The US attempted coup against Venezuela
Contained with political intelligence by the Maduro government
Following the presidential elections in Venezuela of July 28, 2024, certified as free and fair by international observers, the United States of America continues to not recognize the re-election of President Nicolás Maduro. The Venezuelan president has accused the United States of attempting to organize a coup d’état, and in this charge, he is backed by many leaders and intellectuals of the Global South and East. Venezuela, since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, has played a leading role in forging Latin American and Caribbean unity and integration, in opposition to the imperialist divide and conquer tactics of the USA, which finds particularly damaging to its interests the Chavista implementation of the principle of the right of the Venezuelan state to control the production and distribution of Venezuela’s significant oil reserves.
During the August 6, 2024, Cuban television program Mesa Redonda, Elio Perera, a researcher affiliated with the Cuban Center for Research on International Politics, maintained that the U.S. coup d’état is being carried out with precision, in accordance with the strategies of “unconventional war,” explained in U.S. military manuals developed during the second Obama administration. However, although implemented to perfection, the results are not so perfect, Perera maintained, because the manual has not taken into account the committed support of the Bolivarian Revolution by a significant social sector of the people, and it has not taken into considerations the divisions within the opposition as well as the limited credibility of claims of electoral fraud within Venezuela.
Perera explained the concept of unconventional war, as expressed by the U.S. military. First, a fruitful terrain for regime change is established by economic sanctions, with the intention of establishing economic hardships and dissatisfaction among the people. In most targeted countries, this strategy tends to have some effect, because most people do not possess a strong and deep historical and political consciousness, and they can be confused by concrete economic hardships in daily life, when accompanied by repeated declarations that the government is to blame. The government may have its explanations of the hardships and its strategy for effectively dealing with them, but many people give priority to immediate material improvements.
The terrain for the coup is also prepared by repeated declarations of anticipated electoral fraud. In a government with a well-developed electoral system like Venezuela, such claims have more credibility in the international arena than in the domestic scene. However, in the domestic political situation, they signal to local actors who support opposition candidates the political will of the United States and the Venezuelan elite to not accept the electoral results, thus stimulating mobilization in protest of electoral fraud.
The strategy of unconventional war calls for the non-acceptance of the results following their announcement, accompanied by the unleashing of fascist violent gangs. These are small groups paid by the opposition to go on violent rampages against government property and symbols of the political authority of the state. Fascist violent gangs function in the targeted country to intimidate supporters of the government, and internationally, the images of violence function as signs of apparent mass opposition to the government, social unrest, and political instability, which can be used to legitimate interventions and interference of all kinds. Venezuelan news reporters in the streets obtained information concerning the payment of “protestors” for specific actions, with destruction of property paid more than non-violent protest.
Things have not been playing out as the opposition had hoped, Perera noted. The denial of the election results and the employment of violent fascist gangs have not led to the stimulation of daily and sustained large-scale protests, which is a key component of successful regime change action. In addition, the United States was not able to attain the support of a sufficient number of states for the approval of an OAS declaration demanding a recount of the vote. All eight of the opposition candidates of smaller political parties, who together received approximately five percent of the vote, have recognized the validity of the official electoral results, as announced by the National Electoral Council of Venezuela.
In an editorial commentary on Cuban television, Oliver Zamora characterized as ridiculous the claims of fraud made by opposition candidate Edmundo González and opposition leader María Corina Machado. He noted that all ten candidates had received copies of the ballots cast from the National Electoral Council. The fascist opposition, claiming fraud, produced ballots with designs that were different from the official ballots, suggesting some kind of irregularity that ought to be investigated. Moreover, the fascist opposition claimed that Maduro received approximately 30% of the vote, with an identical 30% in each of the nation’s provinces, absurdly indicating that Chavista support is equal in all regions of the country.
Zamora reiterated that all eight of the other opposition candidates supported the electoral results. Accordingly, he referred to them as the “democratic opposition.” It should also be noted that Maduro, the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, was the candidate of a coalition of thirteen political organizations, known as the Great Patriotic Pole. It thus can be seen that Venezuela has a multiple-party political reality, with more than twenty political organizations affirming the electoral results. Far-right opposition leader María Corina Machado was barred from candidacy, as a result of evidence that she was receiving funds from the U.S. State Department.
An article by Maria Fe Celi Reyna, published on August 8 in Russia Today, explained further the effect of the economic sanctions that have been applied against Venezuela. She noted that the first sanctions were applied in 2014 against Venezuelan authorities. The following year, the Obama government emitted an executive order declaring that Venezuela is a threat to the national security of the United States, which has been renewed each year by the Trump and Biden administrations. The measure had a hard impact on the private sector, affecting the capacity of the nation to obtain credit. Trump carried the sanctions to a new level, blocking the commercial transactions of the state-managed petroleum company and its access to the U.S. financial market. In 2019, a total economic embargo on the Venezuelan economy was imposed. In addition, in conjunction with the Gauidó plan, Venezuelan assets in the USA were robbed.
