[A-List] The Coming War on Venezuela

["Tony B." <tal1@xxxxxxxxx>]

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From: Tony B.
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Subject: The Coming War on Venezuela


Eva Golinger's Bush v. Chavez

The Coming War on Venezuela

By GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER

More than a year ago, I attended the official book release for the 
Venezuelan edition of Eva Golinger's Bush Versus Chávez, published by Monte 
Avila, and the book had previously been printed in Cuba by Editorial José 
Martí. I recount this to make the following point: long before the 
publication of Bush Versus Chávez in the current English-language edition, 
the book was already a crucial contribution to international debates 
regarding United States' efforts to destroy Venezuela's Bolivarian 
Revolution.
In choosing to publish the English edition of the book, Monthly Review Press 
has opened that debate to an entirely new audience, and for this we should 
be grateful. Furthermore, in an effort to streamline production, Monthly 
Review has further made the appendices to Bush Versus Chávez, largely 
composed of declassified or leaked documents, available publicly on its 
website, at the address: http://monthlyreview.org/bushvchavez.htm.

A New Toolbox

Golinger, a U.S.-born lawyer who has recently taken up full-time residence 
in Venezuela (and Venezuelan citizenship), first shot to prominence with her 
2005 book The Chávez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela. There, 
Golinger drew on a multitude of documents requested via the Freedom Of 
Information Act (FOIA) to thoroughly and convincingly document the role of 
the U.S. government in funding and sponsoring those Venezuelan opposition 
groups that participated in the undemocratic and illegal overthrow of Chávez 
in April 2002, most of which also signed the interim government's Carmona 
Decree which dissolved all constitutionally-sanctioned branches of 
Venezuelan power. All this against Condoleezza Rice's recent claim, patently 
preposterous, that "we've always had a good relationship with Venezuela."

In Bush Versus Chávez, Golinger continues this diabolical narrative, this 
time relying less on FOIA requests than on a series of other key documents 
and bits of testimony gleaned from anonymous sources. After the failed 2002 
coup, Golinger documents how the United States changed its tack slightly, 
drawing upon the variety of experiences gained in the military overthrow of 
Salvador Allende in Chile and the electoral overthrow of the Nicaraguan 
Sandinistas. While it would be easy to say that this represented a 
"Nicaraguanization" of U.S. policy in the aftermath of the botched coup, in 
reality this new policy draws equally heavily on the many other elements 
that constituted the multifaceted war against Allende, and hence the thesis 
of the "Chileanization" of Venezuela remains all-too-relevant.

The key institutional devices deployed by the U.S. in its covert support for 
the coup remained the same in its aftermath: the neoconservative National 
Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International 
Development (USAID), both convenient mechanisms for bypassing Congressional 
oversight. What was new on this front, as Golinger demonstrates, was the 
establishment by USAID in the months following the coup of a 
sinister-sounding Office of Transition Affairs (OTI). Both the NED and USAID 
(via the OTI) immediately began to shift strategies, providing covert 
support for the opposition-led bosses lockout of the oil industry which 
crippled the Venezuelan economy for two months in late 2002 and early 2003, 
and when this failed, by providing direct support for efforts to unseat 
Chávez electorally (a là Nicaragua) in a 2004 recall referendum spearheaded 
by opposition "civil society" organization Súmate. Needless to say, doing so 
entailed continuing to support those very same organizations who had proven 
their anti-democratic credentials in 2002, but such things are hardly 
scandalous these days.

Through the popular and military support enjoyed by the Chávez government, 
all these efforts failed, which is unprecedented in and of itself. In 
response to the emptying of its traditional toolbox, the U.S. government has 
been forced to diversify its tactics even more drastically than ever before, 
and this is where Bush Versus Chávez comes in.

Domestic Continuity

In her analysis of contemporary U.S. strategies to unseat Chávez, Golinger 
speaks of three broad fronts: the financial, the diplomatic, and the 
military (43-48). But we should be extremely wary of distinguishing too 
cleanly between such tightly-interwoven categories: the "financial front" 
remains largely in the hands of the NED and USAID, agencies directly 
controlled by the U.S. government and the embassy in Caracas, funding the 
domestic side of the equation through support for destabilizing opposition 
organizations and even psychological operations (psyops) targeting the 
Venezuelan press and military.

Since 2004, the NED and USAID have seen massive budgets earmarked for 
activities in Venezuela: currently, some $3 million for the former and $7.2 
million for the latter's OTI operation (77). Of the NED funds, most went to 
the very same groups that participated in the 2002 coup, the 2003-4 oil 
lockout, and the 2004 recall referendum. Súmate, which headed up the recall 
effort, and whose spokesperson and Bush confidant Maria Corina Machado had 
signed the Carmona Decree, was granted more than $107,000 in 2005 alone. 
Súmate, to which Golinger devotes a chapter, had also received $84,000 in 
2003 from USAID and $53,000 in 2003 and $107,000 in 2004 from the NED, as 
well as an inexplicable $300,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and 
Human Services (90). All of which demonstrates, for Golinger, that "Súmate 
is and continues to be Washington's main player in Venezuela" (91).

