Venezuela

The adverse impact of an invasion of Venezuela on the empire and their allies

If their inexorable invasion takes place, the empire would be on the road to generating a gigantic Vietnam in our region.

Carlos E. Lippo

02/03/2018

Opinión

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“Any idea born of impatience and destined to obtain a quick victory is only a big error. It was necessary to win many small struggles to convert them to a great victory”

--General Vo Nguyen Giap, great leader of the Vietnamese epic.

One of the first occasions on which Comandante Chávez pointed out that the Bolivarian Revolution was peaceful and democratic but not disarmed, was on April 13, 2003. It was in his speech at the closing session of the “Forum with the revolution”[1], an international event that brought together political and social leaders from the five continents, celebrated in Caracas to commemorate the first anniversary of the victory of the Bolivarian Revolution over the coup mongers of April 11, 2002.

On this occasion, he also pointed out that the same phrase had already been pronounced in a broadcast on the national media chain, in response to an opposition leader who had said that they would apply to Chávez the formula that was applied to Allende. And precisely, Chávez never tired of saying that what was lamentable in the revolutionary process led by Salvador Allende in Chile, at the beginning of the 1970s, was not that it was peaceful and democratic, but that it was disarmed.

This early warning by Chávez went unheard, both by the empire and their puppets of the Venezuelan counter-revolution, who have spent nearly two decades trying to defenestrate the Bolivarian Revolution, thus underestimating the potentialities of our civil-military union. Nevertheless, the Pentagon chiefs took early steps to cease arms sales to Venezuela, as well as placing obstacles on the sale of any military or similar equipment, manufactured by any of their NATO allies, as is the case of the sale of transport aircraft and patrol launches of dual use contracted with the Spanish government [2].

There is the emblematic case of the failure to honour the contracts derived from the acquisition of F-16 aircraft purchased from the US in the 1980s through contracts that guaranteed the supply of parts during their useful life. This was denounced publicly by the Comandante in November 2005, in the following words: “They sold us these aircraft at high prices, and now they do not want to sell us spare parts, they delay, they send the wrong parts, anything they can do to bring our F-16 aircraft to inoperability” [3].

That the Bolivarian Revolution is an armed revolution is evident from the fact that the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FNAB), the fundamental axis of the civil-military union that sustains it, managed early on to free themselves from US military tutelage. They continue to act under their own doctrine, which is not the case of other countries of the region that are still kept under US military tutelage through the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR).

This is also evident in the present equipment of the FANB, inspired in its new doctrine and the Latin principle that establishes: “if you want peace, prepare for war”. As a result of this, and with frequent exercises and maneuvers, they have become one of the best prepared operational forces in the region. We should note that among these exercises in civil-military union are the operations of integral multidimensional defense of the national territory, called “Independencia 2018", being carried out on February 24-25 [4].

Just for reference, we think it opportune to note here some of the more relevant technical characteristics of the FANB:

An aviation force that is considered the most powerful of the Latin American region from the technical viewpoint, with 24 Sukhoi 30 MK21.

A Navy equipped with units of US, Italian and Spanish origin, which even if it is not the most powerful in the region, has increased marine capacity and expertise. This made it possible, in August 1987, for a simple patroller to force the retreat of the Colombian corvette Caldas, when it violated the waters of the Gulf of Venezuela, only by continuing to navigate in its “shadow cone”.

A land army made up of more than 120,000 active combatants, equipped with the assault rifle AK 103; with close to 200 Russian tanks T-72BM1, of proven effectiveness in the protection and defense of urban areas. It is also equipped with the most powerful system of areal defense of the region, with the assistance of Russia, made up of brigades of missiles S-300 and of antiaircraft missiles Igla-S and Super Igla.

Special Action Forces (FAES), in addition to elite units of the same kind attached to the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) and the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN).

An organized civil population that is the largest in the region and is attached to the following entities: the Bolivarian National Militia, with over 350,000 effectives, equipped with the automatic light rifle FN-FAL, of Belgian manufacture, in their great majority, and with the Russian Mosin-Nagant M91/30, in the case of peasant militias; the Combat Corps, made up of some 30,000 personnel, workers of institutions and enterprises; and the Bolivar-Chávez Fighting Units (UBCh), some 14,000 at the national level, with an average participation of 40 militants each. In the face of such a large mobilization of the civilian population, organized and armed in favor of the revolution, we consider it relevant to pose the following question: How many governments of the region, of those who most oppose us, would remain in power in the face of such equivalent forces in their respective territories?

