by MICHAEL K. SMITH
Super-hawk Elliot Abrams is back in the news again, worrying that Donald Trump lacks “clarity” about what he intends to do in Venezuela. Abrams recommends the president eliminate all doubts and ambiguities in his mind and directly attack Venezuelan territory, in order to bring down the “dictator” Nicolas Maduro.
Abrams, U.S. special envoy to Venezuela during Trump’s first term, said in a recent Foreign Affairs article that the president’s advisors should promptly persuade him that the point of no return has already been passed in Venezuela, and that the only possible outcomes are that either Trump or Maduro will win the contest that is now well underway. Forthrightly titled, “How To Topple Maduro,” Abrams calls for doing more than blowing up “narco-trafficking boats” (i.e. Caribbean fishing vessels), though he does not go so far as to advocate the deployment of U.S. ground troops in the South American nation.
According to the Mexican daily La Jornada, Abrams wants Washington to destroy Venezuelan’s air defense systems, the F-16s at the air base of Palo Negro, and the Sukhoi jets at the air base in La Orchila, an island one hundred miles off the coast of Venezuela. He also desires to see U.S. attacks against bases in western Venezuela used by the Army of National Liberation (ELN) a Colombian Marxist group allied with Maduro.
Abrams worries that after a prolonged show of massive U.S. force off the coast of Venezuela, Washington may end up leaving Maduro in power, sending a signal to the world that it has declined from superpower status to the “pitiful helpless giant” that Richard Nixon feared the U.S. was becoming by not being aggressive enough in Vietnam. Such an outcome, he feels, would only benefit the Venezuelan “regime”, as well as irrationally hostile countries (presumably) like China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran.
Abrams nowhere takes note of the huge risks U.S. military escalation necessarily carries with it, namely, that it might provoke a Vietnam-style bloodbath or worse, after uniting all of Latin America against Washington’s unprovoked aggression. Even Colombia, which regards the Marxist ELN affiliated with Maduro as a drug-trafficking terrorist group, has made it very clear it will not tolerate a U.S. attack on Venezuela. If Washington overthrows Maduro and Venezuela turns to prolonged popular resistance via guerrilla war and sabotage, expect a large number of Americans to return home in body bags.
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