25 Years of US Hybrid War Against Venezuela: An Interview With Vladimir Adrianza
Vladimir Adrianza, geopolitical analyist interviewed by Brian Mier. Photo: teleSUR English
July 13, 2024 Hour: 6:08 pm
When the Biden administration announced it was restarting dialogue with Venezuela last week, some journalists and analysts suggested that it might be a positive sign that the US government could recognize the results of the upcoming July, 28, presidential elections. In order to shed more light on this issue, I interviewed Dr. Vladimir Adrianza Salas. Salas, a geopolitical analyist with a PhD in in Security, Defense and Integral Development from Venezuela’s Universidad Nacional Experimental Politécnica de la Fuerza Armada (UNEFA), has decades of experience studying the relations between the US and Venezuela.
How has the US relationship with Venezuela changed over the past 25 years?
Venezuela has suffered continuous aggression for 25 years from the United States and, we could say, all its allies in the collective West. This aggression may have changed in style and form in the different US presidential administrations, but the effect remains the same. Starting with the Obama administration, an executive order was imposed on Venezuela declaring it as an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States
Venezuela was a neo-colony of the United States during the 20th Century – a time during which all its internal affairs and international policies were directly influenced by the United States. The moment Hugo Chávez emerged this began to change. It was at the moment he took power that this aggression began. Today we can say that there has been permanent aggression towards Venezuela during the last 25 years of different US administrations. It has become more than the policy of a certain political party, it has become a State policy of the US towards Venezuela. Why? Because the political tendencies that have led Venezuela for the last 25 years are not to the liking of the US establishment.
This is the reality. Bush’s presidency was marked by failed coups d’état. We suffered the coup d’état of April 2002. Our petroleum industry was sabotaged from December 2002 to January 2003. We have suffered from , we continuous media aggression in multiple forms. This aggression deffinately continued after the death of President Hugo Chavez. We have deffinately been suffering from the same continual agression and this has become a hybrid war which has materialized in different kinds of actions.
One example of these actions is the set of executive orders that have led to to more than 930 so-called sanctions against Venezuela. I say “so-called” because the only World body that can legally sanction another country is the United Nations, and only after a great deal of deliberation. Venezuela is being subject to a blockade, a blockade that definitavely damages key national industries such as petroleum. The first executive order was issued by President Obama, and six more were issued by President Trump. The Biden-Harris administration refused to lift them so now we are holding national Presidential elections under a blockade. They are also being held in a context of obvious participation by the United States as happened in the past when even Vice President Pence personally intervened in what was an internal matter of our own country.
Venezuela was on the periphery of the western world and a periphery of the United States during the 20th century and the economic model that was implemented here was precisely the oil model which was closely linked to the interests of the Rockefeller group. It’s an economic model from which we have still been unable to properly evolve out of. Venezuela continues to be a blockaded country, this has cost us a very high number of dead people, outwards migration, especially of young people of working age to other countries – among them the United States. The blockade has damaged us much that the nearly $100 billion of oil and other products in the petroluem production chain that we exported in 2012 has been reduced by 96%. These are the conditions that the Venezuelan people are experiencing.
The US relationship with Venezuela has not changed. The fact that a Republican or Democrat has been in power in the US has not had any influence on the relationship. Aggression towards Venezuela has been a shared State policy. This is my perception of the question you asked me.
Do you think that there is any relationship between the reopening of dialogue between the Biden administration and the Maduro government and this month’s presidential elections?
I think that the attempt to reopen the dialogue is part of a larger process. US foreign policy is charecterized by double standards. Often, when the US has said something publicly, it has done something else behind the scenes, that is exactly what is happening today. There is a political group here that is totally aligned with US interests that we call the ultra-right. This ultra-right has had financing from the United States and there have been different aggression programs from the Southern Command, from the State Department, etc., precisely to finance these groups, with the goal of and leading Venezuela into social chaos and civil war.
This is clearer than ever today. I would need a lot of time to explain all the aggression that Venezuela has suffered through different programs – especially from the US Southern Command – and how the State Department has financed these far right groups to the point of having declared Juan Guaidó, who nobody elected, as president. Juan Guaidó was a puppet who was simply used by the United States and its allies to destabilize the country. Fortunately, that episode is now behind us because Venezuelan democratic institutions have prevailed.
The constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has prevailed, but the aggression continues. The fact that we are trying a talk to the Biden administration again does not guarantee anything, especially because Biden is a very questionable president at this moment in the United States due to his senile condition, his senile condition that is widely criticized, even by members of the Democratic Party. So this dialogue underway does not give any guarantees to the Venezuelan people, nor is there an agreed road map as to whether the upcoming elections on July 28 will be accepted by the international community and whether the decision of the Venezuelan people will be duly accepted by these ultra-right groups here in the country or whether this permanent aggression that we have had will continue.
We have seen how hard the times of Donald Trump were, but the executive orders have not been reduced. It was the first executive order by Barack Obama that opened all this, coming after the strategy of coups d’état that began here in the 2000’s, which led to the events of April 11, 2002 and the events of the 2002-2003 oil sabotage, plus all the media and other types of aggression that Venezuela has been subjected to. So there is no guarantee that new round of dialogue will help. I believe that the United States is not going to move from where it is and Venezuela is not going to move from where we are.
So we are simply left with diplomacy and dialogue in the hope to reach agreements for the United States to understand that in Venezuela there is a political reality with which it must, leaving aside sabotaging it, come to some kind of understanding. The Venezuelan government has demonstrated good will to be able to reach an understanding with the United States. We are very close countries, we are all part of America and we really should try to understand each other.
There are many ties that unite the Venezuelan people with the people of the United States. It is only logical that the politicians, the political framework, the establishment in the United States and the national political class reach a framework of understanding for the benefit of both peoples and for the benefit of the two nations, respecting the sovereignty of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Autor: Brian Mier/ACJ
