“This military deployment – which includes B52 long-range bombers, F35 stealth bombers, a nuclear-powered submarine, and the world’s biggest aircraft carrier – is configured for a land attack not an anti-drugs operation.”
By Carol Turner, Labour CND
President Donald Trump announced this weekend that the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered ‘closed in its entirety’. This is the latest move in Trump’s increasingly threatening stance toward the government of President Nicolas Maduro. Venezuela has condemned Trump’s announcement, describing it as a ‘colonialist threat’ to the country’s sovereignty and incompatible with international law.
Reuters reports that US officials contacted for comment by the news agency were ‘surprised’ by Trump’s announcement and ‘unaware of any ongoing US military operations to enforce a closure of Venezuelan airspace’. Neither has the Pentagon issued any statement.
Venezuela Solidarity Campaign is calling for support for an emergency statement, No to Trump’s War on Venezuela, rejecting military escalation and calling for peace, which has attracted the signatures of Richard Burgon and other MPs and trade unionists, and includes Britain’s leading anti-war organisations CND and the Stop the War Coalition.
In the Labour CND podcast below, VSC Secretary Francisco Dominguez joined Carol Turner to discuss the US military encirclement of Venezuela which began in early September. This is the biggest United States military build-up in Latin America since the Cuban Missiles crisis of 1962.
Venezuela has been under sanctions since 2014 for what Congress documents euphemistically say is to ‘hasten a return to democracy’. In March this year, Trump signed an executive order imposing secondary tariffs on all goods coming into the US from any country that imports Venezuelan oil. In August, he authorised the deployment of US troops to Venezuela’s borders, claiming it was an anti-narcotics operation.
This military deployment – which includes B52 long-range bombers, F35 stealth bombers, a nuclear-powered submarine, and the world’s biggest aircraft carrier – is configured for a land attack not an anti-drugs operation. In flagrant disregard of international law, Trump said: ‘we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country.’
Dominguez draws attention to growing fears that US military encirclement of Venezuela could be the first move in a wider military escalation by Trump in Latin America, and warns that the stability introduced by the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco is under threat. This is a nuclear free zone agreement covering Latin America and the Caribbean successfully promoted by Mexico in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Original report at Labour Outlook
You can sign the emergency statement: No to Trump’s War on Venezuela here.
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