What Maduro’s capture means for the world

This is Infocus. The Hindu's current affairs podcast. On January 3rd, the United States of America launched Operation Absolute Resolve. It bombed the city of Caracas in Venezuela, capturing the sitting President Nicolas Maduro. He has been accused of narcoterrorism, cocaine conspiracy and possession of dangerous weapons. He is now jailed in New York. Meanwhile, Trump has declared himself the acting President of Venezuela. He stated that he would be effectively running the country for the benefit of both US and Venezuela. He also said that he would open the country for American oil companies. The recent developments in Venezuela is said to have huge political ramifications, not only for Latin America but across the globe. To discuss these issues with us, we have a very special guest, Mr. Tariq Ali. Tariq Ali is a writer and activist, who is a prolific voice on the left for decades. He was close to Hugo Chavez and has been closely following Latin America for many years. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and regularly contributes to them. Thank you so much, sir, for joining us today. Thank you for asking me. As someone who has been closely following Latin America and Venezuela, as someone who is close to Hugo Chavez, did you expect the turn of events in Venezuela? If you read the SAI wrote on the blog of New Left Review, Sight Car, you will see that neither of the two most perceptive leaders of the continent, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, would have been surprised. Twenty years ago, Hugo Chavez said that Castro had told him that if they come for us, they will do a Noriega style operation. And we should be prepared because they have not given up. And they were right, they knew. After all, many attempts had been made on Castro's life. They never attempted to get an app in because that would have. they'd have fallen flat on their faces. And the conversation Chavez reports he had with Fidel, he said, "When they do come for us, let's die fighting on the front line, not hiding in a hole somewhere like Saddam Hussein. We're not like that." So the leadership of the Bolivarian Revolution and of the Cuban Revolution were not at all, wouldn't have been surprised that this said happened. I mean, there has been a wave of tsunami-style propaganda ever since Chavez was elected to power, not once, not twice, but several times. So they didn't like him because Chavez said, "What was his program?" It wasn't a revolutionary program. It was essentially left social democratic reforms, encouraging voices from below, giving people communities their own radio stations, creating the missions, helping the poor, mobilizing the people and a very staunch internationalist foreign policy. This, the United States, could never stomach, not just Trump. Presidents before him could have done deals. They refused to do so. Why? I think at the core of this is a mistake that many people made. I'm glad I didn't. But many people, including friends of mine, which is that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and after China's turn to its own type of capitalism, imperialism, Western imperialism, too, would die like that. Perhaps it was already dead. There was a lot of euphoria after the collapse of the Soviet Union. You know, we're going to have this, we're going to have that. But the peace dividend, Papar Bush, George Burb, you know, senior Bush said, "So there was a sort of wave of euphoria, which disarmed people. Now they're realizing how wrong they were, and that the tiger's spots never disappear. You know, the United States is there now acting openly. The only big difference between Trump and his predecessors, it's not that they didn't do these things, they did them. They destabilized governments, they toppled governments. Trump does it openly. He says, "Yeah, I am doing this, so what, what can you do about it?" And so the questions that arise for me regarding Venezuela, we can agree, of course, most people do that. It's atrocious what happened. And many people are shocked, which they shouldn't be. That Trump, you know, said, "Yeah, we're after the oil ready. It's not a personal thing. So whoever enables us to get the oil, we work with them." So he dumped his own people who they were preparing to put into power. That Machado, the woman created by the US ambassador, who's now very angry, that all his hard work in getting her and her future cabinet ready, has come to an out, and they pressured the idiots on the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee to give her a big prize. I mean, everything has been manipulated for a different government. And then basically, Trump does a deal with the remnants of the Bolivarian movement. His only demand was that Maduro go. That's where the real trouble. Maduro, to his credit, refused to go. They offered him many things. They offered him a asylum in Russia, where he would be saved. They gave him pledges. No one is going to come after you or anything. They couldn't tolerate the diplomatic scandal of keeping Maduro in part. Though Trump could have pushed it through, said he's now doing what we want him to do. But he wasn't. And when Maduro began to mobilize against the American presence in the Caribbean, arming his people, creating popular militias, they thought the sooner the better. And they spoke at length to Delcy Rodriguez. This is not a secret, by the way. She had a number of conversations with Rubio and showed him. And a show, Trump, according to what Trump says, that she would do as asked. Now, will there, we shall see. All Trump wants, he says, is the oil. But his own oil companies are refusing to invest. They're saying it will cost us huge amounts of money. And why should we go in? Our aim is to make profits. And this is where we'll go in and start making a loss immediately. So we don't want to do it. So Trump is now very angry with exile. And