US SECRETARY of State Mike Pompeo had a secret meeting last month with prominent American Jewish leaders in which he spilled the beans on the manoeuvrings of US imperialism to effect regime-change in Venezuela and he outlined the determination of the Trump administration to block any possibility of a Corbyn-led Labour government in the UK.
This was revealed in a clandestine tape of his speech leaked to the Washington Post. On Venezuela, Pompeo admitted that the official US narrative, that it is supporting a popular pro-democracy movement against the elected president Nicolas Maduro is a complete fiction.
He admitted that there is no popular movement to oust Maduro, saying that there was no movement ‘worth talking about’. In fact, Pompeo was scathing about the so-called opposition and its leader, the self-declared ‘interim president’ Juan Guaido, admitting that Guaido does not have any popular support amongst the Venezuelan people.
Pompeo went even further when he lamented that the handful of bourgeois ‘oppositionists’ cobbled together by the US are nothing more than a rabble fighting one another over who will grab the spoils if regime-change is achieved.
He said: ‘Our conundrum, which is to keep the opposition united, has proven devilishly difficult. The moment Maduro leaves, everybody’s going to raise their hands and say, “Take me, I’m the next president of Venezuela.” It would be forty-plus people who believe they’re the rightful heir to Maduro.’
The complete failure of US imperialism to orchestrate the overthrow of Maduro was exemplified in the humiliating debacle of a military coup attempt on 30 April led by Guaido which fizzled out before it even began.
Pompeo also candidly admitted that US efforts to conjure up an opposition had been going on long before Maduro was overwhelmingly re-elected as president last May. He said: ‘We were trying to support various religious … institutions to get the opposition to come together … since the day I became CIA director. This was something that was at the centre of what President Trump was trying to do.’
Pompeo made it clear in his speech that the Venezuelan people are not alone in being the subject of attempts at regime-change. The Trump administration is also determined to prevent the election of a Corbyn-led Labour government and intends to try and stop Corbyn from ever becoming prime minister.
Pompeo was recorded saying: ‘It could be that Mr Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get elected. It’s possible. You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.’
His remarks surfaced after Trump’s three-day visit to London where he contemptuously spurned two requests by Corbyn for meetings, saying Corbyn was ‘somewhat of a negative force’ while going out of his way to endorse Boris Johnson as his pick for next UK Prime Minister.
Trump, as Pompeo confirms, will mobilise the US resources, being Labour right-wingers, to dump Corbyn before any election – this is the meaning of Pompeo’s pledge of a ‘push back’ against the Labour leader. That Corbyn pleaded to meet with a man preparing to shaft him politically and dictate who will be Prime Minister proves the political bankruptcy of ‘left’ reformism.
Trump’s rampaging around the world attempting regime changes while waging trade wars with China and the EU is a product of the acute weakness of US capitalism.
In the face of a rapidly developing banking crisis, a crash in industrial production and a US working class taking mass action against low wages and poverty, Trump is forced to fight it out with his capitalist rivals to either destroy them or turn them into servile client states of US capitalism through regime change.
Pompeo’s speech has established that the enemy of the Venezuelan people is the same enemy of the British working class. The only way forward is for British workers to carry out their own regime-change by organising a general strike to bring down the Tory government and go forward to a workers government and socialism.