mind can believe
that the regime will come out without violence. So let's negotiate an exit of
Nicolás Maduro and his accomplices "peacefully" -which I doubt-, in
the country there will remain thousands of armed fanatics on the war footing
(which was openly demonstrated in the borders on the 23F) that will make
stability impossible for any transitional government, especially if the Armed
Forces are in a terminal state, for which foreign military aid will always be
necessary.
And it's not that we want violence.
Nobody wants it. But no matter how many pacifists we wish to be, there are
limits that cannot be tolerated on pain of falling into what Sir Winston Churchill
said in his famous saying: "He who humbles himself to avoid war, stays
with humiliation and with war". I firmly believe that after the 23F the
regime declared war on Venezuelans. It denies us the medicines and food we need
and burns them. Well, it's up to us to see what we do with it.
But it's clear that we kidnap
victims can't do it alone. The Liberator also knew this when he searched
between 1817 and 1822 for what became known as the British Legion, made up of
paid military volunteers from England, Scotland and Ireland (see in Spanish the
pertinent article by Gustavo Azocar Alcalá, Bolívar: Traidor a la patria por
pedir ayuda extranjera?, in https://lanacionweb.com/opinion/bolivar-traidor-a-la-patria-por-pedir-ayuda-extranjera/) to fight a war that was also not sought and that was
given by the determination of Venezuelans to fight for their freedom. We have
something like this now: the international communist mafia wants to keep the
country with violence, despite our democratic rejection. So we have a war that
we are not looking for, with communism and all the international delinquency
that has made Venezuela its planetary refuge.
The unfortunate thing about all this
is that the later we assimilate this fact, the worse it will be for us. Let us
accept once and for all that it has already happened to us and we are trapped.
And this is not going to be solved as easily as ceding half the country to
criminals through negotiations that are impossible to sustain, let alone by
giving them elections where they count the votes. They will always want everything.
Americans know that even when their diplomacy, and Latin American diplomacy -
read Grupo de Lima - insist on denying it. We're on a gunpowder barrel.
Why have the Americans delayed the
military solution? For them it is very easy to get Maduro and his thousand
thieves out in minutes - not even hours. The problem for them is that it
happens after they take him out. According to the technical analysis of Adam
Isaac, an expert in security and defense. (see Adam Isaac, “Thinking about the
unthinkable: US Military Intervention in Venezuela”
https://adamisacson.com/thinking-about-the-unthinkable-u-s-military-intervention-in-venezuela/) the United States would not initiate an intervention
“without some pretext or provocation
involving non-Venezuelans. There would have to be an initial spark, a “Gulf of
Tonkin” moment, that makes the Maduro government appear to be the aggressor”.
Isaac believes that this could begin on the border with Colombia and the
assurances that Colombia has from the Americans to accompany and repel an
aggression from Venezuela.
The expert predicts that before an intervention there would be “a period of fighting between Colombia and Venezuela before U.S. forces got involved”. In particular, I don't believe in a war between us and our brothers in Colombia. Venezuela also has no way of sustaining that, so the trigger for military intervention must be another.
“As happened in Iraq, the Maduro government would almost certainly be pushed out. Top regime officials would either be killed or forced into exile. What would happen then?”. Again, the problem for them is not to get Maduro out but what would happen next, which is summarized in the following paragraphs of their analysis:
- “While I dislike recurring so often to the Iraq analogy (“fighting the last war”), it’s pretty likely that a post-conflict Venezuela would, as in Iraq, be challenged by insurgents committing acts of asymmetrical warfare. I have no idea whether the colectivos, Bolivarian Militias, expelled officers, renegade security forces, intelligence services, ELN, FPL, and others would collapse or persist. But it’s very plausible that many would persist, even without a unified leadership structure. They’d have illicit revenue streams, like cocaine, extortion, and fuel piracy, to sustain themselves. They could also be supplied by Russia.
- Look at the “Bolivarian militias” alone. They have between 500,000 and 2 million members. Many are poorly trained, and probably undisciplined. Still, if even 10 percent of the low estimate opt for clandestine warfare, that’s 50,000 fighters from this force alone. At its height, Colombia’s FARC had half that.
- And again, add to them the armed thugs in the “colectivos,” the FAES and other police units, the SEBIN, the FPL, the ELN, and any other radical elements who opt for violence.
