Donald Trump has warned Nicolas Maduro he can “do things the easy way or the hard way” as the Venezuelan authoritarian leader responded to an escalating US pressure campaign by urging followers to be prepared to defend “every inch” of the South American country.
Maduro, dressed in woodland camouflage, told a rally in the capital Caracas that it was his historic duty to fight foreign invaders, as Venezuelan liberation hero Simon Bolivar did two centuries ago.
“We must be able to defend every inch of this blessed land from any type of imperialist threat or aggression, no matter where it comes from,” Maduro declared in his Tuesday address to the “revolutionary people of Caracas.”
Maduro vowed to defend his country’s skies, mountains and plains, saying, “I swear before our Lord Jesus Christ that I will give everything I have for the victory of Venezuela.”
Speaking on Air Force One while flying to Florida, Trump declined to specify the exact purpose of his four-month campaign against Venezuela, though many suspect it is designed to overthrow Maduro, who is widely believed to have stolen last year’s presidential election.
Officially, the massive deployment of US troops to the Caribbean Sea is part of a crackdown against Latin American drug traffickers who are flooding the US with drugs. Washington has accused Maduro of leading a narco “cartel” – the “Cartel of the Sons”, which was designated a foreign terrorist organization this week – although many experts say the group does not actually exist.
“I’m not going to tell you what the goal is. You should probably know what the goal is,” Trump said of his crusade, hinting that he might talk to Maduro.
The US President told reporters, “If we can save lives, if we can do things the easier way, that’s OK. And if we have to do it the harder way, that’s OK too.”
Trump’s future plans for South America’s sixth-largest country – and the one with the world’s largest proven oil reserves – are shrouded in mystery.
“Maduro and most of his allies view the U.S. military threats as a bluff,” a source with regular contact with top Venezuelan officials told the Wall Street Journal this week.
“Maduro believes the only way the United States can remove him is by sending troops to Caracas,” the person said.
Given Trump’s reluctance to send US troops to war overseas, this seems extremely unlikely. But many observers are skeptical that, after carrying out more than 10 deadly airstrikes targeting drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea, Trump’s next move will be US strikes on Venezuelan soil.
Douglas Farah, a national security adviser and Latin America expert who advised the U.S. government on Venezuela during Trump’s first term, said, “I think we’re going to start blowing things out of proportion. I think we’re going to have to do something because there’s too much power there (in the Caribbean) to do anything.”
Farah said his biggest fear is that — even if the U.S. launched some kind of attack, perhaps targeting a major Caribbean port through which cocaine was smuggled — that would fail to topple Maduro, just as Trump failed to topple him in 2019.
“(If that happens) Maduro will feel empowered. He will say: ‘Yes, I defeated the United States,'” Farah said. And any possibility of the Venezuelan dictator leaving power will be “somehow systematically decimated again for the next 10 years”.
<a href