Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,
Last week President Trump announced that the United States would no longer recognize Nicholas Maduro as president of Venezuela and would recognize the head of its national assembly, Jose Guaido, as president instead. US thus openly backs regime change. But what has long been a dream of the neocons may well turn out to be a nightmare for President Trump.
Why did Trump declare that the Venezuelan president was no longer the president? According to the State Department, the Administration was acting to help enforce the Venezuelan constitution. If only they were so eager to enforce our own Constitution!
It’s ironic that a president who has spent the first two years in office fighting charges that a foreign country meddled in the US elections would turn around and not only meddle in foreign elections but actually demand the right to name a foreign country’s president! How would we react if the Chinese and Russians decided that President Trump was not upholding the US Constitution and recognized Speaker Nancy Pelosi as US president instead?
"I think it’s going to be very difficult [to oust Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro]. I don’t think he’s going to walk away easily, and I think it’s going to end up in violence and could have a civil war. Some countries are lining up with him, but we’ve been antagonizing and threatening him and decide that we are going to install a president for them. And I would think even the people that might not like Maduro shouldn’t like us settling the dispute. It’s internal; they should settle it. And I think it’s rather ironic for our government to say that they want to take care of Venezuela because they’re not democratic, and we have to take care of it by, you know, the authoritarian approach of us installing a president and having a coup and threatening them with military violence because they’re not democratic enough. I would hardly say that our position is very democratic."
Even those who would like to see a change of government in Venezuela should reject any notion that the change must be “helped” by the United States. According to press reports, Vice President Mike Pence was so involved in internal Venezuelan affairs that he actually urged Guaido to name himself president and promised US support. This is not only foolish, it is very dangerous. A Venezuelan civil war would result in mass death and even more economic misery!
Regime change has long been US policy for Venezuela. The US has been conducting economic warfare practically since Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, was first elected in 1998. The goal of US sanctions and other economic measures against Venezuela (and other countries in Washington’s crosshairs) is to make life so miserable for average citizens that they rise up and overthrow...