After the U.S. military detained then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined a three-part plan for Venezuela: stabilization, recovery, and transition to democracy. But what the U.S. is doing to Venezuela counts as nothing but colonization.
An astonishing report by The New York Times, based on interviews with more than a dozen officials and people close to governments in Washington and Caracas, details the imperial overhaul of Venezuela’s government and economy after Trump’s ouster of Maduro. The U.S. isn’t just setting up an economically advantageous policy regime to access Venezuela’s oil, but is now directly controlling much of Venezuela’s state revenue. “The U.S. Treasury receives the revenue from most of Venezuela’s exports, then disburses it to Venezuela through the country’s banking system, a relationship akin to parents handing out allowances to children,” the Times reports. “Mr. Rubio and his team set the conditions on what that money can be spent on, and by whom.”
The U.S. is systematically stripping Venezuela’s government of its right to self-determination.arco
That’s just one of many remarkable new structures and rules that Rubio has installed to give him immense control over Venezuelan affairs. According to the Times, Rubio is administering the application of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and determining who in the country can do business with the world without getting hit by penalties. He’s helping set up U.S. access to Venezuela’s oil resources, while boxing out European companies. He’s constantly issuing edicts by text message directly to Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, who has turned to him for sign-off on major political appointments, including the minister of defense. When Venezuela issued a moderately critical statement of the U.S. for bombing Iran, the Trump administration quickly and successfully pressured Rodrigeuz’s administration to rescind it. Rubio’s control over Venezuela on behalf of Trump is so total and so outmoded that other officials in the Trump administration have reportedly started calling him “viceroy.” We’re back in the colonial era.
This arrangement is reprehensible. The U.S. is systematically stripping Venezuela of its right to self-determination. Its “stabilization” and “recovery” phases are not about helping the long-suffering Venezuelan people but enriching U.S. corporations and enhancing U.S. geopolitical domination of the world. And the prospect of Venezuela becoming a free democracy at this point seems unlikely. There’s been no talk of a schedule for elections, and it’s hard to imagine the Trump administration being OK with future Venezuelan political campaigns that call out the U.S. pillaging the country’s economy.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
