The Coup Has Failed & Now the U.S. Is Looking to Wage War: Venezuelan Foreign Minister Speaks Out
Venezuela’s opposition is calling on the United States and allied nations to consider using military force to topple the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
We discussed in the previous article how China and Russia are using diplomatic, economic and military means in areas like Asia and the Middle East to contain the belligerence and chaos unleashed by the United States. In this analysis, we will examine the extent to which this strategy is working in Europe. In the next and final article, we will look at the consequences of the “America First” doctrine in relation to South America and the Monroe Doctrine.
The United States has in the last three decades brought chaos and destruction to large parts of Europe, in spite of the common myth that the old continent has basked in the post-WWII peace of the American-led world order. This falsehood is fueled by European politicians devoted to the European Union and eager to justify and praise the European project. But history shows that the United States fueled or directed devastating wars on the European continent in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, with the conflict between Georgia and Ossetia at the beginning of the 1990s, with the war in Georgia in 2008, and in the coup in Ukraine in 2014, with the ensuing aggression against the Donbass.
The major problem for Washington's European allies has always been summoning the will to contain US imperialism. For many years, especially since the end of the Cold War, European countries have preferred to defer to Washington's positions, confirming their status as colonies rather than allies. It is fundamental to recognize that European politicians have always been at the service of Washington, eager to prostrate themselves to American exceptionalism, favoring US interests over European ones.
The wars on the European continent are a clear demonstration of how Washington used Europe to advance her own interests. The abiding goal of the neocons and the Washington establishment has been to deny any possibility of a rapprochement between Germany and Russia, something that could potentially result in a dangerous axis threatening Washington's interests. The war of aggression against Yugoslavia represented the deathblow to the Soviet republics, an effort to banish the influence of Moscow on the continent. The subsequent war in Ossetia, Georgia and Ukraine had the double objective of attacking and weakening the Russian Federation as well as creating a hostile climate for Moscow in Europe, limiting economic and diplomatic contacts between East and West.
In recent years, especially following the coup in Ukraine, the return of Crimea to the Russian Federation, and Kiev’s terrorist action against the Donbass, relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated to historically low levels.
The election of Trump has sent confusing signals to the Europeans vis-a-vis Russia. Initially Trump seemed intent on establishing good relations with Putin in the face of strong opposition from European allies like France, Germany and the UK. But the possibility of a US-Russia rapprochement has been severely undermined by a combination of Trump’s inexperience, the unhelpful advisors he has appointed, and the US deep state. This geopolitical upheaval has had two primary consequences. For the Germans, first and foremost, it has deepened energy and economic cooperation with Moscow, especially in relation to the Nord Stream 2. But on the other hand, Trump has found friends in European countries hostile to Russia like Poland.
The divergences between the US and Europe have widened with Washington’s withdrawal from a number of important treaties like the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) and Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal, both of which have a direct impact on Europe in terms of security and the economy. Donald Trump and his “America First” attitude has thereby afforded Europeans some space to maneuver and establish some level of autonomy, resulting in increasing synergies with Moscow and especially Beijing.
In economic terms, China has offered Europe (with Greece as a prime example) full integration into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a project with vast possibilities for increasing trade among dozens of countries. Europe will become the main market for Chinese goods, but at the moment one of the greatest obstacles to be overcome can be seen in the freight trains, which often start their journey towards Europe full but are half-empty on their return journey to China. Beijing and the major European capitals are well aware that to make the BRI project economically sustainable, this exchange must go in both directions so that both sides gain.
The technological interconnection between China and Europe is already happening thanks to Huawei devices that are being purchased by European companies in increasing numbers. The absence of back doors in Huawei systems, in contrast to what Snowden has shown with other Western systems, is the real reason why Washington has declared war on this Chinese company. Industrial espionage is a priceless advantage enjoyed by the United States, and the presence of backdoors on Western systems, to which the CIA and NSA have access, guarantees a competitive advantage allowing Washington to excel in terms of technology. With the spread of Huawei systems this advantage is lost, to the chagrin of Washington's spy apparatus. European allies understand the potential advantage to be gained and are protecting themselves with the Chinese systems.
In technological terms, Beijing's efforts are proving very successful in Europe and are paving the way for future physical integration in the BRI. In this sense, the participation of such European countries as the UK, France, Germany and Italy in the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) also shows how the prospect of Chinese capital investments are of great interest to troubled European economies.
