Vice President Pence, who represents the interests of U.S. continentalism with strong influence in the Pentagon—Southern Command and the IMF, strongly reproached Guaidó at the summit of the Lima Group (February 25) as if he were a piece on his chessboard.

The vice president of the United States criticized Guaidó for not having produced the massive military desertion he had promised. This has led Pence/Bolton/Pompeo to fear that the Venezuelan opposition will collapse due to the lack of "concrete progress" against Maduro.

The Bogota regional summit led by Mike Pence left the vice president with a taste of defeat, which will also have repercussions at the internal level with Trump. It may even take his position to a level of weakness against Trump that he had not had previously, allowing his room for manoeuvre to grow.

The failure of the operation to bring humanitarian aid into Venezuela, which was supposed to mark the beginning of the end of Nicolás Maduro's regime, turned out to be quite the opposite because Pence's defeat broadens Venezuela's legitimacy and even weakens its allies in South America and the world.

In this framework of defeat, Pence gave Guaidó a harsh diagnosis of everything that was failing in the "assault" against Venezuela. Pence's greatest dissatisfaction with Guaidó came with the demonstration of the monolithic unity of the Bolivarian armed forces and the continuity of their loyalty to Maduro.

Guaidó had promised the U.S. government that if most of the world's leaders recognized him as Venezuela's highest authority, at least half of the officers would defect. It didn't happen. The United States managed to get no less than 50 presidents to recognize the president of the Venezuelan Assembly, but so far, the armed forces remain with Maduro.

The armed forces even demonstrated maneuverability when, by pretending to defect, they were able to learn what, when and where the actions were being prepared.

In fact, the peak came when, with Pence's presence, the Lima Group rejected a military intervention in Venezuela. With the intervention of the vice president of Brazil, Hamilton Mourão, who stood out for his confrontational position with that of Pence.

On the other hand, the crisis revealed that the support of his government had waned, but it continues to be even more important vis-à-vis the United States. In addition, Venezuelan millionaires living abroad contributed little to confront Maduro. A more decisive contribution of money was expected to finance the transfer of police, military and politicians to Guaidó’s sphere, which did not happen.

Guaidó had bet all his chips on Pence announcing the use of U.S. force; in fact most of his moves towards Pence tended towards forcing him to choose the military route and not the diplomatic one, in order to remove Maduro from power. Guaidó also lost because Pence decided to cool those expectations. Also, international pressure has grown to cool any military option.

Pence even went so far as to consider a minimal option: getting the puppet-president "in charge", Guaidó, to secure control of part of Venezuela's territory. But it was discarded because the United States has recently suffered the serious consequences of implementing such strategies of territorial fragmentation in Syria and Libya.

The self-styled Lima Group, which brings together nations aligned with the U.S. attempt to overthrow the government of President Nicolas Maduro, described it as a "crime against humanity" to have frustrated the introduction of a batch of "humanitarian aid" from Colombia and agreed to promote the appointment by the United Nations Human Rights Council of an independent expert (Michelle Bachelet) to evaluate what they call a "humanitarian crisis" in the South American country.

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, an independent UN expert, has stated in a document that the UN would violate its own Charter if it recognized Guaidó and that it is rather the US that is committing crimes against humanity against Venezuela. Malnutrition and lack of medicines can be directly attributed to US sanctions. These are geopolitical crimes in the category of crimes against humanity. The other countries that support imposing such sanctions are also committing a crime against humanity. One cannot first strangle the Venezuelan economy and then claim that the country needs to accept humanitarian aid from its torturer (See: Manuel Palma, UN independent expert: "U.S. commits crimes against humanity against Venezuela," https://actualidad.rt.com, 28 Feb 2019).

It remains to be seen whether Trump will wait for the final result at the UN where it could be spelt out that it is the US that is committing crimes against humanity against Venezuela. Rather, hopefully Trump will soon make changes in his cabinet that will weaken the position of the Republican Financial Tea Party and expand his own position. Maybe the U.S. president might invite Maduro as he invited his North Korean counterpart after firing Tillerson as Secretary of State. It is a fact that with this outcome, the financial establishment of Nancy Pelosi's Democratic Party would also suffer a new defeat.

01/03/2018

(Translation: ALAI)