Of course, the empire must be fully aware of the above noted characteristics, even in greater detail, this being the only reason, in our opinion, that they do not think of invading us alone, but persist with the idea of making up a multinational force to do so. We say this based on the opinion of John Pilger, the famous Australian journalist who has acted as a war correspondent in such acute conflicts as those of Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh and Biafra, who recently pointed out: “...Washington only invades undefended countries, and Venezuela is not defenseless...” [5].

Coming finally to consider the adverse impact on the empire resulting from an invasion of Venezuela, we will take as a starting point the most relevant points of a recent article published in “Foreign Affairs”, titled “What would a US Intervention in Venezuela look Like?”: Risky, Expensive, and Counterproductive [6].

It is worth pointing out that, as is well-known, the journal mentioned is a bi-monthly publication of the Council of Foreign Relations, which is a non-profit US organization founded in 1921, specialized in foreign policy and international affairs of the United States, whose members include high ranking politicians, more than a dozen ex-Secretaries of State of the United States, ex-directors of the CIA, bankers, lawyers, professors and media personalities.

The author of the cited article, Frank O. Mora, in his effort to alert to the inconvenience of a military intervention such as that preannounced by Trump last August, concisely points out the following, among many other arguments.

“Overpowering Maduro’s loyalists and policing the aftermath would take a force of around 200,000 people—20,000 more than the U.S.-led coalition sent to Iraq soon after the invasion of that country….

“…using force against Venezuela would undermine the U.S. military’s other commitments, straining its finances and drawing its assets away from problems far more important to the United States’ security. It is unlikely that Trump and those who support an intervention understand these costs….

“It is hard to say how many lives and how much money would be lost in a U.S. intervention. But the numbers would not be immaterial, especially if the United States invaded Venezuela and then sought to stabilize it…

“Using force in Venezuela would redirect the United States’ attention and power from issues more important to its security and place an unnecessary burden on its overstretched military… and the Pentagon is busy managing operations in areas from Iraq and Syria to West Africa and the South China Sea…

“If North Korea or Iran believed that the United States was preoccupied with an operation in South America, those states might take risks they otherwise wouldn’t, threatening U.S. interests in Northeast Asia and the Middle East.”

To this we would add, these would be the costs of the invasion only in military terms.

With respect to the economic impact, the same article indicates that by interrupting the activities of the Venezuelan petroleum industry, a US military intervention would increase the global prices of hydrocarbons. We would add that such an occurrence would be particularly grave in a year such as 2018, in which the US, although they should reach a record of production (10 million barrels daily), would have to import the same quantity to develop their productive activities and services, plus an additional 700 million daily for the maintenance of their strategic reserve, an important part of which should come from Venezuela. It is worth noting that at the beginning of the invasion of Libya, in March 2011, the price of petroleum climbed close to the historic maximum of $120 per barrel registered in February 2014 [7].

In questions of politics, Mora’s article is emphatic in pointing out that a military intervention would have a high cost for the influence of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. Recurring to force would provoke a strong backlash, even from Washington’s closest partners, reminding the states of the region of the US history of meddling in their affairs, by which Washington would lose its faint image of goodwill and, with it, the opportunity to work with them on issues that matter to everyone in the hemisphere, from dealing with transnational crime to trying to integrate the so-called "energy infrastructure of the Americas".

The adverse impact on the allies of the empire, particularly on those regional allies that give in to the demand to be part of the invading military force, would not be less terrible, given that:

The battered economies of the majority of them, in particular those that are not oil exporters such as Mexico and Brazil, and that of Colombia that only exports the oil extracted by contraband from Venezuela, would be strongly affected by the global increase in the price of hydrocarbons, by the increase of their own military expenses and the inevitable disruption of the flows of regional trade.

The extremely precarious interior peace of the majority of them, especially of Colombia, now in the process of reconstruction on the basis of the peace agreements signed with the FARC, could be seriously compromised. Indeed, it cannot be excluded that in that country neighboring on Venezuela, a rear-guard force may emerge against the invasion, made up of fighters from the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the at least 12 fronts of the FARC that did not join the aforesaid agreements.

In spite of the excessive media campaign, which has reached truly xenophobic levels in countries such as Colombia, Peru, Chile and Panama, there are likely to emerge, in the heart of these societies, groups of volunteers for both media and physical defense of Venezuela. Other similar contingents would certainly arise in the member countries of ALBA-TCP. This would sharpen class contradictions and lead to extreme polarization, and the disappearance both of the political center as well as the so-called “light left”, that have always been opportunists and survive on Western resources.

In summary, we believe that if their inexorable invasion takes place, the empire would be on the road to generating a gigantic Vietnam in our region, only his time much closer to its borders than their military strategists could desire. Would they risk doing it again this time?

Caracas, February 20 2018

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

Carlos E. Lippo

celippor@gmail.com

Notes