While USAID's funding structure has become more secretive, a turn that 
Golinger deems illegal, one project in particular has been publicly 
discussed: the establishment of "American Corners" throughout Venezuela, 
institutions which even the U.S. Embassy deem "satellite consulates" (145). 
Aside from the patent illegality of such underground U.S. institutions, 
Golinger points out that their primary function is the distribution of 
pro-U.S. propaganda to the Venezuelan population.

Perhaps most frightening on the domestic front is the strategic 
transformation that such U.S. funding has undergone. Specifically, such 
funding has increasingly begun to target what had previously been considered 
core Chavista constituencies, such as the nation's Afro and Indigenous 
populations (77-78). What Golinger doesn't emphasize is the fact that this 
has occurred alongside a concerted effort by opposition political parties, 
notably the NED-funded Primero Justicia, to penetrate the poorest and most 
dangerous Venezuelan barrios, like Petare in eastern Caracas.

While this domestic element has remained shockingly continuous, with the 
U.S. continuing to directly fund the groups involved in Chávez's 2002 
overthrow, the military and diplomatic fronts are where Golinger reveals 
some veritably frightening new developments.

Asymmetrical Aggression

Perhaps the most intriguing and frightening revelation in Bush Versus Chávez 
surrounds a 2001 NATO exercise carried out in Spain under the title "Plan 
Balboa." Here we should bear in mind the open support provided by then 
Popular Party Prime Minister José Maria Aznar for the brief coup against 
Chávez. And while we might be struck by the irony of naming a NATO operation 
after the Spanish conquistador who invaded Panama, the name is far more 
accurate than we might initially believe.

Plan Balboa was, in fact, a mock invasion plan for taking over the oil-rich 
Zulia State in western Venezuela. In thinly veiled code-names (whose coded 
nature is undermined by the satellite imagery showing the nations involved), 
it entailed a "Blue" country (the U.S.) launching an invasion of the "Black" 
zone (Zulia) of a "Brown" country (Venezuela), from a large base in a "Cyan" 
country (Howard Air Force Base, in Panama) with the support of an allied 
"White" country (Colombia) (95-98). The fact that a trial-run invasion was 
carried out less than 11 months before the 2002 coup against Chávez should 
further convince us that this was mere contingency planning.

But Plan Balboa would be only the beginning, and Golinger deftly documents a 
series of increasingly overt military maneuvers carried out in recent years 
by the U.S. government in an effort to intimidate the Chávez government 
while preparing for any necessary action. Here, Golinger rightly trains her 
sights on the small Dutch Antillean island of Curaçao, which she deems the 
U.S.'s "third frontier." Curaçao hosts what is nominally a small U.S. 
Forward Operating Location (FOL) as well as, not coincidentally, a refinery 
owned by Venezuelan national oil company PDVSA. Furthermore, it sits fewer 
than 40 miles off Venezuela's coast, and more specifically, off the coast of 
the oil-rich "Black Zone" of Plan Balboa that is Zulia State.

Until February 2005, Curaçao probably seemed to be of little concern to 
Venezuelan security, given that its FOL housed only 200 U.S. troops. But 
this all changed when the U.S.S. Saipan made its unannounced arrival. The 
United States' premier landing craft for invasion forces, the Saipan arrived 
in Curaçao with more than 1,400 marines and 35 helicopters on board (104). 
When the Venezuelan government responded to the hostile gesture, U.S. 
Ambassador William Brownfield claimed there had been a "lack of 
communication," while simultaneously declaring that "it is our desire to 
have more visits by ships to Curaçao and Aruba [only 15 miles off the 
Venezuelan coast] in the coming weeks, months, and years" (105).

This veiled threat would come to fruition with Operation Partnership of the 
Americas in April 2006. In that instance, which dwarfed the Saipan's visit, 
the aircraft carrier U.S.S. George Washington arrived in Curaçao with three 
warships. The total strength of the force was of 85 fighter planes and more 
than 6,500 marines (106). Were this not worrying enough, then-intelligence 
chief and Latin American Cold Warrior par excellence John Negroponte 
admitted around the same time that the U.S. had deployed a nuclear sub to 
intercept communications off the Venezuelan coast (100). When we factor in 
the Curaçao-based Operation Joint Caribbean Lion, carried out in June 2006 
with the goal of capturing the mock-terrorist rebel leader "Hugo Le Grand," 
there can remain little doubt that at the very least, the United States is 
keen to prepare for the possibility of a direct invasion of Venezuelan 
territory.

Of Terror and Dictators

But, one might ask, what are the chances that the U.S. would actually invade 
Venezuela, given the predictably harsh international rebuke that such an 
invasion would earn? It is here that another aspect, what Golinger loosely 
characterizes the "diplomatic front," comes into play, and it is here that 
U.S. policies and strategies have seen the most striking innovations.

