EIR held an Emergency Roundtable Dialogue on Thursday, Nov. 20 on the increasingly dangerous situation in the Caribbean.
As a powerful American military strike force gathers in the Caribbean—including the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group, as well as joint military maneuvers with Trinidad & Tobago from Nov. 16-21—U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced in a Nov. 13 post on social media that the Trump administration is seeking not only regime-change against the Nicolás Maduro government in Venezuela, but that all of “the Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood—and we will protect it.” The spurious justification of this dangerous breach of international law is to allegedly “stop the drug trade.”
President Donald Trump has received sharp warnings from friends of the United States that, should he authorize military action against Venezuela, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others loudly propose, he will be dragged into yet another “forever” war, just like Afghanistan, but on a larger scale. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) issued a statement on Nov. 5 which warned:
We are deeply concerned about where the United States seems to be headed in its Venezuela policy and urge you to demand that the Intelligence Community give you clear, unfiltered, `truth-to-power’ analysis.…
Flying blind into an unprovoked war against a Latin American government, even one weakened by years of U.S. `maximum-pressure’ sanctions, risks a conflagration that could draw Russia into the conflict and offers zero probability of establishing a legitimate, pro-U.S. successor government….
We have seen this before—during numerous intelligence and foreign policy debacles, including the fake allegations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And we remember the disastrous consequences for the country and its leaders.
On Oct. 25 ten former heads of state and government from the Caribbean nations of Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago issued a joint statement titled “Our Caribbean Space: A Zone of Peace on Land, Sea & Airspace Where the Rule of Law Prevails.” In it they “are impelled to urge a pull back from military build up to avoid any diminution of peace, stability and development within our regional space that has the potential to pull the region into conflicts which are not of our making.” They added that “CARICOM Governments, over the long sweep of time, have sought, and responded positively, to collaborative agreements to combat these nefarious activities [e.g. narco-trafficking], but consistent with our sovereignty, international law and intrinsic rights.”
There are also broader global implications of this crisis that go well beyond the Caribbean. We are descending internationally into the law of the jungle. Washington has stated that it opposes China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the BRICS, which the nations of the Global South find attractive because China actually helps them build infrastructure—which Wall Street, the City of London and the IMF do not. But the U.S. has no reason to fear the BRI and the BRICS, and should instead cooperate with them in building those great projects. This approach could rapidly develop the entire Caribbean Basin region, and stop the real narco-trafficking and related migrant problems that will only be worsened by an attack on Venezuela.
The event had the participation of a number of distinguished international experts, including:
Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), EIR Editor-in-Chief
Diego Sequera (Venezuela), researcher and columnist for misionverdad.com
Donald Ramotar (Guyana), former President of Guyana
Ray McGovern (U.S.), former CIA analyst, co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professions for Sanity (VIPS)
Beto Almeida (Brazil), Director of Telesur; Advisory Board, Brazilian Press Association
Dennis Small (U.S.), EIR Ibero-American Editor
Commentators: Morella Barreto López (Venezuela), historian and Venezuelan diplomat;
Diane Sare (U.S.) former candidate for U.S. Senate from New York
A more full report on the event proceedings is forthcoming.
This article has been updated as of Nov. 21.