I think they will put pressure on some of the other oil companies to go in and help and offer state subsidies and more ever. But we shall see, we shall see how this pans out. There's a lot to unpack here, sir. But let's start off with a propaganda. You know, the right wing opposition in Venezuela have constantly denounced the democratic elections along with the Western media. This was very evident during the coup against Chavez, which was thwarted by the popular support of the people. So keeping that in mind, what the ones were actually celebrating Maduro's fall. And how do you see the portrayal of Venezuela and particularly Maduro in the Western media? I think the people who are celebrating the abduction of Maduro are basically an extremist far right extremist wing of the Venezuelan opposition. Nor all the Venezuelan opposition. The more respectable elements of the opposition who have been oppositionist for some time. I don't agree with them, but I don't impune their motives. Have come out and said they are not in favor of what has been done to Venezuela. And the demonstrations that took place in Caracas and some other cities, the opposition joined in those demonstrations. So effectively, it's a handful of people funded by the United States, created by the United States, sometimes made presidents by the United States. You know some years ago, they attempted to put this Obama look like Juan Guido on the throne in Venezuela. And that backfired very badly, but the entire Western media from the Guardian rightwards. What did they do? They treated this guy seriously. Not a single article in the Guardian, pointing out this is a total and complete fraud. And so the embrace of the liberal level and the conservative media of the American interests and the American empires, very blatant for us to see. We've seen it in Gaza non-stop since the genocide began. But it began before that. It began with Venezuela. It began seriously with the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO in the '90s. Then it carried on to the attempts to topple Chavez constantly portraying Chavez as a dictator when he had won more elections and most people. And the line, the words may have been different and sometimes even they weren't. But the coverage in the Guardian apart from a few of us who were then hadn't been cancelled and were allowed to write. The coverage in the Guardian, Le Monde in France, El Pais in Spain, the Republican in Italy, exactly the same. And once I said it, a press conference somewhere or the other, I said I don't know why these Western newspapers waste so much money. They could just have one article sent by the State Department and rewrite it at home. They don't need to have waste all these salaries and sending people to these countries. When the Americans are already spending so much, that's what it's come to. We live in a very debased era as far as Western democracy is concerned. Chavez was faced with a choice of picking a successor from within the Bolivarian movement. Joe's Nicolas Maduro, who had been his foreign minister, who's a loyal guy, rather than choose someone from the army. You have to understand something about Venezuela, which most people don't talk about, but racism goes very deep. The first time I visited Caracas in the late, early 2000s, I asked someone I knew, who was known to us at the New Left Review. He came up and said, why are you backing Chavez? He said, what else is there in your country, man? And he said, we said the question you should be asking, we should be asking, is why aren't you backing him? And he said, my parents taught me, never trust a Zambo. You know what a Zambo is? A Zambo is someone of mixed indigenous and slave heritage. That is a Zambo. Now you are, this is said to you by a left-wing intellectual. And you then see and size up the scale of the problem. So I saw the intelligentsia by and large as some very good people remained aloof. They backed every opposition, not the extreme right opposition, but they backed magazines that were put out, etc, appeared on television, radio, attacking Chavez. And they were left alone by and large. You know, he didn't touch them. I was staggered when I was in Venezuela to find that 90% of the, apart from the state television networks, all the private networks were backing Chavez's opponents, attacking him, urging the military to get a co-organized to get rid of it. And I said, my God, this couldn't happen in Britain, France, the United States of America. You know, it couldn't happen there. They'd stop it ages ago for that matter in India. You know, they'd stop it. But this was going on non-stop. I was once invited to one of these networks and I let them have it. I said, you accuse him of taking you every single day or carrying on like this. And he lets you. The government lets you because they want to encourage a democratic medium and atmosphere in that country. But you won't tolerate it because he's not pro-America. That essentially was the thing. The domination of the United States was being challenged. Now Maduro could challenge it to a limited extent. He tried to do a deal with them that failed because they wanted him to go. And he refused to leave the country and that has to his credit. So because he refused to leave the country with lots of money they were offering and money and no doubt that has been related elsewhere. This was the only other way they knew of getting rid of him about from killing him. The economic situation was so bad in Venezuela after the sanctions. The country produces the largest amount of oil in the world and you sanction that oil. And who is the United States to put a sanction on that oil? And why should the rest of the world accept it? Of course Russia didn't, China didn't, Iran didn't, they negotiated with the regime and kept it going. And Venezuela and oil kept Cuba going. They never charged Cuba for any oil. Like the Saudi Arabians don't charge