U.S. Army War College Research Professor R. Evan Ellis, a known policy hitman for the Anglo-American Establishment against Ibero-America, is now assuring anyone in Washington foolish enough to listen, that taking out Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by military force could turn out to be a cakewalk—like Iraq.
In his Sept. 15 piece, “Finally, the Endgame in Venezuela?,” Ellis argues that the combination of the “size and composition” of the U.S. military force deployed in the Caribbean, the demonstrated willingness of the Trump administration “to escalate beyond prior restraints,” and the alleged existence of “a legitimate, elected de jure government” to replace Maduro, has opened a “window of opportunity” to take out Maduro that must be seized quickly, because it will not last long.
Ellis proposes that the “range of options” for the U.S. military runs from “additional, limited strikes all the way to a Just Cause-like operation to bring Maduro and his cronies to justice in the United States like what happened to Manuel Noriega.” The latter refers to George H.W. Bush’s 1989 Christmas Eve invasion of Panama, in which minimally 4,000 and probably more Panamanians were killed. Ellis admits that the U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean today “is not of the size for a long-term occupation of Venezuela or even the type of temporary takeover involved” in the Noriega operation. But, he assures, the $50 million reward offered to anybody facilitating Maduro’s capture will secure enough turncoats to tilt the scales towards the U.S..
The “legitimate government” Ellis alleges is waiting in the wings to be installed in power by U.S. military intervention, refers to Edmundo González Urrutia, the doddering opposition leader currently living in exile in Spain, and the U.S. Project Democracy-asset who controls him, the fiercely neoliberal María Corina Machado. This opposition claims they won the July 2024 national elections—but they too, like the failed U.S.-appointed “President” Juan Guaidó operation of 2019, do not come close to holding any control in Venezuela.
Would there be opposition to the hit? Ellis admits there might be, but he limits that to “a scramble by the country’s numerous criminal actors to grab power for themselves and undermine any establishment of order by a democratic government that could hold them accountable for their crimes”—a government, we repeat again, that does not exist. Russia, China and Cuba might help create chaos, he allows.
Nowhere does he take into consideration the many poor and working people, who along with Venezuelan professionals opposed to foreign rule, have provided the political base for the Hugo Chávez-Maduro governments which have governed the country since 1998. Nor does Ellis take into consideration the political explosion which any U.S. military action against Venezuelan territory—however “limited”—will set off in the rest of the region.
Here’s another reality check: Panama had some 4.4 million people when Bush invaded it. Venezuela has a population of 28.5 million people; estimates of Iraq’s population in 2003 when the U.S. invaded range from 24 to 27 million.
