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March 24, 2008

Eva Golinger's Bush v. Chavez

The Coming War on Venezuela

By GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER

More than a year ago, I attended the official book release for the Venezuelan edition
of Eva Golinger's Bush Versus Chávez, published by Monte Avila, and the book had
previously been printed in Cuba by Editorial José Martí. I recount this to make the
following point: long before the publication of Bush Versus Chávez in the current
English-language edition, the book was already a crucial contribution to international
debates regarding United States' efforts to destroy Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution.
In choosing to publish the English edition of the book, Monthly Review Press has
opened that debate to an entirely new audience, and for this we should be grateful.
Furthermore, in an effort to streamline production, Monthly Review has further made
the appendices to Bush Versus Chávez, largely composed of declassified or leaked
documents, available publicly on its website, at the address:
http://monthlyreview.org/bushvchavez.htm.
A New Toolbox
Golinger, a U.S.-born lawyer who has recently taken up full-time residence in
Venezuela (and Venezuelan citizenship), first shot to prominence with her 2005 book
The Chávez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela. There, Golinger drew on a
multitude of documents requested via the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) to
thoroughly and convincingly document the role of the U.S. government in funding
and sponsoring those Venezuelan opposition groups that participated in the
undemocratic and illegal overthrow of Chávez in April 2002, most of which also
signed the interim government's Carmona Decree which dissolved all
constitutionally-sanctioned branches of Venezuelan power. All this against
Condoleezza Rice's recent claim, patently preposterous, that "we've always had a
good relationship with Venezuela."
In Bush Versus Chávez, Golinger continues this diabolical narrative, this time relying
less on FOIA requests than on a series of other key documents and bits of testimony
gleaned from anonymous sources. After the failed 2002 coup, Golinger documents
how the United States changed its tack slightly, drawing upon the variety of
experiences gained in the military overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile and the
electoral overthrow of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. While it would be easy to say that
this represented a "Nicaraguanization" of U.S. policy in the aftermath of the botched
coup, in reality this new policy draws equally heavily on the many other elements
that constituted the multifaceted war against Allende, and hence the thesis of the
"Chileanization" of Venezuela remains all-too-relevant.
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The key institutional devices deployed by the U.S. in its covert support for the coup
remained the same in its aftermath: the neoconservative National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), both
convenient mechanisms for bypassing Congressional oversight. What was new on
this front, as Golinger demonstrates, was the establishment by USAID in the months
following the coup of a sinister-sounding Office of Transition Affairs (OTI). Both the
NED and USAID (via the OTI) immediately began to shift strategies, providing covert
support for the opposition-led bosses lockout of the oil industry which crippled the
Venezuelan economy for two months in late 2002 and early 2003, and when this
failed, by providing direct support for efforts to unseat Chávez electorally (a là
Nicaragua) in a 2004 recall referendum spearheaded by opposition "civil society"
organization Súmate. Needless to say, doing so entailed continuing to support those
very same organizations who had proven their anti-democratic credentials in 2002,
but such things are hardly scandalous these days.
Through the popular and military support enjoyed by the Chávez government, all
these efforts failed, which is unprecedented in and of itself. In response to the
emptying of its traditional toolbox, the U.S. government has been forced to diversify
its tactics even more drastically than ever before, and this is where Bush Versus
Chávez comes in.
Domestic Continuity
In her analysis of contemporary U.S. strategies to unseat Chávez, Golinger speaks of
three broad fronts: the financial, the diplomatic, and the military (43-48). But we
should be extremely wary of distinguishing too cleanly between such tightly-
interwoven categories: the "financial front" remains largely in the hands of the NED
and USAID, agencies directly controlled by the U.S. government and the embassy in
Caracas, funding the domestic side of the equation through support for destabilizing
opposition organizations and even psychological operations (psyops) targeting the
Venezuelan press and military.
Since 2004, the NED and USAID have seen massive budgets earmarked for activities
in Venezuela: currently, some $3 million for the former and $7.2 million for the
latter's OTI operation (77). Of the NED funds, most went to the very same groups that
participated in the 2002 coup, the 2003-4 oil lockout, and the 2004 recall
referendum. Súmate, which headed up the recall effort, and whose spokesperson and
Bush confidant Maria Corina Machado had signed the Carmona Decree, was granted
more than $107,000 in 2005 alone. Súmate, to which Golinger devotes a chapter,
had also received $84,000 in 2003 from USAID and $53,000 in 2003 and $107,000 in
2004 from the NED, as well as an inexplicable $300,000 from the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services (90). All of which demonstrates, for Golinger, that
"Súmate is and continues to be Washington's main player in Venezuela" (91).