In the military field, the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty threatens the safety of European countries because of the measures adopted by the Russian Federation to guarantee necessary protection from US systems deployed in Europe. A proverb states that when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. Europe, as the potential battlefield in any great-power confrontation, has the most to lose from a renewed cold war that could turn hot. Moscow’s revelation of its new generation of weapons has caused anxiety among Europeans who worry that their lives may be sacrificed in order to please Americans who are thousands of miles away. At the same time, the Americans want to get rid of NATO while demanding that the Europeans spend more on American weapons and also limit Sino-Russian investments in Europe. It is likely that the breakdown of the INF Treaty, combined with the conventional and nuclear capabilities of Moscow, will boost diplomatic talks between Russia and Europe without the US being able to sabotage future agreements. Some European countries are keen to be rid of the policy of subordinating their interests to that of Washington, especially with regards to security.
Russia cleverly uses two decisive instruments to limit Washington's influence on Europe and contain the chaos produced by its foreign-policy establishment. Firstly, it has the strength of its own conventional and nuclear arsenal that acts as a deterrent against excessive provocations. Secondly, it has huge deposits of oil and LNG that it exports to the European market in considerable quantities. The combination of these two factors allows Moscow to contain the chaos unleashed by the US in such places as Georgia or Ukraine as well as limit US influence on internal European affairs, as can be seen in the case of Germany and the Nord Stream 2 project. Merkel is forced to concede that in spite of her demonisation of Moscow, Berlin cannot do away with Russia’s supply of energy. This has increased tensions between Berlin and Washington, with the US eager to replace Russian gas with its own much more expensive LNG shipped all the way across the Atlantic.
Chinese economic power, combined with Russia’s military deterrence as well as European reliance on Russia for its energy supply, shows that Europe cannot afford to follow its American ally in acting provocatively against the Sino-Russian axis. Europe has, moreover, suffered from US wars in the Middle East and the waves of migrants brought on by this. Small shoots of strategic autonomy can be seen in the creation of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), an alternative payment system to the dollar to work around sanctions against Iran. The little or no diplomatic support extended to Ukraine’s anti-Russia stance by France and Germany could be seen as another sign of the Europeans becoming more independent. The recent Munich Security Conference, with Poroshenko in attendance, further confirmed that Merkel intends to rely on Russian gas supplies in the interests of energy diversification.
The combined diplomatic, military and economic actions of Russia and China in Europe are decidedly more limited and effective in Europe compared to other parts of the world like the Middle East and Asia. Political rhetoric, amplified by the media, that is against cooperation between Europe, Russia and China, only serves the interests of the United States. Russia and China are succeeding by proposing viable alternatives to Washington’s unipolar world order, extending to European countries a strategic liberty that would otherwise not be available to them in a Washington-directed unipolar world order.
It is still not clear whether the European capitals are turning to Moscow out of anti-Trump rather than anti-American sentiment. It remains to be seen whether these changes are temporary and await the return to the US presidency of someone who believes in liberal hegemony, or whether the changes underway are the first in a series of upheavals that will progressively reshape the world order from unipolar to multipolar, with Europe clearly being one of the main poles.
Are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton and (farcically titled) Special Envoy for Restoring Democracy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams agents of influence for Russia and China? The idea has a lot more going for it than most of the ridiculous paranoia sweeping Washington over the past years.
If Russia and China really wanted to subvert the national security of the United States, they would seek to plunge Washington into a completely new, open-ended war with no practical resolution in sight on another continent far away from either of them where the United States itself had absolutely no major strategic interests at all, apart from fantasies of domination and greed.
Such a war would also serve the purpose of burning up an increasing share of the defense budget that otherwise could be spent on modernizing the US armed forces.
Repeated congressional testimony over the past two years by Service chiefs confirms that these forces remain woefully aging and out of date despite record size defense budgets. This is testimony to the incompetence, corruption and sheer wastefulness of the military-industrial-congressional-complex (MICC).
Most of all, such a war would weaken the US armed forces and distract them from what is now supposed to be their primary strategic goal, as set out by the Trump administration itself of focusing on great power competition, primarily with Russia and China.
The sudden obsession with provoking a full-scale military confrontation with Venezuela does not fit this ambitious agenda: Instead it subverts it and guarantees US failure and defeat.
Pompeo and Bolton appear to have successfully sold the Venezuela adventure to President Donald Trump on the grounds of eliminating Russia’s main friendly nation in the Western hemisphere that has hosted flights by Tuploev160 supersonic “White Swan” nuclear strike aircraft, the best strategic bombers in the world.
