by Hudson George
Whatever is the outcome of Venezuela’s political crisis, the Caribbean region will not be the same again.
If the Nicolas Maduro government survived, or if the US-backed interim leader Juan Guaido is installed by US military invasion, the region will become infested with foreign military presence for a very long time because the conflict is all about who should control the largest oil deposit resources in the world.
All the talk about democracy and who is a dictator and who will restore democracy is just a joke. There is no proper democracy in those OPEC oil-rich countries. The majority of governments are dictatorships and there are no future plans ahead to create any forms of functioning healthy democracy in the future.
If the present Venezuela government survived the conflict, it will continue to buy more military weapons to protect the regime and there will be a good excuse for the leadership to say that they are protecting the country and government with better military equipment in case an unfriendly foreign power tries to invade or destabilised the regime.
On the other hand, if the US invades the country and installs a puppet regime, it is obvious that the US will keep some kind of military presence on Venezuelan soil as long as possible to protect its economic and geopolitical interest. And most likely a section of the population will try to resist foreign occupation of their country. Such a situation will create more bloodshed and loss of lives.
It will pluralise our fragile Caricom countries, whereby politicians in those countries including Guyana, will be playing political games with superpowers to fulfill their political dreams. For example, it is blatantly clear that the present Jamaica government is pro-American in the conflict.
However, it is expected that in Trinidad &Tobago and Guyana, 2 major political parties will play their opportunistic political game too. As we already heard the voice of Trinidad & Tobago’s opposition leader supporting the US government in the conflict. One can only guess that the 2 main political parties are hoping that the US administration will favour one of them to govern Guyana, due to the fact that Guyana has the potential to have the second largest oil deposit after Venezuela.
With so much oil and gas monies at stake based on western capitalists countries interest, even little Grenada will be targeted and affected too because just recently a Russian oil company discovered some natural gas deposits in Grenada’s offshore waters.
With the oil and gas deposits in Grenada, it is expected that Grenadian politicians will be interested in the politics of Grenada’s wealth, both internal and external. So, it looks like a new problem will be added to Caribbean people’s rights to live peacefully. We have already been suffering from the evils of the drug trade that is creating an alarming increase in murder rate in the region.
In addition, I have been listening to some radio and television “call-in programmes” in Grenada on the topic, and it seems as though Grenadians who claim to be Christians and followers of Jesus Christ are playing politics with the issue. Now, I am wondering if they are aware of the fact that Jesus Christ was not interested in wealth and earthly governments. They are supposed to know that Jesus Christ was a healer and not a killer for material things.
Furthermore, there is a particular Grenadian woman in Grenada, who always makes her contribution to all the call-in programmes by reading biblical scriptures, without fully explaining the contents of what she reads. But at the end of her reading, she tries to make her listeners believe that they are sinful and they must turn their lives to God so that they can be washed with the blood of Jesus Christ. She tends to enjoy hearing bad news globally to justify Jesus is coming soon. She fully believes that the political crisis in Venezuela is a sign of revelation time.
I do not know who indoctrinated this woman to read versus of scriptures from the Book of Revelation, but I realise that she cannot explain the revelations within the paragraphs that she continues to be reading on a daily basis.
However, I personally do not have to read the Book of Revelation to understand global politics. The problem in the world today is all about money and power. The game is all about natural resources wealth that comes with power to control with modern technology.
Presently, there are 3 powerful countries fighting to dominate the world. The political game is no longer a 2-way battle between capitalism versus communism. The 3-way game is now being played between China, Russia and the United States for world dominance.
So, if the United States invades Venezuela, most likely Russia and China will do the same thing too in different locations on the globe. For, example, if the United States occupy Venezuela military, China might want to invade Taiwan and Russia might want to invade some other country of political interest.
So, as Caribbean people, we could find ourselves caught up in global politics and become pawns to superpowers. These superpower countries are like predators; when they are hungry economically and politically, they will do whatever is necessary to remain military and economically powerful. Now, it seems as though oil-rich countries are becoming battlegrounds.
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How much suffering must the Venezuelan populace endure under the Dictator Maduro? How long do you expect Brazil and Columbia shoulder the financial burdens of the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing not war, but starvation and lack of available necessities. Pre-Chavez and Maduro, Venezuela was a manufacturer and net exporter of the basic necessities. Socialist practices, not any embargoes or actions by “big” governments have brought about these shortages. Business cannot survive when the government controls the raw material supplies and the prices of the finished goods. Simply looking at Venezuela’s rate of inflation shows that Venezuela’s brand of Socialism is not working.
Caricom sticking their collective head in the sand by doing nothing, will not alleviate this humanitarian crisis. Caricom needs to step up and take an active role in negotiations, not sit on the sidelines and wring their hands over the crisis on their border.