Once again, the U.S. global military empire is the father of the fear that it propagates. And this time it’s right here in our own backyard.
Just as freezing Russia’s dollar assets has encouraged foreign central banks’ gold accumulation and driven global de-dollarization, leading to President Donald Trump’s veiled threats against those that turn their back on the weaponized dollar, sanctions on Venezuela’s oil production and markets made certain the growing presence of Iran, Russia, and China in our hemisphere.
By restricting Venezuela’s access to U.S. capital markets and halting oil imports from Venezuela that were averaging 500,000 barrels a day, Washington provided an unmistakable advantage to China which more than doubled it imports, now taking 80% of the Nicolás Maduro regime’s exports at steep price discounts, and deepening China’s influence in the region.
Americans always pay twice. U.S. sanctions backed by the threat of the empire’s massive military spending, a cost borne by the taxpayers, force producers like Venezuela, Russia, and Iran to sell oil below prevailing world prices, thereby subsidizing China’s energy consumers including industries that compete with U.S. businesses.
Venezuela appeared in the Deep State’s crosshairs long ago as I describe in my new book Empire of Lies: Fragments from the Memory Hole. On March 9, 2015, President Barack Obama formally declared a new national emergency. Most Americans went blithely about their business that day without ever suspecting that what the White House gravely called “an unusual and extraordinary threat to our national security” had suddenly erupted.
A White House statement explained:
“President Obama today issued a new Executive Order declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela.”
What? Venezuela? A threat? Even worse, an unusual and extraordinary national security threat?
As would anyone terrified at the prospect of the gathering storm Venezuela posed, I took a closer look at its formidable might:
“Venezuela had a GDP that is less than that of New Jersey, only 1/30 that of the U.S.
The U.S. military budget was 160 times larger.
Venezuela had no aircraft carriers, no naval destroyers, and a grand total of 2 submarines.
It had 33 fighter jets; the U.S. had about 2,300. Venezuela had only 10 attack helicopters. The U.S.? 957.
Venezuela had 192 tanks; the U.S. had almost 9,000. If the mighty Venezuelan powerhouse were to mount an invasion of the United States, it would take nothing less than a miracle for it to land one or two boats on Florida’s Gold Coast or on the Jersey Shore.”
Perhaps Obama had detected a terrorist threat? But no, his rationale for an emergency declaration, complete with sanctions and freezing Venezuela’s U.S. assets, amounted to charges of its erosion of human rights, persecution of political opponents, curtailment of press freedoms, and significant public corruption. In other words, the kinds of things other American allies are engaged in every day.
Nevertheless, once the Deep State sets its sights and picks its threat (WMDs, terrorism, abandoning the dollar, or trafficking narcotics) there is no turning back. It thrives even as it blunders its way to war.
“The dynamic at work possesses a terrible logic,” observes José Niño. “As the United States escalates pressure on Russia over Ukraine, Beijing over Taiwan, and Tehran over its nuclear program, these powers find common cause supporting governments that challenge American hegemony.”
Like the others, Trump’s Venezuela initiative will end badly for Americans and the entire world. Such self-destructive behavior is reason enough for institutionalizing troubled individuals.
But it is just another day in the empire of lies.