However, it is clear that Trump was sold a bill of goods and that Bolton and Pompeo are energetically pushing for mission creep to eventually insert major US military forces in Venezuela to topple legitimate President Nicolas Maduro and replace him with the farcical National Assembly Speaker Juan Guiado.
The US Fourth Fleet has been activated in the Caribbean and Bolton has been preparing to deploy thousands of US ground forces in neighboring Columbia – which incidentally continues to pose a far greater threat to US national security by its cocaine production and exports than Venezuela has ever done.
But why are they doing it? Venezuela’s vast oil supplies certainly make a tempting target. But previous US efforts at regime change, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven woefully incompetent in securing control of their victims’ strategic resources, much less organizing them for profit.
The British Empire – which seized and ran Iran’s oil resources for more than 40 years from 1911 to 1953 and Iraq’s from 1918 to 1958 – proved vastly more efficient in its day at arranging such matters.
On the other hand, the recklessness and indeed plain stupidity of charging into Venezuela and risking opening up an endless war in a tropical jungle environment for the first time in half a century since Vietnam ought to be obvious to the National Security Adviser of the United States.
US forces remain overstretched and exhausted, caught up in major unending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and sucked into highly dangerous commitments in Georgia and Ukraine and the Baltic States any of which could escalate through recklessness or sheer incompetence into global war.
The US armed forces desperately need a time of peace and retrenchment such as they enjoyed under President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s and President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to rest, recover and re-equip themselves. But Bolton, with his usual explosive cocktail combination of recklessness, gambling and hard-charging ignorance is not giving them that.
Bolton and his neocon coconspirators have always narcissistically prided themselves on being strategic “geniuses” much as Wile E Coyote, the endlessly hapless comic buffoon of the classic Warner Brothers Road Runner cartoons always did. Instead, in reality they have always been catastrophic clowns who did not have a clue what they were stumbling into. Venezuela is repeating that classic nightmare pattern.
A quarter of a millennium ago, a real strategic genius King Frederick the Great (Friedrich der Gross) of Prussia cautioned, “He who tries to defend everything defends nothing.”
One hundred and twenty years ago, the masters of the British Empire preserved their far-flung domains by applying the same principle: They settled all their outstanding differences with Russia and Japan in order to focus on the one primary existential threat arising for them with Imperial Germany’s construction of a new High Seas Fleet.
However, Bolton, Pompeo and their minions are deaf to such precedents. They reckon themselves far wiser than old King Frederick or than Winston Churchill, who appealed in vain through the 1930s for Britain to forge an alliance with the Soviet Union and resolve its differences with Italy in order to focus on the one true threat to everyone – Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime in Germany.
Getting involved in Venezuela does much more to weaken US power in Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and the Middle East than anything the governments of Russia, China and Iran combined could come up with, even if they wanted to. It is a classic case of strategic overstretch and dissipation of effort.
Bolton and his friends have become victims of their own rhetoric, drunk on their own mad delusions. They really believe that the United States has become an eternal hyper-power, virtually omnipotent and inexhaustible – able to project limitless power in every direction simultaneously.
Friedrich Nietzsche was right: Those who the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Die CIA benutzt die Türkei, um Druck auf China auszuüben
von Thierry Meyssan
Während die Türkei sich wirtschaftlich China angenähert hatte, um ihre Wirtschaftskrise zu lösen, hat sie, auf falschen Informationen basierend, öffentlich die Unterdrückung der Uiguren angeprangert. Peking hat darauf sehr trocken reagiert. Nachdem Daesch im Irak und in Syrien verschwunden ist, geschieht alles so, als ob Ankara die geheimen Aktionen im Auftrag der CIA wieder aufnähme, diesmal aber in Singkiang.
Seit mehreren Wochen erwähnt die türkische Presse das Schicksal der Uiguren, diese türkischsprachige und muslimische Bevölkerung Chinas. Die politischen Oppositionsparteien der Türkei, einschließlich der kemalistischen, haben die Unterdrückung dieser Minderheit und ihrer Religion durch die Han in allen Formen angeprangert.
