When known operatives of the financiers’ war party insist the United States must use whatever force necessary to overthrow Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, you know you are looking at a disaster in the making. On Nov. 13, the NATO-serving Atlantic Council assembled two panels of dubious “experts” to make the case for forcible regime change in Venezuela. And why? First and foremost, to drive China and its Belt and Road Initiative out of the Western Hemisphere. The anti-drug pretext was mentioned, but stopping drugs is not the real aim of this game.
Leading the pack were former U.S. Southern Command head Gen. Laura Richardson, infamous in the region for her repeated assertions that “Latin America’s resources are our resources,” and Elliott Abrams, notorious for his central role in George Bush, Sr.’s arms-for-drugs Iran-Contra operation. Other speakers worthy of note were former Green Beret Daniel Elkins, founder of the Special Operations Association of America, and the Atlantic Council’s Alex Gray, who served in the National Security Council in the first Trump administration.
General Richardson appears more concerned about China building much-needed infrastructure in Ibero-America—which she views as a security threat to the U.S.—than illegal narcotics trafficking. For her, the primary threat is the “axis of aggressors” (China, Russia, Iran), a phrase she repeated at least five times, with which Venezuela has purportedly allied. Venezuela, she acknowledged, has more military capability than most countries in Latin America, including, she said, 120,000 under arms in the Armed Forces, 100,000 in reserves, around 120,000 in the National Guard, and 4.5 million people in the militias, some provided with MANPAD missiles, and some Russian military equipment, but she assured listeners all that is old and nothing like the force the U.S. has assembled in the region.