By 2021, the state budget of the Venezuelan state was only a small fraction of what it had previously been, which would have provoked a humanitarian crisis, if it were not for alleviation through migration. Venezuelan emigrants arrive to various countries in the region that do not have any capacity to economically assimilate them, provoking hostility in the receiving countries.
In response to the economic situation, Celi Reyna reports, Venezuela has developed economic relations with China, Russia, Türkiye, Syria, and Iran. And it has diversified its productive networks and has made advances in the de-dollarization of its economy. These structural reforms in the economy have led to eleven consecutive trimesters of economic growth. The International Monetary Fund projects that for this year, Venezuela will have growth of 4%, the highest in the region, and it is able to produce nearly all the food that it consumes.
As explained by Venezuelan analyst Luigino Bracci, elections in Venezuela are automated. When a citizen casts a vote in a voting machine, the machine prints a receipt, which the voter places in a box. Thus, there is a double system of counting, in which the machine keeps track of each vote and prints a tally of the votes, and at the same time, polling station members and political party observers verify that the machine printed report of the vote tally is consistent with the tally of the printed receipts. The machine sends the results to one of two tallying centers of the National Electoral Council (CNE for its initials in Spanish).
Bracci notes that for the last twenty years, CNE has been publishing the results of each polling station on its website, making the votes transparent, and enabling observers representing the political parties to verify the results with their polling station observations. This publication of results usually occurs a few hours after the first electoral bulletin is released. However, the results could not be verified in this way with respect to the July 28 presidential elections, because there had been a cyberattack against the data transmission system of CNE, a fact that was announced by the president of CNE, Elvis Amoroso, when he announced the election results at 12:13 a.m. on July 29. He noted that the cyberattack was slowing down the transfer of information to the tallying centers.
Subsequent to the CNE announcement, President Nicolás Maduro went to the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice to request an investigation and to request that all candidates and the National Electoral Council be summoned and requested to submit all necessary records and documents. Maduro also promised that the tally sheets of his party’s witnesses would be presented. In accordance with the request of the President, the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court, authorized by the Constitution to rule on such question, summoned the ten candidates to appear, and nine of them did so on August 2. Edmundo González, who had made accusations of fraud beginning on July 29, was the only one of the ten candidates who did not appear before the Court.
Gonzalez and María Corina Machado had announced that they have 80% of the tally sheets, which show that González received 67% of the vote. The opposition claim of fraud suggests the possibility that a group of people is secretly manipulating the machines to reprint tally sheets with numbers favorable to the government.
In order to address the issue of a cyberattack and the question of electoral fraud, Bracci interviewed Víctor Theoktisto, a computer science professor at Simón Bolívar University, who has served as an advisor in the development of the nation’s automated electoral system. He maintained that the automated electoral system is designed with numerous security checks, such that any manipulated or modified tally sheet would have a QR code or “hash” different from the unique code of the original, which could be discerned through investigation. For this reason, the question of fraud ought to be resolved through the Supreme Court, with all parties presenting what they have. The opposition ought to present their evidence and their case to the Court. “The fact that González did not appear before the Electoral Chamber last Friday raises many questions. If they have the evidence, why not challenge the elections before the appropriate body? Are they willing to have their election evidence verified? . . . The opposition must challenge the results before the [Supreme Court], not in public opinion or international media.”
Thus, the failure of the opposition to respond to the Court summons indicates that they do not have a credible case. The opposition apparently intends the accusation of fraud itself, even if lacking in substance, can be used with political intent.
Theoktisto noted that hacking technologies do indeed exist that could slow down the CNE process by disrupting connections, without changing the actual tallies. He further observed that there were attacks on the CNE Website of such a volume that would likely be of sources outside the country, with some level of support by local actors. He notes that “a governmental actor is indispensable,” and he believes that a hostile government was involved in the attack. But all such questions need to be investigated, he stressed.
Theoktisto further observed that Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) ought not to publish its tally sheets online, because the opposition could modify them to create false tally sheets. The approach of the PSUV is correct: submitting all tally sheets to the Court and waiting for the opposition to do the same.
Journalist and political analyst Clodovaldo Hernández published in Venzuelaanalysis.com on August 7 an article maintaining that the government of Maduro has contained the attempted coup d’état. He points to several indications that, so far, the balance of forces is favorable for the re-elected president Nicolás Maduro. First, when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recognized Edmundo González as the winner of the elections, Maduro responded that if the USA does not recognize his electoral victory, the energy contracts awarded to U.S. companies would be turned over to companies in the BRICS group. This prompted the State Department to retreat, declaring that although the United States considers González to be the winner of the election, it has not recognized him as the president of Venezuela, as was done in 2019 with respect to Juan Guaidó.
The government of Maduro, Hernández notes, had the political intelligence to not arrest Guaidó. the self-proclaimed and U.S. backed president. His “interim government” of 2019 to 2023 collapsed of its own accord. In 2023, Guaidó settled in Miami, where he lives in luxury, no doubt on the basis of the corruption of his government, which was given access to Venezuelan assets illegally frozen by the USA.