While USAID's funding structure has become more secretive, a turn that Golinger
deems illegal, one project in particular has been publicly discussed: the
establishment of "American Corners" throughout Venezuela, institutions which even
the U.S. Embassy deem "satellite consulates" (145). Aside from the patent illegality
of such underground U.S. institutions, Golinger points out that their primary function
is the distribution of pro-U.S. propaganda to the Venezuelan population.
Perhaps most frightening on the domestic front is the strategic transformation that
such U.S. funding has undergone. Specifically, such funding has increasingly begun
to target what had previously been considered core Chavista constituencies, such as
the nation's Afro and Indigenous populations (77-78). What Golinger doesn't
emphasize is the fact that this has occurred alongside a concerted effort by
opposition political parties, notably the NED-funded Primero Justicia, to penetrate the
poorest and most dangerous Venezuelan barrios, like Petare in eastern Caracas.
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While this domestic element has remained shockingly continuous, with the U.S.
continuing to directly fund the groups involved in Chávez's 2002 overthrow, the
military and diplomatic fronts are where Golinger reveals some veritably frightening
new developments.
Asymmetrical Aggression
Perhaps the most intriguing and frightening revelation in Bush Versus Chávez
surrounds a 2001 NATO exercise carried out in Spain under the title "Plan Balboa."
Here we should bear in mind the open support provided by then Popular Party Prime
Minister José Maria Aznar for the brief coup against Chávez. And while we might be
struck by the irony of naming a NATO operation after the Spanish conquistador who
invaded Panama, the name is far more accurate than we might initially believe.
Plan Balboa was, in fact, a mock invasion plan for taking over the oil-rich Zulia State
in western Venezuela. In thinly veiled code-names (whose coded nature is
undermined by the satellite imagery showing the nations involved), it entailed a
"Blue" country (the U.S.) launching an invasion of the "Black" zone (Zulia) of a
"Brown" country (Venezuela), from a large base in a "Cyan" country (Howard Air
Force Base, in Panama) with the support of an allied "White" country (Colombia) (95-
98). The fact that a trial-run invasion was carried out less than 11 months before the
2002 coup against Chávez should further convince us that this was mere contingency
planning.
But Plan Balboa would be only the beginning, and Golinger deftly documents a series
of increasingly overt military maneuvers carried out in recent years by the U.S.
government in an effort to intimidate the Chávez government while preparing for any
necessary action. Here, Golinger rightly trains her sights on the small Dutch Antillean
island of Curaçao, which she deems the U.S.'s "third frontier." Curaçao hosts what is
nominally a small U.S. Forward Operating Location (FOL) as well as, not
coincidentally, a refinery owned by Venezuelan national oil company PDVSA.
Furthermore, it sits fewer than 40 miles off Venezuela's coast, and more specifically,
off the coast of the oil-rich "Black Zone" of Plan Balboa that is Zulia State.
Until February 2005, Curaçao probably seemed to be of little concern to Venezuelan
security, given that its FOL housed only 200 U.S. troops. But this all changed when
the U.S.S. Saipan made its unannounced arrival. The United States' premier landing
craft for invasion forces, the Saipan arrived in Curaçao with more than 1,400 marines
and 35 helicopters on board (104). When the Venezuelan government responded to
the hostile gesture, U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield claimed there had been a
"lack of communication," while simultaneously declaring that "it is our desire to have
more visits by ships to Curaçao and Aruba [only 15 miles off the Venezuelan coast] in
the coming weeks, months, and years" (105).
This veiled threat would come to fruition with Operation Partnership of the Americas
in April 2006. In that instance, which dwarfed the Saipan's visit, the aircraft carrier
U.S.S. George Washington arrived in Curaçao with three warships. The total strength
of the force was of 85 fighter planes and more than 6,500 marines (106). Were this
not worrying enough, then-intelligence chief and Latin American Cold Warrior par
excellence John Negroponte admitted around the same time that the U.S. had
deployed a nuclear sub to intercept communications off the Venezuelan coast (100).
When we factor in the Curaçao-based Operation Joint Caribbean Lion, carried out in
June 2006 with the goal of capturing the mock-terrorist rebel leader "Hugo Le Grand,"
there can remain little doubt that at the very least, the United States is keen to
prepare for the possibility of a direct invasion of Venezuelan territory.
Of Terror and Dictators
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But, one might ask, what are the chances that the U.S. would actually invade
Venezuela, given the predictably harsh international rebuke that such an invasion
would earn? It is here that another aspect, what Golinger loosely characterizes the
"diplomatic front," comes into play, and it is here that U.S. policies and strategies
have seen the most striking innovations.
