Numerous commentaries have already covered a lot of ground regarding the Venezuela attack and abduction, so I’m just going to stick to excerpting two important pieces on the subject.
From Jake Johnson at Common Dreams:
During a Saturday press conference, Trump openly invoked the Monroe Doctrine—an assertion of US dominance of the Western Hemisphere—and said his campaign of aggression against Venezuela represented the “Donroe Doctrine” in action.
In his unwieldy remarks, Trump called out Colombian President Gustavo Petro by name, accusing him without evidence of “making cocaine and sending it to the United States.”
“So he does have to watch his ass,” the US president said of Petro, who condemned the Trump administration’s Saturday attack on Venezuela as “aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and Latin America.”
Petro responded defiantly to the possibility of the US targeting him, writing on social media that he is “not worried at all.”
In a Fox News appearance earlier Saturday, Trump also took aim at the United States’ southern neighbor, declaring ominously that “something’s going to have to be done with Mexico,” which also denounced the attack on Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro.
“She is very frightened of the cartels,” Trump said of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. “So we have to do something.”
“This armed attack on Venezuela is not an isolated event. It is the next step in the United States’ campaign of regime change that stretches from Caracas to Havana.”
Rubio, for his part, focused on Cuba—a country whose government he has long sought to topple.
“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned, at least a little bit,” Rubio, who was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents, said during Saturday’s press conference.
While Trump took note of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, he didn’t mention — quite probably isn’t even aware of — the [Theodore] Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 which laid the groundwork for Gunboat Diplomacy. The Trump “corollary” is worse than a throwback.
And from Brian Schwartz at The Wall Street Journal:
Some on Wall Street are already considering possible investment opportunities in Venezuela following the capture of Nicolás Maduro, according to Charles Myers, chairman of consulting firm Signum Global Advisors and a former head of investment advisory firm Evercore.
Myers said in an interview he is planning a trip to Venezuela with officials from top hedge funds and asset managers to determine whether there are investment prospects in the country under new leadership. The trip will feature about 20 officials from the finance, energy and defense sectors, among others, Myers said. The tentative plan is for the group to travel to Venezuela in March and meet with the new government including the new president, finance minister, energy minister, economy minister, head of the central bank and the Caracas stock exchange.
Myers didn’t provide a list of individuals who were planning to travel to the country. He estimates that there will be between $500 billion and $750 billion in investment opportunities in the country for foreign investors over the next five years.
“There is a huge amount of interest in Venezuela reconstruction opportunities. And it will bounce back faster as it is in our hemisphere, and the new government will be predicated on welcoming foreign direct investment from day one,” Myers said.
For those interested, this piece has details of oil in Venezuela since nationalization in 1976.
Here is reality:
“The principle of non-intervention [is] one of the basic pillars of international relations in the Latin American vision. … [T]he intervening state is more powerful than the one suffering interference, and constitutes an illegitimate act of force.” — Augusto Cançado Trindade(Brazilian jurist)
“The Monroe Doctrine may have started as a shield against Europe, but it became the club with which Washington disciplines its neighbors.”— Eduardo Galeano, The Open Veins of Latin America, (1971).
Here are two previous pieces I wrote on the Venezuela situation:
