I would like to tell you a little personal anecdote. Many years ago, I attended a survival workshop as part of a high-level management program. We did a very interesting exercise that left me with a lesson that I would like to share with you today. They gathered the whole group in a shed to sleep on cots. They woke us up at 3 a.m. and divided us into groups of 5. All the groups pointed out a campfire that could be seen in the distance in the middle of the blackest darkness at the top of a mountain and told us to meet there in less than an hour.
Most of the groups chose the short route: a straight line between where we were and the campfire that could be seen many miles up the mountain. No one sat down to think, they just ran up the mountain without even a flashlight. There was a group that fell down a ravine before reaching the designated place, thank God, with no fatalities to lament, but with one person injured in the fall. Nobody thought how they could have lit a campfire so far away and warn us in such a short time, let alone ask us to meet them there in less than an hour, in a place that would be no less than 10 kilometers away. It was illogical to believe that we could get there in a straight line: there had to be a road!
And indeed there was. It took us about 30 minutes to find it and go around the mountain, and another 30 minutes to run to the site following the trail. The path was a hidden spike for rustic people that the organizers used to light the campfire. The route at first seemed to go in the opposite direction, which led to discussions in the group about whether or not it was an option. In the end we all agreed to follow it because we had enough time. From that experience I learned that to get there you first have to study the options and that takes time. But once you do that and make a decision, you know what to do, and you stick with it until you succeed. However, that was not the way most of the groups in the exercise thought. Thank God, in my group we found people with a minimum of reasoning capacity who first asked ourselves what the problem was about and then we all agreed on a solution to solve it.
Well, that is what is happening to us now. Venezuela is in complete darkness. And in that darkness we see a light in the distance and we are told that we must reach it to achieve freedom. We desperately want to get there and, in most cases, we do not stop to reason that although it seems that the straight line to that light is the obvious way to reach it, the experience of 25 years should tell us that it is not, and that it is necessary to sit down and think about the best route with serenity, even if it takes time and desperation consumes us. The better we think about it, the less time it will take to get there.
Once again we have been presented with a similar problem that would seem to have an obvious solution: that the Armed Forces intervene and solve the problem. But, as we shall see, the terrain where this situation will be decided is in a broader context than that of Venezuela and its Armed Forces, although from here we also have a role to play. And we think the obvious because the Armed Forces should have enforced the decision of the Popular Sovereignty on July 28, not only because it was their constitutional obligation but also because they were present in the electoral process and they know very well what the result was in all the polling stations, and they abstained from doing so. But, why did this happen? We must go deeper then and examine more precisely what is going on. To begin with, the fact that the Armed Forces did not make the decision at the time we think it was obvious does not mean that they did not make it later. It just means that something bigger than them is present, putting noise into what we assume to be obvious. Let's see:
In an interview conducted by American Thought Leaders in Spanish with Joseph Humire, Executive Director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for a Secure Free Society, published on August 12 (see In-depth Analysis of the Venezuelan Elections and the Hidden Forces: Joseph Humire's Perspective, in https://es.theepochtimes.com/videos/analisis-exhaustivo-de-las-elecciones-venezolanas-y-las-fuerzas-ocultas-perspectiva-de-joseph-humire-1301530.html), the geopolitical expert indicates that the Venezuelan regime's hold on power does not depend only on the Armed Forces, as seems to be the general conviction:
“Between 2002 and 2004, Chavez used Venezuela's oil revenues to finance socialist candidates in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Argentina and Brazil, driving what is known as the pink tide or socialist wave in Latin America. During this period, Hugo Chavez financed political campaigns and helped put Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Cristina Kirchner in Argentina and Lula da Silva's first term in Brazil into power. This effort, known as petro diplomacy, used Venezuela's petro dollars to support these candidates. Chavez also created the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America. Alba, which came to encompass some 13 countries, although today it has been reduced to some 9 or 10, including the more authoritarian ones such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and formerly Ecuador. Through this network, Chavez promoted a geopolitical vision that distanced Latin America from the United States and brought the region closer to China, Russia and Iran. Venezuela became the country most indebted to China, requesting loans for 60 billion dollars, which allowed China to support Chavez and the Maduro regime. Russia saw an opportunity to sell its armament, becoming Venezuela's largest arms supplier, with more than 12 billion dollars in military equipment. For its part, Iran, although not supplying arms or money directly, provided the necessary network and know-how. Its embassy in Venezuela was strengthened, and these three actors began to use Venezuela as a platform to challenge the United States from Latin America” (Interview J. Humire, min 21:11) (emphasis added).
“...Between 2007 and 2008, Chavez restructured Venezuela, dividing the country into eight regions instead of provinces and municipalities, he appointed his military to run each of these regions. The regions, called Integrated Regional Defense Zones, each region is driven by a specific illicit economy. In the west it may be oil smuggling, in the east illegal mining or contraband, in the north drug trafficking, and in the south also drug trafficking. This scheme has created an intricate network of transnational organized crime, which is deeply integrated with the Venezuelan State. This network respects no borders and extends beyond Venezuela, encompassing Colombia, Brazil, Panama and its surrounding territories. The complexity of Venezuela is such that even if a political transformation is achieved, the criminal network would continue to exist. Therefore, if Maduro resigns or is removed, that would be a positive first step, but not enough by itself to resolve the crisis. The underlying problem is the criminal network that continues to operate and cannot be fully addressed without external intervention. The level of interest of Russia, China and Iran in maintaining that power structure in Venezuela is too great for the Venezuelan people to solve it by themselves” (Interview J. Humire, min 23:33) (emphasis added).
Here the term
“external intervention” does not necessarily imply armed invasion troops, but
specific movements of our own to request foreign aid because the problem goes
beyond our capabilities, even beyond OUR VOTES. And in this plays a fundamental
role the U.S. who will have, whether it wants it or not, to renew its policy
towards Latin America due to this problem that has escalated to proportions
never seen before: “Therefore, Venezuela is a hemispheric problem that will require a
response at the regional level. The United States needs to develop a robust
regional strategy, perhaps a renewed version of the Monroe Doctrine to
adequately address this challenge” (Interview J. Humire, min 26:31)
(emphasis added).
In this sense, the US can and should negotiate directly -at its own expense- and right now, with these 3 actors, Russia, Iran and China, the cost of getting their hands off our country, for having forgotten for many years, not only the Monroe Doctrine, but also for having ignored that we Venezuelans in freedom and democracy are the best guarantee of its own hemispheric security. That is why it will be much more effective to take a route to recover our country, which first requires a forced change in the attitude of these actors towards Venezuela, with the help of the US, than to continue begging the Venezuelan military to comply with their constitutional duty, since once the former is resolved, the latter comes as a consequence, obtaining as a collateral gift the solution of the open Cuban invasion because the Venezuelan military would take care of it as it should.
I recommend you to watch Humire's full interview, which includes other very relevant aspects of the current Venezuelan geopolitical and post-electoral situation. I simply wanted to highlight an extremely important aspect, which shows how the simple initial example of arriving at a campfire in a straight line in total darkness, without thinking about the problem, is complete suicide, falling into the trap of the obvious. In the meantime, time is running out for everyone. They had better make the most of it...
Caracas, August 16, 2024
Blog:
TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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