Die Aufregung kommt von: dem Bericht der Jamestown Foundation über die „73 chinesischen Geheimgefängnisse“. [1] ; der Kampagne von Radio Free Asia, das zahlreiche Interviews mit ehemaligen Häftlingen der chinesischen Lager ausgestrahlt hat und soweit gegangen ist, zu behaupten, dass China den Koran (sic) verbiete [2] ; der Kampagne, die durch die Vereinigten Staaten und ihre Verbündeten im Genfer Rat der Menschenrechte am 13. November 2018 gegen die Repression des Islam in China gestartet wurde [3] ; der Anhörung in Washington am 28. November 2018 von Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) und Kongressmitglied Chris Smith (R-NJ) vor der gemeinsamen Exekutiven Kongresskommission für China (Congressional-Executive Commission on China - CCCB) über "die Unterdrückung von Religionen durch die chinesische kommunistische Partei“ [4]. Man vernahm dort, dass 1 bis 3 Millionen Uiguren elektrischer Folter in Umerziehungslagern ausgesetzt würden. Diese Anschuldigungen sind von Amnesty International und Human Rights Watch übernommen worden.
In diesem Zusammenhang hat der Sprecher des türkischen Ministeriums für auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Hami Aksoy, am 9. Februar 2019 eine Erklärung abgegeben, die offiziell die „Chinesifizierung (...) der ethnischen, religiösen und kulturellen Identitäten der Uigurischen Türken“ und den Tod hinter Gittern des berühmten Dichters Abdurehim Heyit anprangerte, der dort "acht Jahre“ Gefängnisstrafe „für eines seiner Lieder absaß“. [5].
Diese Stellungnahme hat wie ein Donnerschlag zwischen Ankara und Peking eingeschlagen: seitdem Präsident Donald Trump der türkischen Wirtschaft die US-Unterstützung entzogen hatte, wandte sich das Land im August 2018 China zu, und kann ohne es nicht mehr auskommen.
Am nächsten Abend veröffentlichte China ein Video von 26 Sekunden von dem angeblichen Toten. Er sagte darin: „Mein Name ist Abdurehim Heyit. Heute ist der 10. Februar 2019. Ich bin in einem Untersuchungs-Verfahren wegen Verdacht auf Verstoß gegen nationale Gesetze. Ich bin jetzt bei guter Gesundheit und ich bin nie gefoltert worden.“
Zwei Tage später, am 11. Februar, unternahm der Sprecher des chinesischen Ministeriums für auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Hua Chunying, eine strenge Kritik der "Fehler" und der "Verantwortungslosigkeit" der Türkei [6].
Wenn die Freiheitsstrafen von mindestens 10.000 an terroristischen Aktivitäten beteiligten Uiguren auch bescheinigt sind, stimmt die Zahl von 1 bis 3 Millionen von Gefangenen absolut nicht.
Bereits am 1. Juni 2017 und am 13. Dezember 2018 hatte die chinesische Regierung zwei Dokumente veröffentlicht, das eine über die Menschenrechte in Singkiang [7] und das andere über den Schutz der Kultur und der Entwicklung in Singkiang [8].
Islamistische Häftlinge im Entradikalisierungs-Lager von Lop.
Die kommunistische Partei weiß allerdings nicht so richtig, wie sie den politischen Islam behandeln soll. Sie geht dieses Problem mit ihrer besonderen Vergangenheit an, der der Kulturrevolution und des Verbots nicht des Islam, sondern aller Religionen. Nach der Einführung der Religions-Freiheit, sieht sie die Spaltungen des Bürgerkrieges wieder auftauchen, und die Vermehrung der Dschihad-Attentate [9]. Am 1. Februar 2018 hat sie eine neue religiöse Politik eingeführt, die darauf abzielt, den Islam durch das Unterdrücken bestimmter Identitäts-Praktiken zu assimilieren [10]. So sollen die Parteimitglieder ein Beispiel geben, indem sie sich weigern Halal zu essen. Nichtsdestotrotz gibt es 24400 Moscheen, die in Singkiang für die 13 Millionen Muslime offenstehen.
Seit fünfundzwanzig Jahren fordern uigurische Organisationen, einen unabhängigen Staat zu schaffen, ein zuerst weltliches und nunmehr „islamisches“ (im politischen Sinn und nicht im religiösen der Muslim-Bruderschaft), Ost-Turkestan (nach dem mittelalterlichen Namen von Singkiang). Sofort haben sie von der Unterstützung der CIA gegen die Behörden von Peking profitiert.