Secondly, the U.S. government failed in its efforts to attain a consensus in the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States for a resolution designed to delegitimate the elections in Venezuela. The governments of Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia played a principal role in derailing the initiative. At the same time, the USA was not able to revive the Lima Group of countries to function as the diplomatic arm of the United States in the region.
Thirdly, when González and María Corina Machado proclaimed González president-elect, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced the opening of an investigation against both. They will possibly be accused of the usurpation of government functions, spreading false information to foment unrest, incitement to violations of laws, incitement to insurrection, conspiracy, criminal association, and calling for military and police officers to disobey their superiors. Their plan to not accept the electoral results is evident on the web publication of the opposition, which was established a year ago, long before the elections.
Fourthly, the Venezuelan military and police forces have forcefully confronted street violence. When initially peaceful protests quickly escalated into vandalism and criminal acts against Chavistas, PSUV offices, public property, and transportation systems, they were effectively constrained through intelligence and infiltration. This prevented the opposition from attaining sustained protest in the streets; by Wednesday, July 31, the situation had returned to calm, as the government was able to control outbreaks of violence.
The government was aided in controlling the situation by the bad memories of 2017 and 2014. In those rebellions, the political leadership of the opposition used criminal elements to stoke the rebellion, which ended up taking over middle-class neighborhoods to engage in theft and extortion. In 2024, as soon as the association of the protest with lawless individuals became evident—through violent behavior that included besieging the homes and political party headquarters of Chavistas and the burning of educational and health facilities, police stations, and vehicles—many opposition supporters distanced themselves from the protests.
Hernández maintains that the effective response of the Maduro government to the attempted coup d’état was the result of an accumulative practical understanding, developed on the basis of similar experiences in the past decade of U.S. unconventional war.
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Further Considerations
The war in Venezuela is a war over who should control the human and natural resources of the South American nation. Should petroleum be produced and distributed under the direction of the Venezuelan state, whose highest officials are elected by the people? Or should this important source of revenue be directed by U.S. imperialist interests, which have a historical record of managing resources without regard for the economic development of Venezuela and the social and cultural development of the people? In moral terms, this question is a “no brainer.” In geopolitical terms, it is becoming increasingly clear that a peaceful and prosperous world requires the equal sovereignty of nations, where each nation has the possibility to develop its natural resources for the good of the nation. The peoples of the world are demonstrating that they will no longer accept foreign control of their resources, since that approach has led to global inequalities and underdevelopment in vast regions, and it is now stimulating an uncontrollable international migration to the North, tearing families apart.
It is a historic war in Latin America, waged in Chile over copper; in Bolivia over tin, gas, and lithium; and in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Cuba over agricultural lands. The issue was put clearly before the General Assembly of the United Nations by Fidel in 1960. In this war, the owners of national industrial and agricultural enterprises that are integrated with the core-peripheral structures of the capitalist world-economy tend to side with imperialist interests, as do citizens from other classes who are confused by the elite propaganda that is widely disseminated in media. But with an effective explanatory discourse, the people can be mobilized in defense of national sovereignty.
In the case of Venezuela, Chávez rose to power on the basis of his clear denunciation of the subservience of the Venezuelan political establishment to imperialist interests. Once he attained the presidency, he used the constitutional powers of the office to appoint new directors of the Venezuelan state petroleum company. Venezuelan oil had been nationalized in the 1970s, but its state management was conducted without any effort to integrate the petroleum resources into a plan for the development of the national economy. In addition, Chávez played a leading role in promoting Latin American and Caribbean unity and integration, founding with Fidel the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). These steps were sufficient for the labeling of Chávez and Maduro as authoritarian dictators by the Western imperialist powers.
Chávez always spoke of the diversification of the Venezuelan economy as a long-term goal. However, with many short-term goals to attend and with the hostility of the North, not much progress was made on diversification. Now, however, pushed by the needs provoked by the U.S. unconventional war, the government of Maduro gives emphasis to the diversification of the economy on the basis of mutually beneficial cooperation and commerce with emerging powers in other regions that also, by virtue of their insistence on their sovereignty, have been targeted by unconventional war. The approach that Venezuela is taking is very similar to that of Cuba, also suffering at the current moment from the intensification of the U.S. blockade, involving the blocking of commercial and financial transactions.
We must think dialectically, rather than with binary morality. Colonialism and imperialism are great injustices, in moral terms. They had, however, positive consequences with respect to promoting the modernization and economic productivity of the world-economy as a whole. But these advances were developed on a foundation of an unjust inequality, driving the colonized peoples to seek a transformation of neocolonial structures and to develop an alternative world-system that, even though built on a colonial foundation, respects the sovereignty of nations, so that truly independent states can cooperate with one another in developing their national economies and attending to the human needs of their peoples. From a colonial foundation, modern humanity seeks to advance to a more just and democratic world order.
In waging unconventional war against nations that have sought to construct a more just world order through the transformation of colonial structures, U.S. imperialism seeks to block the progressive forces in history that it unleashed during the course of the twentieth century.
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