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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14540">https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14540</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Here’s Why Venezuela is the Vietnam of
Our Time</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Celina Della Croce - June
13, 2019<br>
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<p>On April 30, 1975, the United States
learned an important lesson. The capture of
Saigon by the People’s Army of Vietnam
(PAVN)<strong> </strong>would mark the
defeat of the world’s most powerful military
force by an<strong> </strong>army of
guerrilla fighters. No matter the scale of
its military, or the weight of the iron fist
it used to maintain its power, brute force
would not always be enough to win wars. The
guerrillas possessed a key weapon that the
U.S. did not: the support of the people.</p>
<p>The U.S. defeat in Vietnam caused a
cataclysmic shift in its strategy of
warfare, which today has morphed into <em>hybrid
warfare</em>. To avoid another
embarrassing defeat, the United States would
need to win over <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDSmzKcTH00&feature=youtu.be">hearts
and minds</a>. Blowing people to bits
would not be enough. This strategy combines
“conventional” warfare—namely military
force—with “unconventional” warfare—such as
covert campaigns to destabilize the economy
of targeted nations; misinformation
campaigns that spread fake news and pave the
way for intervention; and violent attacks
taking the form of targeted assassinations,
road blockades, and the incitement of
violence.</p>
<p>The result of these hybrid wars is seen
clearly today as a series of right-wing
governments sweeps across Latin America.
Venezuela, however—which borders both Jair
Bolsonaro’s Brazil and Iván Duque’s
Colombia—has remained a sharp thorn in the
side of U.S. imperialism and, consequently,
at the center of U.S.-led hybrid wars. It is
the domino that will not fall.</p>
<p>The unconventional war waged against
Venezuela and its neighbors is a war that
seeks to win over the hearts and minds of
the people, convincing them to voluntarily
(and often enthusiastically) align with the
interests of global capital at their own
expense. It is a battle to shift what
Italian militant <a
href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/the-new-intellectual/">intellectual</a> Antonio
Gramsci would call common sense and to
infiltrate the dominant worldview with the
interests of capital. Writing from a fascist
prison in Italy while World War I raged on,
Gramsci tried to understand why working
people were engaging in an ideology that was
against their best interest. Part of the
answer is a battle over ideology. It is this
battle that the United States has been
unable to win in Venezuela. In the <a
href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/life-and-the-people-have-never-let-us-down-the-twenty-third-newsletter-2019/">words</a><strong> </strong>of
Tricontinental: Institute for Social
Research Director Vijay Prashad, “[t]his
Revolution [has] crafted new hopes for
millions of people, and they will fight
tooth and nail to defend not this or that
reform but the great horizon of freedom that
has opened before them.”</p>
<p>Immense human suffering has been
manufactured to lay the ground for U.S.
intervention. Though U.S. sanctions have
caused <a
href="https://cepr.net/publications/reports/economic-sanctions-as-collective-punishment-the-case-of-venezuela">40,000</a> deaths
in one year alone (from 2017 to 2018), U.S.
and corporate media have put the blame on
the Venezuelan government for the
casualties. In this sense, the ideological
component of the hybrid war against
Venezuela follows a long historical <a
href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/dossier-17-venezuela-and-hybrid-wars-in-latin-america/">trend</a> in
which imperial forces “economically
suffocate the population of non-aligned
countries. Having made them gasp for air,
the imperialists blame the governments
for—effectively—choking themselves.”</p>
<p>In its latest <a
href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/dossier-17-venezuela-and-hybrid-wars-in-latin-america/">dossier</a>,
Tricontinental: Institute for Social
Research details the forms that the hybrid
war in Venezuela has taken. Using a concept
elaborated by political analyst <a
href="https://orientalreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AK-Hybrid-Wars-updated.pdf">Andrew
Korybko</a>, the dossier discusses the aim
of the war to achieve “full spectrum
dominance”; to dominate every aspect of
society including not only “ideological
frameworks but also the full range of human
emotions—how to understand desire and
beauty, values and aesthetics—as well as all
the dimensions of human
survival—organisation of the market and
production.” It is a war, then, to dominate
one’s entire conception of reality. It is a
war that seeks to so thoroughly squeeze the
people of Venezuela that they are forced to
adopt the solutions presented by
imperialism. The iron grip will loosen, the
U.S. promises, so long as they are willing
to sacrifice their sovereignty and submit to
the interests and the direction of the
United States.</p>
<p>The United States is keenly aware of the
legacy left by colonialism, a legacy that it
continues to exploit. Forced for centuries
to develop its economy around the export of
a single primary commodity—oil, in the case
of Venezuela—the country is heavily reliant
on the import of basic consumer goods, such
as food and medicine. This strategy to
exploit the weaknesses and limits of target
governments is squarely in the center of the
strategy of hybrid warfare.</p>
<p>Though the Bolivarian government has taken
measures to increase the national production
of food, they have remained insufficient,
providing a weakness for the U.S. to exploit
in its plan to “make the situation more
critical,” in the words of former chief of
the U.S. Southern Command Kurt Tidd. In his <em>Plan
to Overthrow the Venezuelan Dictatorship:
“Masterstroke,”</em> Tidd details a number
of strategies to this end including inducing
inflation, obstructing imports, discouraging
investors, and creating general instability.
