Bolton Behind Embargo of Venezuela, Russia and China Tension

Aug. 6, 2019 (EIRNS)—In an action bearing National Security Adviser John Bolton’s and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s fingerprints, President Donald Trump late last night issued an Executive Order establishing a total economic blockade of Venezuela. This will block all property of the Venezuelan government in “the jurisdiction of the United States,” and target for secondary sanctions any nation or individual “who provide material support to ... or enable the illegitimate Maduro regime and undermine the National Assembly of Venezuela and interim President Juan Guaidó.”

Aside from killing more Venezuelans, the White House action also ratchets up the geopolitical conflict with Russia and China, governments that have opposed the U.S. war party’s regime change policy for Venezuela and backed a negotiated settlement. Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry called the U.S. action “economic terrorism.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry called it illegal.

Speaking this morning in Peru at the Lima Group-sponsored “International Conference on Democracy in Venezuela,” Bolton declared that it is the “moral imperative” of the U.S. to defend Western Hemisphere “neighbors against any threat, internal or external.” He harkened back to past London-supported U.S. regime-change offensives in Ibero-America to warn that Washington won’t hesitate to repeat them. “Not since an asset freeze against the [Manuel] Noriega government in Panama in 1988, a trade embargo on Nicaragua in 1985, or the comprehensive asset freeze and trade embargo on Cuba in 1962 have we taken this action,” he boasted, the Miami Herald reported.

“In each of these instances, we used robust economic tools against dictatorships.... It worked in Panama, it worked in Nicaragua once, and it will work there again, and it will work in Venezuela and Cuba,” Bolton threatened. He went on that, outside of Cuba, “the U.S. has used similar economic sanctions on the governments of Iran, North Korea and Syria. Now, Venezuela is part of this very exclusive club of rogue states.”

As for Russia and China, Bolton warned them that “your support to the Maduro regime is intolerable, particularly to the democratic regime that will replace Maduro.”