Eric Zuesse: “Trump Threatens Nuclear War If Russia Protects Venezuela”

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Written by Eric Zuesse; Originally appeared on strategic-culture.org

On March 27^th, US President Donald Trump said that “Russia has to get out” of Venezuela, and that “All options are on the table” if Russia refuses to withdraw from Venezuela the protection it has recently provided to Venezuela’s elected Government, which Trump is attempting to overthrow, by an illegal coup. And Vice President Mike Pence, on the same day, said “Nicolás Maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to power, and it is the policy of the United States of America, at the direction of President Donald Trump, that Nicolás Maduro must go.” The United States is therefore trying to do to Maduro what Barack Obama did to Victor Yanukovich in Ukraine in 2014, and to Muammar Gaddaffi in Libya in 2011, and tried to do to Bashar Assad after 2011 in Syria, and what George W. Bush did in 2003 to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But, this time, there is a difference, because right up front, Russia isn’t allowing it, and is sending men and equipment to Venezuela, to prevent it from happening — in other words, to block the US Government from achieving a conquest of Venezuela.

On the night of January 22^nd, Juan Guaido, who had been the President of the National Assembly of Venezuela (somewhat equivalent to Nancy Pelosi in the US House of Representatives), was instructed by US Vice President Mike Pence, to declare himself the ‘interim President’ of Venezuela, and Guaido did that the very next day, though the Venezuelan Constitution says that only Venezuela’s constitutional court (the “Supreme Judicial Tribunal”) can authorize the National Assembly to even consider the possibility of removing Venezuela’s President, and though the only person who (under the Constitution) can follow (succeed) the elected President of Venezuela if an elected President becomes removed from office, is Venezuela’s Executive Vice President, the equivalent of America’s Vice President — not the President of the National Assembly. The Supreme Judicial Tribunal did no such thing. So: Guaido was (and is) following Pence’s instruction to perpetrate actually a coup against his country. This coup-attempt was long in the planning. It is a follow-on to what Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, was trying to do.

Russia has sent troops and weapons to Venezuela to protect Venezuela from a possible US invasion. Trump and Pence are telling Russia they won’t accept this. They demand that their coup-attempt succeed. Russia is no more-likely to accept that in Venezuela than in Syria, where the US invasion-via-proxies continues. So, the US is now committed, in at least those two places, to regime-change, where Russia is less publicly and explicitly, but perhaps even more, committed to halt America’s aggressions.

The idea of the United States as a ‘policeman of the world’ has now become an insult to the United Nations and makes clear what John Bolton had meant when he said:

Congressional Record, Volume 154, Part 8, May 22, 2008 to June 6, 2008 [ultimate source being Unification Church’s neocon Insight on the News magazine during 1999, interview w. Bolton]

“It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so — because over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrain the United States.”

Global Structures Convocation in New York on 3 February 1994

“JOHN BOLTON: The point that I want to leave with you, in this very brief presentation, is where I started, is there is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interest and when we can get others to go along. … The Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”

Anyone today who supports the United States Government opposes the United Nations, and despises democracy — not only domestically, but especially internationally.

Specifically in regard to the ongoing US coup-attempt against the sovereign nation of Venezuela, here is what Bolton said on January 23^rd:

“We’re looking at the oil assets. That’s the single most important income stream to the government of Venezuela. We’re looking at what to do to that. … We don’t want any American businesses or investors caught by surprise. They can see what President Trump did yesterday. We’re following through on it. … We’re in conversation with major American companies now that are either in Venezuela, or in the case of Citgo here in the United States. … It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

Why does John Bolton keep coming back to power in the US? Because he represents America’s billionaires no matter what, and because the US Government does, too — it doesn’t represent America’s public; it represents only the individuals who overwhelmingly finance America’s politicians; and those politicians, in turn, represent the 585 US billionaires’ interests, and not the interests (the priorities) of the American public. The public are merely to be manipulated, not represented. That’s why we invaded Iraq. That’s why we invaded Libya. That’s why we invaded Syria. That’s why the US regime took over Ukraine. That’s why it now is trying to take over Venezuela. The public don’t learn from history but instead are constantly being manipulated — the public are constantly gullible. A gangster-led nation hires professionals to fool them, constantly. This is serious business, not for amateurs. The naive view of ‘democracy’ makes it sound natural, but it’s not — not at all. Sometimes things that are unnatural are essential; and this is increasingly coming to be the case. Calling the US a ‘democracy’ is to support this government that the entire world (in the only polls that have been done of the matter) recognizes to be the most aggressive and dangerous regime on Earth. This Government is natural, but it’s rotten, through and through.

