United States’ Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has explained in some detail how President Donald Trump intends to run Venezuela with the capture and freighting to New York of the country’s erstwhile president, Nicolas Maduro, to face charges relating to narcotics trafficking.
Rubio, who is also National Security Advisor, in interviews on Sunday, with George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week and Margaret Brennan of CBS’s Face the Nation, noted that rather than have military boots on ground in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, or have US officials directly running the government of Venezuela, the Trump administration will continue to pressure what is left of the Maduro regime till it meets its demands.
He stressed, for instance, that the quarantine on Venezuelan oil, the bombing of drug boats, the crackdown on gangs, and action to stop Venezuela continuing to align with Iran, Hezbollah and other US adversaries will continue, and if those in charge of the country in the absence of Maduro fail to realign, that the Trump government would explore other options.
Maduro’s Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez, has been sworn-in to take his place, but Rubio said that the armada of US boats currently positioned in the area will continue to seize any sanctioned boats going in to take out oil or coming out loaded with oil. This, he said, will literally cripple the economy of the troubled country and cut off the source of funding of what is left of the regime.
Insisting that America’s security interest comes first, as it will not allow Venezuela to be so closely allied to its adversaries, be used to funnel dangerous drugs into the country, or be a safe haven for violent gangs, Rubio said that the Trump administration also had the interest of the people of Venezuela at heart, as according to him, the country’s oil industry has not been benefitting Venezuelans but a few fat cats.
He said: “We want drug trafficking to stop. We want no more gang members to come our way. We don’t want to see the Iranian – and, by the way, Cuban – presence of the past. We want the oil industry in that country not to go to the benefit of pirates and adversaries of the United States but for the benefit of the people. We want to see all of that happen. We insist on seeing that happen.”
The Secretary of State pointed out that the arrest of Maduro, who he insists is an illegitimate president or head of state, was well within the powers of President Trump and did not need Congressional approval as it was not an invasion or extended military operation but the arrest of an indicted drug trafficker and his wife who is also indicted.
He pointed out that apart from having a $25 million price for the capture of Maduro, the President Joe Biden administration, like more than 60 other countries, the European Union and many Latin America nations did not recognize him as the legitimate President of Venezuela, and praised the team that stormed the presidential palace, arrested him and his wife and flew them to New York.
“It is not easy to land helicopters in the middle of the largest military base in the country. The guy lived on a military base. Land within minutes, kick down his door, grab him, put him in handcuffs, read him his rights, put him in a helicopter and leave the country without losing any American or any American assets – that’s not an easy mission,” Rubio said.
He was explaining why the team did not also arrest two key members of Maduro’s junta – Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister, who controls the police and is considered Maduro’s chief thug, and the defence minister, Vladimir Padrino López, who is said to have ties to Russia. The two are said to have a $25 million and $15 million price on their heads respectively.
Rubio said the mission would have been much more complex than it was as it would have meant storming more than one military fortress at the same time. He insisted it would have been absurd to do so, noting that the arrest of Maduro, the main target, was “one of the most daring, complicated, sophisticated missions this country has carried out in a very long time. Tremendous credit to the U.S. military personnel who did it.”
He insisted that the Trump administration is not at war with Venezuela but unwaveringly committed to preventing the Western Hemisphere from becoming a safe haven for drug traffickers, Iranian proxies, or hostile regimes that endanger America’s national security.
Rubio also said that American and other western companies would likely go into Venezuela to help with the reactivation of the country’s “completely destroyed” oil industry which is currently functioning at an abysmally low level, so that it will begin to benefit the people of the country rather than the few people who have been stealing the oil, and Iran or any of the other sanctioned entities that the US is going after.
According to him, presently, Venezuela’s oil industry is technically “nonexistent,” or “destroyed” as it is basically being run as as “pirate operations” where people steal the oil just to hold the Maduro regime together. He insisted that a few people benefit from the oil wells that are producing at about 18 per cent capacity essentially because of “decrepit” equipment.
He said that the oligarchs sell the oil at hugely discounted prices on the global market and pocket the money, making a handful of people millionaires and billionaires without the people, in the last decade and more, benefiting from their commonwealth. Rubio insisted that this situation must be redressed through the involvement of private companies that are not from Iran or any other such place.
These companies, he said, will move in, invest in modern equipment that has not been the case in 20 years, because none of the profits made from the oil had been reinvested. “It’s all been stolen,” he stressed, noting that the injection of the required capital into the industry can only come from western companies who also have the needed expertise to rejuvenate the industry.
Once this is done, the Secretary of State said, tremendous royalties will accrue to the people of Venezuela, not to the handful of people presently at the top. He also noted that there are companies ready to move in to remedy the situation in the oil industry, if those in control of the country’s affairs presently can create the right conditions.
Otherwise, Rubio stressed, the US will continue to use the leverage of the quarantine of Venezuelan oil, among others, to whip what is left of the regime into line.