Im Jahr 1997 wurde die islamische Bewegung von Ost-Turkestan (MITO) gegründet und ging nach Afghanistan zu den Taliban und einigen Al-Kaida-Elementen, um sich auszubilden. Sie kommt aus dem politischen Islam und wird direkt von der CIA finanziert. Im September 2004 wird eine "Regierung des Ost-Turkestan im Exil" in Washington von Anwar Yusuf Turani gegründet. Sie stellt das Bündnis der Kuomintang mit dem Dalai Lama und Taiwan aus der Zeit des chinesischen Bürgerkrieges (1927-1950) wieder her. Im November des gleichen Jahres ist in München ein Weltkongress der Uiguren entstanden, dessen Präsident Rebiya Kadeer ist. Er fördert den ethnischen Separatismus. Diese letzten beiden Entitäten werden vom National Endowment for Democracy, einer Agentur der "fünf Augen", finanziert [11].
Schwere Unruhen sind in Singkiang ausgebrochen, zuerst im Februar 1997 und dann im Juli 2009. Die Demonstranten forderten sowohl den uigurischen Separatismus, den Anti-Kommunismus der Kuomintang, als auch den politischen Islam.
Peking hat wieder Ruhe hergestellt, indem es den Uiguren gewisse Privilegien gewährte, wie z. B. durch die Aufgabe der (jetzt aufgegebenen)) ein-Kind-Politik [12].
Die US-amerikanische Kampagne gegen die Unterdrückung der Uiguren scheint den Investitionen von Erik Prince, Gründer von Blackwater, bei den Behörden von Singkiang zu widersprechen [13]. Aber Prince ist nicht nur der wichtigste, auf die Erstellung von Privatarmeen spezialisierte Geschäftsmann, er ist auch der Bruder von Betsy DeVos, Bildungsministerin von Donald Trump. Seine Sicherheitsagenten sollen Söldner im Auftrag des Bingtuan sein, einer Han-Miliz des Singkiang.
In den 1990er Jahren, als der aktuelle Präsident der Türkei Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Chef der Islamischen Gemeinschaft Milli Görüs war und zugleich Bürgermeister von Istanbul, stellte er eine Rückzugsbasis für verschiedene terroristische islamistische Bewegungen zur Verfügung, egal ob sie Tataren, Tschetschenen oder Uiguren waren [14].
Deshalb stellt sich nun die Frage: ist die türkische Anweisung gegen die Han-Unterdrückung der Uiguren eine einfache interne Positionierung, um sich nicht von den Oppositionsparteien überwältigen zu lassen, oder ist sie eine neue Politik des Staates, in Übereinstimmung mit den bisherigen Rollen von Präsident Erdoğan im Terroristen-Apparat der CIA?
Die islamische Bewegung des Ost-Turkestan (MITO) war während des Krieges gegen Syrien, mit der Unterstützung des türkischen Geheimdienstes (MİT), sehr aktiv. Seit vielen Monaten leben 18000 Uiguren (davon mindestens 5000 Dschihadisten-Kämpfer) von der Welt abgeschlossen in al-Zambari, in einer syrischen Stadt an der türkischen Grenze des Gouvernorat Idlib. Sie halten dort ihre Stellung mit Hilfe von deutschen und französischen Spezialeinheiten [15].
Während Präsident Donald Trump ein kommerzielles Tauziehen mit Peking unternimmt, geschieht alles so, als ob eine Versöhnung zwischen der CIA und der Türkei für die Wiederaufnahme der geheimen Aktionen gegen China erreicht wurde.
[4] Diese in 2001 gegründete Kommission, besteht aus 15 Mitgliedern: 5 für den Senat und 5 für das Repräsentantenhaus und 5 für die Bundesregierung. Die Trump-Administration hat keine Persönlichkeiten dorthin ernannt.
[11] Die "fünf Augen" sind ein militärisches Bündnis, das während des zweiten Weltkriegs gegründet wurde, in dem Australien, Kanada, die USA, Neu-Seeland und das Vereinigte Königreich versammelt sind. Es verwaltet sowohl das Echelon Abhörsystem, als auch die "Demokratieförderung".
China in Europa. Ist die europäische Industrie gefährdet?
Abendveranstaltung , 19:00–21:00 Uhr
Darüber diskutieren wir am Freitag, dem 26. April 2019, 19.00 Uhr, im MEZ, Spielhagenstraße 13, 10585 Berlin-Charlottenburg, nahe U-Bhf. Bismarckstraße (U2 und U7) und Bus 109.
dem Bericht der Jamestown Foundation über die „73 chinesischen Geheimgefängnisse“. [1] ;