Pakistan. This general, but that was internationalism. With Maduro's abduction, the question of who governs Venezuela has become very crucial. We expected that Maria Kuraina Machado would actually be the face of the regime change or the regime management. Well, that is not the case to be. Trump has basically said that you know he would be the acting president of Venezuela and that he would rule over the country. But does Trump and the Americans know what they're getting into in Venezuela? Do you think that they will be met with resistance similar to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya? And other chances that the Venezuela, the country will spiral into a civil war. Like what are your thoughts on this? It depends how they do it. It's Trump gets the Venezuela national assembly, which consists of you know people from the opposition as well. To nominate him as president, that will be a miracle. They won't. They have already voted unanimously against any U.S. occupation of Venezuela. I may be wrong, but I think I'm right in saying that the Venezuelan parliament as presently constituted will not vote. So if there is no vote to invite and outside it to come and take you over your country, how are they going to do it? I don't think Kelsey Rodriguez has the power even if she wanted to, which I don't know. I don't think she has the power to do it. The only people who can make this decision are the army. We now know that one very senior general who was around Chave, Maduro all the time turned traitor has been arrested by the government. He was the one who supplied the Americans with information every single day of where Maduro would be sleeping because he was changing his sleeping place. And some other generals have just disappeared, probably going and picking up their checks, came on islands, Switzerland, wherever I don't know, but they've disappeared. So the strongest armed wing of the Bolivarian movement at the moment of the popular militias under the charge of Cabello. Is Cabello going to capitulate? Doesn't look like it. I would be very surprised and satan if he did. In that case, they will need troops on the ground. The Americans, are they going to do that? It's a big decision for them because you know one has to consider the situation in the United States itself. Trump's base, a large section of Trump's electoral bases opposed to US interventions above abroad or sending American troops to occupy countries to be more blunt. They're not in favor of it. That they opposed Bush and the Clinton's for that, and Obama in particular. And Trump has said 101 times he has a peacemaker, etc., etc. That's all bullshit, as we know. But what he means, he's talking to his base and saying, "Look, I'm way not sending troops in." So they use, usually even in the past, the United States used local relays to do the dirty work, like Israel and the Middle East. They use it openly and the Israelis love to be used. It's very interesting that Netanyahu was amongst the first to welcome the fall of Maduro and his abduction. He said they hate Israel. They don't hate Israel. Chavez broke off relations, all relations with Israel in 2009 after Operation Castlet. He just said no, and broke off all relations. And Latin America has been well ahead of most other parts of the world in breaking off relations. Because Turkey talks a lot, still has diplomatic and trade relations. The Sultan of Donkeys, as I call him, braze, non-stop. But what do you actually do? Because that's how we judge people on the basis of what they do. The Egyptians haven't broken off relations with Israel. Most of the Gulf states are collaborating openly with Israel, with the United Arab Emirates offering to sell arms and help Israel in many other ways. They have accepted Israel as the local strong power with the backing of the United States. So what will happen in Venezuela depends also on, you know, the rest of Latin America has gone very right when Chile, Argentina, Brazil is in trouble. Bolivia, the army is back, the only exceptional country now in Latin America is Mexico, where the President incredibly decent, almost full of integrity, shine bomb, is steadily Americans know we don't want any American troops in our country. And she yesterday she pledged to maintain the flow of oil to Cuba. So we shall see what happens, it's difficult to predict. So you mentioned Delcy Rodriguez, and now she's the Acting President of Venezuela, and the Trump administration is constantly negotiating with her. While there is speculation that she's a proxy of Donald Trump, many also state that one shouldn't come to a conclusion like this. But what do you say, sir? I think Delcy has capitulated completely, that is my view, maybe she'll change her mind, I don't know. But look, the questions arise very clearly. You have known for months the Americans have publicly said that they're going to remove your president from office. They haven't they never specified how the CIA has been present in Venezuela months and months and planning this operation. So how come that all of Maduro's Cuban bodyguards were killed? Quite mysterious circumstances, who killed them? Who shocked them? How come their guns hadn't been fired? How come there are no casualties at all for this team of drug terrorists which operates from Fort Bragg? You know, who were sent in to do the business? That's the irony. Fort Bragg is known as the largest drug center in the United States. These special troops who carry out these operations dominate the drugs industry in the United States. So you're saying you're going to capture someone who is involved in the drug industry and you send your own drug gangs, whatever uniforms they're wearing to do it. It's just not credible, but in any event. The situation with Venezuela is how come that they could capture your president when you were prepared for this and your army stood by and didn't do anything? That's the question. I mean, you