In the wake of last month’s failed coup-attempt, nominally headed by Juan Guaidó, the United States’ hybrid-war against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela continues unabated. Since it has become clear that President Maduro would not be ousted by opposition-elements within Venezuela, other strategies have been employed.
Despite the Trump administration’s explicit threats of direct US military intervention, it is arguable that this has never been probable at any point, insofar as Venezuela’s military preparedness (over 2 million army-reservists, well trained, the overwhelming majority of them resolutely loyal to the Bolivarian revolution) would have made it impossible for US concerns to profitably extract Venezuelan oil. If the US had invaded unilaterally or led a coalition intervention-force, the resulting guerrilla-war would have been far worse than Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The military intervention scenario had “quagmire” written all over it. In addition, the United States has been continuously militarily overstretched for the past 15 years.
The Venezuelan government’s decision last month not to allow convoys of US humanitarian aid enter the country was perfectly rational, for three distinct reasons.
Firstly, humanitarian aid convoys are often used to smuggle weapons, which in this case would have ended up in the hands of subversive, extremist opposition-elements in Venezuela.
Secondly, the situation in Venezuela does not require foreign humanitarian aid.
Thirdly, on multiple fronts, the United States itself has been the linchpin in a systematic attempt to create a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela for the past several years. In addition to the United States and its strategic partners deliberately suppressing the world-price of Venezuela’s largest export, US sanctions have prevented Venezuela from importing raw materials and equipment for domestic food-production, and have also prevented the Venezuelan government from sourcing medicines and hospital equipment, including dialysis-machines.
Following so closely after the failed coup-attempt and Venezuela’s refusal to accept the Trojan horse of US “humanitarian aid,” the timing of the nationwide power-outage, which began on March 7th, is very strongly suggestive of sabotage, especially considering that US Senator Marco Rubio tweeted about the power-outage only 3 minutes after it began. It is almost inconceivable that Rubio did not have foreknowledge of the power-outage, implying US-involvement in sabotage.
Of course, Rubio was not even attempting plausible deniability – on the contrary, the timing of his tweet was intended to send out a clear signal that US hybrid-warfare and economic sabotage against Venezuela will continue. So far, 23 Venezuelans are known to have died as a direct result of the power outage, including 6 children. Most of these victims were hospital patients, including dialysis-patients. Furthermore, the power-outage resulted in large areas of Venezuela being left without water.
Meanwhile, on March 11th, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took aim at both Russia and Cuba for their continued support for and economic cooperation with the Maduro government, and held talks with Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale regarding Venezuela. India continues to be a major importer of Venezuelan oil.
In sifting through all of these details, we need to bear in mind that the essential act of modern warfare, whether it’s conventional warfare or hybrid warfare, is not to kill people. The essential act of both conventional and hybrid warfare is vandalism, to sabotage rival economic systems. The people who get killed are only collateral damage. On a moral level, this makes the humanitarian cost of warfare even more appalling, insofar as the people who die are not even the targets – they are merely classified as beneath contempt, and therefore incidental.
We have seen this in every country where the United States has failed to install a puppet-government ever since the Korean war. US Air Force bombardment destroyed more than half of the entire housing-stock in 20 out of the DPRK’s 23 major cities. During the Vietnam war, the use of napalm and Agent Orange rendered hundreds of millions of hectares of Vietnamese land uncultivatable to this day, and even now 5 million Vietnamese people have birth-defects which render them incapable of working.
As part of the CIA’s regime-change operation against Cuba, codenamed MONGOOSE, US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy urged a massive escalation of sabotage-operations in October 1962. In response to this suggestion, US Vice President Lyndon Johnson noted that such “massive activity would have to appear to come from within.”
The ongoing public health crisis in Serbia following NATO’s use of depleted uranium munitions was an intended long-term effect of the 1999 NATO air-campaign there. The central purpose was to place as much long-term systemic strain as possible on Serbia’s economy post-conflict. The thousands of kids who die of leukemia year after year are classified merely as collateral damage. In addition, the NATO-campaign destroyed 400 factories, all of them government-owned, only a handful of which were in any way connected with Serbia’s military industries.
Sabotage was also the central purpose of the NATO air-campaign in Libya, whose pre-2011 infrastructure was the envy of all other African states, just as Syria’s pre-2011 infrastructure was the envy of most other countries in the Middle East. Finally, considering that the Ukrainian army are de facto US proxies, we should remember that the principal target of the Ukrainian army’s artillery-campaign in Donbass has been to destroy as much of the region’s infrastructure, industrial capacity and housing as possible.
Regarding each of these cases, and also regarding the case of Venezuela, we should remember the remark of the former Chairman of the US Joints Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, in 1996
– “The military has two functions, to kill people, and to break things.”
Breaking things is actually far more strategically important than killing people. The essential targets of modern warfare are infrastructure, housing and economic capacity, not people. Its essential function is economic sabotage, to prevent rival economic systems from developing. The people who die are classified merely as collateral damage, incidental, beneath moral consideration or even contempt.