Here Golinger cites a document by retired U.S. Army Colonel Max G. Manwaring
published by the Army's Institute for Strategic Studies in 2005 (112). This document
represents above all an inversion of strategies applied to Venezuela, and one which
drastically complicates the military picture: Manwaring advocates appropriating the
concept of "asymmetrical warfare" that many guerrillas and rebel movements have
historically used with success against the United States, and converting it into an
explicit U.S. strategy. Somewhat bizarrely, Manwaring compares this employment of
asymmetric warfare to the "Wizard's Chess" of Harry Potter, deeming Chávez a "true
and wise enemy" who must be dealt with by a panoply of maneuvers on all levels
(112-113. Central to this strategy is the deployment of psychological operations
(psyops), which had been previously focused on the Venezuelan press (toward the
objective of justifying a coup or electoral removal of Chávez) to the international and
diplomatic arena (toward what one could presume to be an objective of direct or
indirect military action).
While domestic psyops have continued, notably in the 2005 deployment of "Gypsy"
(JPOSE, Joint Psychological Operations Support Element) teams to Venezuela with the
objective of spreading propaganda among the Venezuelan military and keeping tabs
on radical Chavista organizations (117), much of their focus has been the spreading
of news stories in the international arena. These stories, as Golinger astutely
documents, tend to follow "three major lines of attack":
1.) Chávez is an anti-democratic dictator
2.) Chávez is a destabilizing force in the region
3.) Chávez harbors and supports terrorism (125).
Even the briefest of glances at any mainstream newspaper in the United States, or
many other countries for that matter, will show to what degree this mediatically-
constructed image has been a success.
New Strategies Unfold
This international effort to discredit the Chávez regime, thereby clearing the way for
future intervention, brings us to a series of recent events that have transpired since
Golinger first published Bush Versus Chávez.
The first was the sudden rebirth of the Venezuelan "student movement" in early
2007, nominally in response to the non-renewal of the broadcasting license for
opposition television station RCTV. I have documented elsewhere the fact that this
"student movement" was by and large supported if not directed by the traditional
opposition parties, but what is more relevant here is that the strategies and even
imagery of the movement were adapted directly from those used in countries such as
Serbia and the Ukraine. These strategies, consisting largely of "non-violent" direct
action, have been formulated and disseminated through institutions such as the
Albert Einstein Institution which, in an irony of ironies, Golinger shows to be directly
supported by the State Department (135), and linked to prior attempts to train
Colombian paramilitaries to assassinate President Chávez (136-137).
Here again we have an inversion, in which the U.S. government has adopted the very
strategies that had previously been deployed against it, and in this case the audience
was international: the foreign press was so eager to show a violent repression of the
students that it exaggerated the response of the largely unarmed police and, in an
infamous incident, transformed an armed attack by opposition students against
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Chavistas at the Central University into just the opposite. The objective? To discredit
and isolate the Chávez regime internationally, clearing the way for more directly
offensive action.
Secondly, we have seen a concrete example of such offensive action in Colombia's
recent illegal cross-border raid into Ecuador. The particular players involved should
not distract our attention: this was a test-run, both militarily and diplomatically, for
future U.S. interventions in the region. With Colombia standing in as proxy for the
U.S. and the more recently-established Correa government standing in as proxy for
the Chávez government, this was above all a test of the international response.
While that response was overwhelming in Latin America, with the OAS and even
right-leaning governments condemning the Colombian raid as a violation of
sovereignty, the U.S.'s international psyops campaign seems to have been
overwhelmingly effective within its own borders. Rather than being presented as an
instance of Colombian aggression, the initial raid was immediately erased from the
picture in much of the international press, with the focus being diverted to what was
perceived as Venezuela's bellicose response. But such a response was a strategic
necessity aimed at discouraging any possible future intervention.
Furthermore, the revelations gleaned from the FARC's magic laptop, which allegedly
implicate Chávez himself in funding the FARC (a charge which Colombia, not
coincidentally, eventually decided not to pursue), are also drawn straight from the
playbook of Plan Balboa, which was premised upon the threat posed by an alliance
between the radical sectors of the "Brown" and "White" countries. The U.S. seems to
be preparing to put that plan into motion with its recent legal gestures toward
declaring Venezuela a supporter of terrorism, and given recent evidence of a massive
influx of Colombian paramilitaries into the "Black Zone" of western Venezuela, the
danger that Plan Balboa might become a reality should not be underestimated.
What would be the international response to such an incursion? Here there is little
ground for optimism. After all, during the 2002 coup against Chávez, that bastion of
the American left celebrated the maneuver, declaring that "Venezuelan democracy is
no longer threatened by a would-be dictator." And all this before the concerted
psyops campaign deployed against the Venezuelan government in recent years.
Now, one democratic candidate spurns facts to declare Chávez a "dictator" while the
other, eager to demonstrate his leftist credentials, deems the massively-popular
Venezuelan leader a "despotic oil tyrant," and is promptly pilloried for his soft line.
George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D candidate in political theory at U.C. Berkeley,
who is currently writing a people's history of the Bolivarian Revolution. He can be
reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.