True to its neocolonialist modus operandi, the United States meddled in the attempted Venezuelan coup It's history of manipulating politics in Latin American nations goes back at least to the Spanish-American War. it was revealed by the Wall Street Journal that Vice President Mike Pence called Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Gualdó on the night before he declared himself president, pledging US support for his regime. Nicolás Maduro, the elected president, has accused the US of attempting to foment a coup. The allegation is reasonable considering the circumstances: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has nominated Elliot Abrams to be US special envoy to Venezuela. Abrams, a neoconservative hawk was convicted of lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal, but was later pardoned. He also defended the Guatemalan dictator General Rios Montt, who conducted a campaign of torture and mass murder against indigenous people in the 1980s. Montt was later convicted of genocide. Abrams' deplorable record of human rights abuse included CIA support for a previous Venezuelan coup in 2002 that attempted to topple Hugo Chavez, and not least, the cover-up of mass murder in El Salvador.
Following the United States' lead, several imperial member countries have also recognized Gualdó, including Canada, Australia and Israel. European countries want Maduro to call for elections within a short time period, but so far Maduro has rejected those demands. Maduro is flawed, but he was elected after two years of negotiations with the opposition. The opposition walked out of talks at the last minute according to third-party mediators and witnesses. Maduro went ahead with the agreed upon election. Unsurprisingly, the BRIC nations do not support Gualdó, but neither do nations in the Caribbean basin (CARICOM).
Predictably, Democratic leaders in Congress have given tacit support to the administration's interference in Venezuelan politics. Even the vaunted lone socialist, Bernie Sanders, hesitated to criticize US policy. When he did issue some critical statements, they contained glaring inaccuracies of the state of affairs in Venezuela. Once again the Untied States in involved in regime change without a plan of action for what comes next. Syria is the latest failure of misguided, interventionist US foreign policy. Support of Syrian rebels prolonged the bloodletting and only succeeded in devastating the country without removing the brutal dictator, Assad. Seventeen years of blood and suffering have passed in Afghanistan before the US was willing to sit down with a Islamic guerrilla movement it could not defeat militarily. A half million Iraqis are dead as a direct result of United State's imperial designs in the Mideast. Mexico and Uruguay are pursuing a more rational course towards Venezuela: negotiating a political settlement. The US should join in that effort, and stop more than a century of dictating to Latin American governments.