U.S. Failed To Install the Pro-US Opposition in Venezuela

Guillaume Long, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador and currently a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told me that “regime change (meaning getting the pro-US opposition into power) failed in Venezuela, because there have been so many US-supported failed coup attempts in Venezuela in the last few years, that there is literally no one left to organize and support a coup attempt.” That means that to pull off complete regime change would have required a military uprising or coup in Venezuela that the U.S. could support. Leo Grande told me that Machado’s hardline approach made her “the least acceptable to the armed forces.” “Trying to impose her,” he said, “would be very risky.” Tinker Salas told me that Machado is both “unacceptable to the military and the police forces” and to the ruling PSUV party structure. So, despite framing the regime change as, amongst other things, a defense of democracy and the removal of a strong man who had held on to power illegitimately, the Trump administration side lined the opposition they said won the last election and assessed that their aims in Venezuela were best achieved by working, through economic and military coercion, with the vice president and inner circle of Maduro’s government.

Author: Ted Snider

---