Here Golinger cites a document by retired U.S. Army Colonel Max G. Manwaring 
published by the Army's Institute for Strategic Studies in 2005 (112). This 
document represents above all an inversion of strategies applied to 
Venezuela, and one which drastically complicates the military picture: 
Manwaring advocates appropriating the concept of "asymmetrical warfare" that 
many guerrillas and rebel movements have historically used with success 
against the United States, and converting it into an explicit U.S. strategy. 
Somewhat bizarrely, Manwaring compares this employment of asymmetric warfare 
to the "Wizard's Chess" of Harry Potter, deeming Chávez a "true and wise 
enemy" who must be dealt with by a panoply of maneuvers on all levels 
(112-113. Central to this strategy is the deployment of psychological 
operations (psyops), which had been previously focused on the Venezuelan 
press (toward the objective of justifying a coup or electoral removal of 
Chávez) to the international and diplomatic arena (toward what one could 
presume to be an objective of direct or indirect military action).

While domestic psyops have continued, notably in the 2005 deployment of 
"Gypsy" (JPOSE, Joint Psychological Operations Support Element) teams to 
Venezuela with the objective of spreading propaganda among the Venezuelan 
military and keeping tabs on radical Chavista organizations (117), much of 
their focus has been the spreading of news stories in the international 
arena. These stories, as Golinger astutely documents, tend to follow "three 
major lines of attack":

1.) Chávez is an anti-democratic dictator
2.) Chávez is a destabilizing force in the region
3.) Chávez harbors and supports terrorism (125).

Even the briefest of glances at any mainstream newspaper in the United 
States, or many other countries for that matter, will show to what degree 
this mediatically-constructed image has been a success.

New Strategies Unfold

This international effort to discredit the Chávez regime, thereby clearing 
the way for future intervention, brings us to a series of recent events that 
have transpired since Golinger first published Bush Versus Chávez.

The first was the sudden rebirth of the Venezuelan "student movement" in 
early 2007, nominally in response to the non-renewal of the broadcasting 
license for opposition television station RCTV. I have documented elsewhere 
the fact that this "student movement" was by and large supported if not 
directed by the traditional opposition parties, but what is more relevant 
here is that the strategies and even imagery of the movement were adapted 
directly from those used in countries such as Serbia and the Ukraine. These 
strategies, consisting largely of "non-violent" direct action, have been 
formulated and disseminated through institutions such as the Albert Einstein 
Institution which, in an irony of ironies, Golinger shows to be directly 
supported by the State Department (135), and linked to prior attempts to 
train Colombian paramilitaries to assassinate President Chávez (136-137).

Here again we have an inversion, in which the U.S. government has adopted 
the very strategies that had previously been deployed against it, and in 
this case the audience was international: the foreign press was so eager to 
show a violent repression of the students that it exaggerated the response 
of the largely unarmed police and, in an infamous incident, transformed an 
armed attack by opposition students against Chavistas at the Central 
University into just the opposite. The objective? To discredit and isolate 
the Chávez regime internationally, clearing the way for more directly 
offensive action.

Secondly, we have seen a concrete example of such offensive action in 
Colombia's recent illegal cross-border raid into Ecuador. The particular 
players involved should not distract our attention: this was a test-run, 
both militarily and diplomatically, for future U.S. interventions in the 
region. With Colombia standing in as proxy for the U.S. and the more 
recently-established Correa government standing in as proxy for the Chávez 
government, this was above all a test of the international response.

While that response was overwhelming in Latin America, with the OAS and even 
right-leaning governments condemning the Colombian raid as a violation of 
sovereignty, the U.S.'s international psyops campaign seems to have been 
overwhelmingly effective within its own borders. Rather than being presented 
as an instance of Colombian aggression, the initial raid was immediately 
erased from the picture in much of the international press, with the focus 
being diverted to what was perceived as Venezuela's bellicose response. But 
such a response was a strategic necessity aimed at discouraging any possible 
future intervention.

Furthermore, the revelations gleaned from the FARC's magic laptop, which 
allegedly implicate Chávez himself in funding the FARC (a charge which 
Colombia, not coincidentally, eventually decided not to pursue), are also 
drawn straight from the playbook of Plan Balboa, which was premised upon the 
threat posed by an alliance between the radical sectors of the "Brown" and 
"White" countries. The U.S. seems to be preparing to put that plan into 
motion with its recent legal gestures toward declaring Venezuela a supporter 
of terrorism, and given recent evidence of a massive influx of Colombian 
paramilitaries into the "Black Zone" of western Venezuela, the danger that 
Plan Balboa might become a reality should not be underestimated.

What would be the international response to such an incursion? Here there is 
little ground for optimism. After all, during the 2002 coup against Chávez, 
that bastion of the American left celebrated the maneuver, declaring that 
"Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator." And 
all this before the concerted psyops campaign deployed against the 
Venezuelan government in recent years. Now, one democratic candidate spurns 
facts to declare Chávez a "dictator" while the other, eager to demonstrate 
his leftist credentials, deems the massively-popular Venezuelan leader a 
"despotic oil tyrant," and is promptly pilloried for his soft line.

George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D candidate in political theory at U.C. 
Berkeley, who is currently writing a people's history of the Bolivarian 
Revolution. He can be reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.