- Already, GunPolicy.org, an international firearms observatory, estimates there are 2.7 million illicit firearms in Venezuela. That’s the highest estimate in South America after Brazil.
- This “insurgency” could make governance impossible in several regions and urban neighborhoods, perhaps for years. It could develop a big capacity to carry out terrorist attacks.
- Under this scenario, U.S. forces could find themselves in Venezuela for many months, or even a few years—perhaps even propping up the Venezuelan government with “hearts and minds” counter-insurgency campaigns. Even if it is only a tiny fraction of the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, it would cost many billions of dollars”.
Then, the problem of the United
States would be to get caught in Venezuela fighting a war for years that is not
theirs, that would cost millions of dollars to their taxpayers, and so we pay
that bill will prefer whenever we negotiate a solution with those criminals as
the author suggests. That is why they are still thinking about it with the
consequent bloodshed of Venezuelans. The solution to this dilemma could be in
the Plan Venezuela proposed by Juan Carlos Sosa Azpúrua (see in Spanish Juan
Carlos Sosa Azpúrua “Jaque Mate a Maduro”, en http://ifrevistadigital.com/jaque-mate-a-maduro/#.XHitDPyWFsI.facebook).
But I wonder, the alternative is to
negotiate a communist enclave in Venezuela for not fighting that war? Do you
believe that Maduro or whoever stays after him in a negotiated manner will
magically disappear the armed militias and paramilitary groups that created
these criminals, and that terrorize the peoples of Venezuela? Those will not disappear
after Maduro! Would they voluntarily disarm? Because at this moment we have had
that war for years without having been declared. Just look at the death toll in
the last 15 years. What difference would it make? In what way would the war be
declared? That wouldn't be reason enough not
to fight it.
We are not asking the United States
to stay and fight a disaster that we create. But I ask myself the same question
that my dear friend Antonio Sánchez García asked in a recent and extraordinary
article: "Why was a phenomenon with
unquestionable geostrategic profiles and serious implications in the field of
hemispheric, even global, security, because associated with Islamic
narcoterrorism, removed without any strategic and tactical consideration from
the concerns of the foreign ministries, the Ministries of Defence and the
General Staff of the Latin American and Western Armed Forces?” (see
in Spanish Antonio Sánchez García “Maduro y el complejo antimilitarista
latinoamericano”, in http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/columnista/maduro-complejo-antimilitarista-latinoamericano_273268).
What's that supposed to mean? That they are as
involved in this problem as we are. All of them, the United States and the
Latin American countries, are indirectly responsible for this situation as we
are directly. That may not be an excuse to shake off our guilt, but it is an
excuse to demand without any regret that they help us get out of the problem
and its implications.
We now have the predicament of
facing a war that already exists and that the regime declared to us, with the
serious violent implications that this will have in the country. But would the
trigger of that be a foreign intervention to politically overthrow a
functioning government or a rescue operation of a country to arrest criminals?
The difference is remarkable. We ask friendly countries to help us stop the
criminals who usurp the Venezuelan government and initiate a political
transition. The subsequent conflict, which we know will come and will last as
long as necessary, is ours and we hope they will help us face it, reorganizing
with us what is necessary to rescue order within the country. Do not compare
that with anything you have done in the past because this is a completely new
situation.
I end with the closing words of
Carlos Sánchez Berzaín at a conference on the Dictatorship in Venezuela and Organized
Crime: "This is the great challenge
for people who defend democracy: to separate politics from crime. Politicians
can make mistakes, they can commit crimes... - and there are corrupt
politicians, there are corrupt politicians - but that is a long way from the
criminal organization that has managed to control political power; that they
are not politicians, that they are not governors, that they cannot rely on
sovereignty to protect their crimes. That they cannot use the right of States
to have appropriated themselves to continue exercising the crime and to ask for
immunities and privileges..." (see in Spanish Conferencia de Carlos Sánchez
Berzain, in https://youtu.be/NideOLmudeY, min 11:55. I recommend seeing it in its entirety). And it's certainly
a challenge. Maduro can no longer rely politically on the sovereignty of
Venezuela to protect his crimes, nor can he continue to use the Venezuelan State
indefinitely to commit crimes. That must stop immediately. It is time for
friendly countries to see that difference and act accordingly.
Caracas, March 4, 2019
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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