PRESIDENT Trump, in his latest speech on restarting the Afghan war, made it clear he is not just interested in ‘killing terrorists’.
He insisted: ‘We are going to participate in economic development to help defray the cost of this war to us,’ proposing that India joins the US in robbing the Afghans of their natural resources and, no doubt, sending some of the loot back home to try to keep the US workers quiet.
This task has now been handed over to the generals who are at the centre of the Trump regime. Meanwhile, US Vice President Mike Pence has taken over where Trump left off. He has just pledged that the United States will not allow the ‘collapse of Venezuela’ and will use ‘economic and diplomatic power’ to restore ‘democracy’ in the South American nation.
However, everybody knows that with millions of Venezuelan workers and youth supporting the left military regime of President Maduro, more will be needed than ‘pro-democracy’ phrases. Pence continued: ‘The collapse of Venezuela will endanger all who call the Western Hemisphere home. We cannot and will not let that happen.’
What he means is that if the US does not take full advantage of the fall in oil prices that has undermined and weakened the Venezuelan government, and take decisive action in a situation where the right wing opposition is still not powerful enough to overthrow Maduro, the US ruling class could well rue the missed opportunity, and pay a huge political price throughout Latin America as Venezuela recovers, and the regime is seen to have successfully defied the US.
In fact, the US Vice President’s comments come days after Trump told reporters a ‘military operation, a military option, is certainly something we could pursue’ in Venezuela.
It has gigantic oil resources that the US ruling class is desperate to get its hands on, and to use some of it, no doubt, to try to buy off the US working class at home. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has responded to the Trump-Pence threats by stating that Latin American countries must be safeguarded from foreign intervention.
He means that after a Venezuela intervention the whole of South America would be fair game for the US. In fact, Maduro has responded defiantly to the US threats, saying that America will experience 15 times as many difficulties as it suffered in the Vietnam War if it attacks his country.
Venezuela has been reeling from unrest for several months in a crisis caused by shortages of food, medicine and hyperinflation, caused by the oil collapse. Pence, on Wednesday, blamed President Maduro for Venezuela’s woes, arguing he has taken the oil-rich country on a path from ‘prosperity to poverty’.
With the US ruling class split and divided, with US workers saying that American capitalism has betrayed them and sold their jobs, and with street battles between neo-fascists and US workers and youth taking place in the streets of US cities, Pence has the cheek to lecture Venezuela on democracy.
‘This is not the fate the Venezuelan people have chosen. No free people has ever chosen to walk the path from prosperity to poverty,’ he said. Venezuela has gone in the opposite direction – toward dictatorship, not democracy, toward oppression, not freedom,’ he continued.
Pence is actually describing the path that the US ruling class is taking both at home and abroad under the Trump-Pence regime. The fact of the matter is that the US ruling class is being forced to attempt the pillaging of the planet to try to keep the peace at home.
In fact, the opposite will happen. There will be a massive opposition to any attack by US imperialism on Venezuela, and millions of workers will take to the streets of the US and the world in defence of the people of Venezuela.
It is capitalism and imperialism that is taking the entire world from prosperity to the most acute poverty. There is only one way out of this crisis. This is through the organisation of the victory of the worldwide socialist revolution to replace capitalism and imperialism with worldwide socialism.