know, I can think of other countries in the world where this couldn't happen. Whatever the character of the president saw the armies, this couldn't happen. But it happened in Venezuela. And that suggests to me that despite the talk, important sections of the Bolivarian state apparatus were prepared to let Madilro go. I can't reach any other conclusion. There are no facts which justify any other interpretation. But there was effectively. You know, I think the Bolivarian are split amongst themselves. That's why Delcy Rodriguez was given only a three-month period. We'll see what happens after that, whether the courts will renew or think what Cabello is up to with the popular militias. That's what will be worrying the Americans not Delcy. You might even use it to try and somehow disarm these militias. That's my opinion. There is no person who is behaved in the way they should have unless they have some plan which none of us know about and which they will carry out. So coming to the narco terrorism allegations. Can you hear me now, sir? Hello. How credible are the narco terrorism allegations against Maduro by both Trump and Rubio? In fact, US Attorney General Pam Bondy has indicted Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, on Twitter. She has openly accused Nicolas Maduro of narco terrorism, cocaine importation, importation, conspiracy that he possesses machine guns and destructive devices against the United States. Like, is this an attempt at short trial, a similar one done to Saddam Hussein, where they stated that he possessed weapons of mass destruction? Like, and also how do you think the trial will go? I think, basically, they don't check themselves seriously, the United States. With this government, that's the difference. They don't care what the world thinks. I mean, Pam Bondy in any other part of the world would not have reached this position at all. You know, she's a completed idiot. She has no legal intelligence. So, that's the only reason why this absurd set of indictments has been made public. Everyone knows, and they themselves have admitted that Maduro was not a drug terrorist. I mean, that's a joke, even as enemies will tell you that he's not a drug terrorist or anything remotely resembling that. But even as UNI speak, they are probably finding fake witnesses who will testify that to save American, whatever, the lies they're telling, they will find some justification. As for the other charge, it really could only have been made by someone who's escaped from the asylum. Think about it. The president of Venezuela, who you have been declaring you want to capture, who you're going to remove from par, who has been a supreme par in the state, shouldn't have machine guns in his presidential in the meat of glorious balance. Why? Every president out there had guards. So, this notion of him and his wife being accused of having awards, it's crazy. It really is crazy. And sometimes, when you read stuff like this, you wonder whether there are people inside the Trump administration or working for its so-called who are trying to discredit them. It's so hard that they come up with these absurd ideas. I mean, it's just complete and not a rubbish. So, how do you think the trial will go? Do you think the short trial? The trial will be a complete show trial. It will be a mockery. And apart from Maduro and his wife who was sitting there, the whole world will be laughing. Saying if the Americans think that they can trick us with this nonsense, we're not that dumb. I, we're not as dumb as most of Trump's cabinet. You know, who are people who've been appointed largely to agree to everything he says? They're not tall, independent minded. I mean, so, it's a trial which they would use, but which I think very few people will take seriously. The Western media might take it seriously, but they're basically discredited to themselves at such a rapid, rapid rate that no one takes what they write to seriously. I mean, many people, young people in particular don't read the newspapers at all. They don't believe them. They have total contempt for them. The BBC, CNN, are virtually the same. So, this is, this is the situation in the Western world. So, those who take this trial seriously will expose themselves for being what they are. So, so, you have written inside the official blog of the New Left Review that the Bolivarian revolution for a very long time combined radical democracy, far reaching social welfare and literacy programs, and an internationalist outlook to foreign policy. But you also state that the regime has been allowed out since 2013. Though much has to do with the US sanctions and the siege, you also attribute it to the internal mismanagement of the political and economic institutions of the country. So, could you take us to that? I think once US sanctions had been set in place into an extent even before that, the regime had very few clear ideas in how to manage the economy, and there were two possibilities. Collon progressive economies from the West and sit down with them and people came. I mean, you know, Mark Weiss brought Dean Baker, Joseph Stiglitz. I think they took their recommendations seriously. And they didn't take the advice too seriously because there was always a slightly out-for-left layer within the Bolivarians. They said, "No, no, no. This won't do. We have to challenge capitalism." But Chavez himself said to me, "We are not living in a phase of world politics, where you can just get rid of capitalism." It didn't work before, and it's certainly not going to work now. These were some of the best Chinese and economists out there. So the other option was to go to the Chinese and say, "You know, help. What should we do?" And the Chinese no doubt would have given quite sage advice on that, given the transformation that they have carried out in their own country. You know, which has astonished the world and which now lies behind a lot of the