U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat of military intervention in Venezuela following the election of a new Constituent Assembly in that country elicits little support from the international community.
President Donald Trump has now turned his attention to Venezuela after threatening North Korea with “fire and fury”. Speaking to reporters in the second week of August, flanked by his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and the United States’ Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, Trump bombastically stated that a military option against Venezuela was very much open. “We are all over the world and we have troops all over the world in places that are very, very far away. Venezuela is not very far away, and the people are suffering and dying. We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option, if necessary,” he announced. Even the right-wing governments in Latin America, which have close military and political links with the U.S., were shocked by the statement. The threat of war against Venezuela was made at a press conference that was supposed to be devoted to the more serious crisis in the Korean peninsula.
Foreign Ministers of 12 countries in the continent opposed to the Venezuelan government had just met in Lima, the capital of Peru, and had issued a statement condemning the newly elected Constituent Assembly, terming it a “rupture with democracy”. The meeting was orchestrated by the U.S. State Department to show the world that Venezuela was being increasingly isolated in the continent. But the U.S.-sponsored charade about democracy being trampled in Venezuela was duly exposed after Trump made his chilling statement.
This story is from the September 15, 2017 edition of FRONTLINE.
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This story is from the September 15, 2017 edition of FRONTLINE.
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