This, in other words, is international piracy. So: instead of US being the international policeman, it’s the leader of the biggest international gang; it is the global leader in international gangsterism, dwarfing the Mafia. That’s the reality. And this explains why the US Government despises the UN.

Anyone today who supports the United States Government opposes the United Nations, and despises democracy — not only domestically, but especially internationally, which means the UN (not that it’s perfect — nothing is — but it’s the only one, at the present time). Either the world will be led by its top gangster, who represents the top gang and definitely not the global public (and not even his own national public — see this and this), or else the world will be led by the only international democracy that currently exists. And this is why the US regime wants to destroy the UN — to eliminate even the little democracy we’ve actually got.

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PS: In order to anticipate the US regime’s next step, which is expected to be citation of America’s ‘Monroe Doctrine’ as ‘justifying’ its actions specifically in Venezuela (and, generally, as ‘justifying’ US imperialism in the Western Hemisphere), there will be quoted below relevant highlights from the superb Ph.D. thesis of Nicholas Cleaver, which thesis documents that America’s first modern application of the Monroe Doctrine was against, and not for, US imperialism (and so the Trump regime has no justification, even in US law, to do this):

Rise to Power?: The Foreign Policy of the Second Grover Cleveland Administration, 1893-1897. Nicholas Cleaver, Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of East Anglia, School of American Studies, February, 2012:

This thesis argues that, confronted by the same changing circumstances for the nation on the world stage which had created the public demand for a more aggressive foreign policy, Cleveland, Gresham and Olney set out a new template for how the United States should conduct itself in global affairs. This template rejected imperialist expansion and proposed a more limited interaction with other nations based upon legalist principles. It also included elements of moral duty and a belief that the United States should be an example to other nations. …

The special message [by President Cleveland, to the US Congress, on 17 December 1895] concluded with a declaration that it would be the duty of the United States to “resist by every means in its power as a wilful aggression upon its rights and interests the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction over any territory which after investigation we have determined of right belongs to Venezuela.”115 The potential significance of this was underlined by the statement: “In making these recommendations I am fully alive to the responsibility incurred, and keenly realize all the consequences that may follow.”116

The December 17 special message brought the Venezuelan Border Dispute to a head and raised the spectre of war between the United States and Great Britain, but it also marked the first step in a movement towards a settlement. … The result was an Anglo-American agreement concluded on November 12, 1896, which would form the basis of a treaty between Great Britain and Venezuela. The agreement provided for an arbitral tribunal which would investigate and define the new border. …

CONCLUSION

Foreign policy was not a priority for Grover Cleveland when he returned to the Executive Mansion on March 4, 1893. His first term in office had demonstrated that he was a domestic-minded president and the ever-increasing financial calamity afflicting the United States in 1893 ensured that there would be no shortage of domestic problems that would require his attention. While Cleveland might have preferred to have devoted the entirety of his second term in office to dealing with these domestic problems, a series of incidents in global affairs provided constant distraction. The fact that Cleveland felt obliged to involve the United States in these incidents is indicative of the nation’s growing stature as a world power and the breadth of its interests and contacts overseas, but it also refutes any suggestion that Cleveland himself was purely an isolationist. Although his opposition to American imperialism would remain unwavering until his death, he was not himself purely in favour of isolation and much of the administration’s foreign policy would be decidedly internationalist in its attempts to formulate new frameworks through which international disputes might be resolved through methods short of war. Despite these views, however, the formulation of foreign policy was still a decidedly ad hoc affair and, while the same might be said for much of the administration’s domestic policy as well, it is clear that domestic issues held priority.

Only later, with the thuggish US President Theodore Roosevelt, did the US become an imperialistic power, but TR’s “corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” was only an announcement in his 1904 State of the Union address, no US law, at all. Even the Monroe Doctrine itself was only a “policy” of James Monroe, no law — and, until TR, it was entirely anti-imperialistic (aimed to end European imperialism in the Americas). US imperialism started with TR. Later, FDR (who designed the UN) tried to end America’s imperialism, but his successor Truman went back to TR’s policy, and Truman’s successor Eisenhower did it full-force by coups in 1953 Iran (where the Monroe Doctrine was entirely irrelevant), and 1954 Guatemala. All that exists within US law regarding imperialism is US policies — no US law at all. Only in international law (what Bolton despises) is imperialism prohibited; and what recent American Presidents and Congresses are carrying out are internationally illegal US policies — no laws, at all; just international thuggery, on behalf of America’s billionaires.

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