turmoil since the United States sees China as its main rival economically. And they're right. I mean, the world market has shifted to the east. The center of the world market is China. It's not the west anymore. China occupies the place that Victorian Britain did in the world, you know, the domination of trade, of industry. Let's hope it isn't forced to go to war by some rash U.S. actions that would be disastrous, but they are not prepared to coexist with another country, the size of China. The U.S. that's very clear. And here I have always thought, and I think even more so now, that one way to deal with this American desire to impose sanctions on anyone is via, you know, big states like China and India, Russia. These three states, if they acted in concert, not agree with each other on everything, obviously, but acted in concert could push back. But they, I think some people are trying for that, but I don't know, you know, whether that's going to happen or not. Because that's what is needed, a pushback. Since we've now seemed to have lost South America, which was a very valuable, progressive continent. Let's go no further than that. If Cuba falls as a result of Madero's capture in the American domination of Venezuela, if it happens like they're planning on it, and they take Cuba as well, that will be a very heavy blow on a global scale. That the one beacon, however weakened, was still there, the first socialist revolution in South America, in the Americas, not too far from Miami has gone. So we should be prepared for all this. You know, I say these things not to demoralize people, but to say we have to be realistic. We have to understand what's going on and fight back the best way we can. We should never accept these atrocities, ideological or military, that we witness every single day. Let's talk about the edgy money of dollar. So to what extent did Venezuela's move away from the dollar, which was actually forced by US sanctions, make Nicolas Maduro a target for US. Did he move away from the dollar? Yeah. I think all these conspiracy theories that everything is to be explained by moves away from the dollar. That's why Gaddafi was removed, said Maduro was from I don't accept that. I don't think that matters as much as people think the United States because they don't take it seriously. So it's a waste of time for me discussing that. You know, you don't need to discuss that. When the reason they're doing it is very clear. They want to dominate the country. You know, they've done that. They removed Gaddafi. And in the case of Gaddafi Saddam and Bashar Assad, these rallies did not want regimes with any change of nationalism or sovereignty. So they insisted and insisted and played a big part in having these regimes removed. I mean, the day Baghdad fell, the Israeli ambassador to the United States said, "Congratulations to the United States. Let's not stop. Let's finish the job. Let's take Damascus and the Iran." Well, we've seen these rallies and the Turks together have taken Syria. And now we wait to see what happens in Iran. So talking about the Chinese, this is my final question. So to what extent is this about checking the Chinese influence in the Latin America? Well, I think that is a dominant fear now in the United States. There are two ways to proceed. Either you can proceed the way they did after the Second World War. I mean, in the following sense, they knew Japan. They destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They used nuclear weapons. And then the Japanese cuddled up to them. The Japanese elite that declared war, the Japanese emperor who had signed the papers authorizing Japan to declare war on the United States. In the United States and Bombard Harbor, most of these people were reintegrated into a staunch anti-communist gold war regime. And they did it. They did the same in Germany. They did the same in Italy. In Italy, 70% of fascist collaborators who had worked with Mussolini were reintegrated on the level of the police, on the level of the army, on the level of the intelligence services. Similar, but lesser figure, was happened in Germany. I mean, the head of NATO had been the head of the German military intelligence under the Third Reich. So you can do it with them. People who really damaged you. But you can't do it with China. You can't coexist with China. You can't make a deal with Russia. What is this? And if the Americans carry on like this backed by their appeasers in Europe, I fear that worst things could happen. I mean, you know, when a piddling little government in Britain, which is nil par globally, dependent totally on the United States, the, you know, makes bold noises attacking the Russians, helping to capture an empty old tanker. Do they think the Russians can't retaliate? Have they no fear on behalf of their populations? Are they so deep-ass that they will go ahead and do whatever the Americans want them to do? It appears to be the case. And they are putting their own countries at risk, because if Russia is provoked to China is provoked, they will defend themselves and these are nuclear states. So it's not a good situation on a global scale. And the United States leadership basically has decided that China is the main enemy. So they are targeting China in every single way possible. And that I think most serious American conservatives and people basically support their own rulers would find very shocking that they're doing this. I mean, some of course back it, but it will not work out well in the end for the United States. But the other thing is all those who I've been arguing for 20 years saying, "Oh, American power is declining, oh, America is collapsing, oh, the American empire doesn't exist, look at the world." This episode was edited and produced by Jude Francis Weston. If you liked it, do subscribe to Infocus by the Hindu on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts from. Thank you for listening.