The U.S.’s decision to pour salt in the
wounds of colonialism—if unchecked—will
continue to result in more deaths. According
to the <a
href="https://tinyurl.com/y66627ly">Center
for Economic and Policy Research</a>,
“Food imports have dropped sharply along
with overall imports; in 2018 they were
estimated at just $2.46 billion, as compared
with $11.2 billion in 2013. They can be
expected to plummet further in 2019, along
with imports generally, contributing to
malnutrition and stunting in children.”</p>
<p>This weakness has also left the country
particularly vulnerable to the economic
blockades and sanctions imposed by the
United States, which have induced capital
flight, inflation, and blocked access to
credit and purchasers for its oil. In other <a
href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/dossier-17-venezuela-and-hybrid-wars-in-latin-america/">words</a>,
the U.S. “withdrew the basic tools that the
government could have used to solve the
crisis, and aggravated the suffering of the
Venezuelan people.” The devastating results
of this offensive provide the perfect
opportunity for the United States’ trojan
horse of humanitarian aid—as it has done in <a
href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/dossier-17-venezuela-and-hybrid-wars-in-latin-america/">Haiti</a>—and
lay the ground for a regime change at all
costs.</p>
<p>What is at stake in Venezuela today expands
far beyond the nation’s borders. The country
lies at the crux of a geopolitical war waged
by global capital, with the United States at
its head, to destroy the threat of a
people-centered agenda once and for all. The
U.S. was unable to do this in Vietnam. It
has been unable to do this in Cuba. And, so
far, it has been unable to do this in
Venezuela, though it has not stopped trying.
Not only was Venezuela able to reduce hunger
and inequality and improve the lives of the
many since Chávez’s election, but it has
also been able to offer key support to other
nations who bear the weight of the heavy
fist of the U.S. empire, from <a
href="https://www.salon.com/2019/01/04/the-cuban-revolution-60-years-on_partner/">Cuba</a> to <a
href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/02/19/how-us-strangling-haiti-it-attempts-regime-change-venezuela">Haiti</a>.<strong> </strong>If
the U.S. succeeds in destroying the
Bolivarian government, it will be a blow to
people across the world.</p>
<p>For the U.S., the Bolivarian Revolution in
Venezuela must be destroyed. Maduro must be
delegitimized. The people of Venezuela must
be made to suffer. But, for the majority of
the world’s people, we would do well to
remember the words of Che Guevara reflecting
on Vietnam: “How close and bright would the
future appear if two, three, many Vietnams
flowered on the face of the globe … with
their repeated blows against imperialism,
forcing it to disperse its forces under the
lash of the growing hatred of the peoples of
the world!” Venezuela is today’s Vietnam.</p>
<p><em>This article was produced by </em><a
href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/globetrotter/"><em>Globetrotter</em></a><em>,
a project of the Independent Media
Institute. </em><em>Celina della Croce is
a coordinator at <a
href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/">Tricontinental:
Institute for Social Research</a> as
well as an organizer, activist, and
advocate for social justice. Prior to
joining Tricontinental Institute, she
worked in the labor movement with the
Service Employees Union and the Fight for
15, organizing for economic, racial and
immigrant justice.</em></p>
<p><em>The views expressed in this article are
the author's own and do not necessarily
reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis
editorial staff.</em></p>
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