VENEZUELAN President Nicolas Maduro said yesterday that he will not betray his country by yielding to Washington’s plan for regime change in Caracas, adding that he will not let history remember him as a traitor.
In an exclusive interview with RT Spanish, he said: ‘I’m not going to be a traitor, a weak one, like a man who turned his back on his historic commitments to his people.
‘I take advantage of every means of communication to ask the whole world to denounce and stop the madness of Donald Trump. Venezuela is never going to give in.’
Maduro said that Venezuela’s vast natural resources have made it a prime target for the Washington-backed regime change. He asked: ‘What is Donald Trump’s “casus belli” against Venezuela? … it is the oil of Venezuela, the riches of Venezuela, its gold, gas, iron, diamonds, and other vast material riches.’
Maduro warned previously that Trump would be responsible for a bloody conflict that would mirror the war in Vietnam if he gets militarily involved in Venezuela.
He said that ‘hyperinflation caused tremendous damage to us,’ and he suggested that the resources ‘kidnapped by the world’ through its sanctions should be returned at once to fight it.
On Monday, Maduro also pledged that the country’s military will do its best to prevent a possible foreign invasion of Venezuela. ‘No one, including aggressor soldiers, will enter Venezuela, I assure you. We have the armed forces capable of protecting the country!’
Responding to Trump’s recent remarks that a US military intervention in Venezuela remains ‘an option’, Maduro said that ‘talking about war in the 21st century is madness.’
Describing Trump’s remarks as ‘illegal and criminal’ Maduro continued: ‘It is insane to think that you can send troops to this land that will defend itself.’ He revealed that Venezuela’s ‘right-wing conspirators’ were applauding Trump and asking him for a military invasion of their own homeland. Maduro said that the ‘oil and natural resources of our beloved Motherland’ are the reason Trump would seek ‘to declare war against Venezuela.’
He urged ‘Stop! Stop Trump! Hold it right there! You are making mistakes that will leave your hands covered in blood and you will leave the presidency stained with blood. Why would you want a repeat of Vietnam?’
In fact, the motive force behind the US drive to war and regime change in Venezuela is the rapidly developing economic and political crisis of the imperialist powers and their worldwide capitalist system. The US, the UK and the EU are gripped by fear of the developing banking collapse, which is being preceded by a ferocious trade war.
This developing crisis has already seen millions of workers in the UK reject the EU and all the major political parties, with their vote to leave the EU, and has seen millions of workers take to the streets in France, Greece, Italy, and now Germany, against the policies of the EU leaders that have pauperised them and terrorised them with super-austerity.
It is this world crisis that is driving the US ruling class to war in Venezuela, and it is this crisis that has seen the UK and the leading EU states, France and Germany, leap aboard the US war chariot. The workers of the world, in particular the workers of the US, UK, France and Germany, must not only stand alongside Venezuela, they must force their trade unions to declare that any imperialist attack on Venezuela will be met with political general strikes to bring down the criminal ruling classes and stop their war against the Venezuelan people.
In the UK, the trade unions must make the Corbyn-led Labour Party support Venezuela or else die of shame. This is the way forward. The only way to deal with the developing world crisis is to carry out the world socialist revolution to smash capitalism and imperialism and bring in worldwide socialism!
