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Latin America Correspondent
Independent commentary & analysis from Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio, featured on The Times, talkRADIO, LBC, ABC, & more.
Latin America Correspondent
Analysis & Implications of US-Venezuela Tensions
Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks to Husain Husaini for Times Radio.
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Husain Husaini:Hello, I'm Hussein to give a Carol Walker this evening. It's the 23rd of December, Christmas Eve Eve, not far away now. And we're going to start this hour with Venezuela, Donald Trump. He thinks seizing tankers taking oil from Venezuela could lead to President Maduro leaving his post. But the president said it was up to Maduro how he responded to America's military might.
Donald Trump:He could do whatever he wants. We have a massive or a modern forum, the biggest we've ever had. And by far the biggest we've ever had in South America. He could do whatever he wants, tough. Whatever he wants to do. If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it'll be the last time he's ever able to play tough.
Husain Husaini:Let's talk to Jon Bonfiglio, Latin American correspondent. Good evening, Jon.
Jon Bonfiglio:Hey, good evening.
Husain Husaini:Goodness, this is not going away, is it? This is uh ratching up, if anything. Where are we up to with the tankers?
Jon Bonfiglio:So actually, there's been a few developments in the last 48 hours. On the one hand, uh, yeah, the US says it is now pursuing a third tanker, a third sanctioned vessel, the Bela 1, I understand is uh its name. It's a large oil tanker, which interestingly has been issuing distress signals as it tracks out back out into the Atlantic, presumably in an attempt to evade uh capture. Meanwhile, China and Russia that have been conspicuously quiet in the last couple of weeks have expressed support for Venezuela, with China denouncing unilateral and illegal sanctions. And this is important, especially the unilateral bit, because the the inference is that actually these sanctions, anyway, were just US established, that there's no sort of international consensus on the sanctions. And they're saying that the seizures of Venezuelan tankers is a serious violation of international law. Now, domestically, just today, Venezuela has passed a law against piracy and has declared extended prison terms for anyone found guilty of supporting the US's uh blockade on Venezuelan oil. And of course, this has a number of domino effects um around the region. It's increasingly getting sucked into this uh this ongoing discourse. And in part the domino effects of these actions, Cuba, which is already in the line of fire as well as a subsequent um target for the US administration, and which is in the grip of an economic crisis and which is hugely reliant on subsidized Venezuelan oil, is now being pushed to the brink by the blockade.
Husain Husaini:Oh wow, so it kind of has knock on the neighboring countries who support it. I I guess we're seeing everybody lining up on the predictable size, aren't we? Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba on one side, America on the other. That's that's dangerous in itself.
Jon Bonfiglio:There's an interesting um flip side to this coin, though, which is that although we're hearing Russia and China sort of be relatively loud about how these are illegal actions, actually US success in um at least curtailing or uh or these these sort of creative actions on illegal or sanctioned tankers in the South Southern Caribbean Sea actually are useful to Russia and China in terms of their own uh sort of creative policies around international waters. I mean, of course, China with the South China Sea and Taiwan would be a key case in point. And on the one hand, it's saying this is uh this is not right, this is goes in uh against international um established protocols, but on the other hand, it's licking its lips as to what this is going to allow it to do in the future.
Husain Husaini:I see. So in fact, it's an example it might, you know, the more the more Donald Trump does, the more that China might feel it can get away with in a future war.
Jon Bonfiglio:Yeah, this this um what's being termed here uh hemispherism or in a sort of play on the Monroe Doctrine, the Donro Doctrine, actually, although it's it's intent on pushing out China in particular from the hemisphere, that necessarily, like it's it's a pretty logical construct to then um uh understand that China is going to use the very same logic in its own hemisphere for its own ends.
Husain Husaini:Yeah, and does Latin America split uh you know, pro-America, anti-America? How is there, I mean, obviously Cuba is with Venezuela. What about the other big powers, Brazil maybe, or or Argentina? Are they are they keeping it out of it?
Jon Bonfiglio:Um no, everybody's getting sucked into it. And actually, uh I think the sort of the fixation, the media fixation with sort of Trump's ongoing engagements with Venezuela has to some extent obfuscated exactly what you're saying, which is a radical reshaping of the hemisphere to one in which allies are rewarded. So that would be a sort of an Argentina, uh, uh, for example, increasing with a new election that's just taking place in Chile, uh, with the right-wing Jose Antonio Cast there as well, Ecuador, undoubtedly, El Salvador Naibukeley with his uh with SECOT and the high security prison, terrorist prison there, um, and those resisting uh uh administrations are, of course, um punished. Especially, I think there's a there's little doubt that the US, which is I think something of a game changer, despite the fact that we're used to sort of gumbo diplomacy historically in the in the region, there's little doubt that the US is using military might threats and coercion, I think, to sort of leverage, and this is a key point, it's not about control per se, it is about preferential access to regional markets in what is a sort of an increasingly brazen attempt to push, to bring the entire hemisphere into the service of United States preferentialism.
Husain Husaini:Yes, and of course, oil is is crucial here. Venezuela, I was reading it, has the most known reserves. It's a an absolute uh uh I was gonna say a gold mine, but that's obviously ridiculous. It's an oil, it's a it's sitting on a lake of oil.
Jon Bonfiglio:Well, it actually also is literally a gold mine because Venezuela also has huge reserves of gold um in the country and also rare earth minerals. What's interesting here is I think that uh certainly at the beginning of this um this standoff a couple of months ago, the US was insistent on the fact that this was about um freedom, that this was about stopping the movement of drugs up to the USA. But in the last couple of weeks, they're they're now openly saying that, of course, oil is is is a is a is an open factor to this. And even to the extent that, as you said at the top of the piece, that Donald Trump is now openly saying, well, we're going to keep the oil that we seize and the boats, and we're potentially going to sell it or use it in our reserves or whatever it might be. So there's no there's no pretense around it anymore that that Venezuelan oil is a significant factor, one of a number of, but certainly a sort of a top three factor in terms of the US uh actions in the Southern Caribbean.
Husain Husaini:Yeah, I guess there's a sort of parallel there with uh in Europe we're talking about whether you can take Russian assets that you seize and and use them, and and people are very reluctant to do that. But here we have a president taking a ship, taking its oil. I mean, uh it seems amazing that isn't causing him more trouble.
Jon Bonfiglio:Well, and and you know, who knows where this is gonna end up? Because, of course, it's uh pretty uncontroversial to say that the US is sort of pursuing regional policies which are sort of undefined, which are volatile, which shift around all over the place, which are malleable, which sort of shift in purpose. It's and it's a design strategy, but of course, chaos breeds chaos. And just as a few examples, um, you know, increasingly Trinidad and Zebega, which is only seven miles off the coast of Venezuela, is being sucked into this. And Venezuela is increasingly saying, well, look, if this is a military base for the US and there is some kind of conflict established, that's going to be the first point of um there's a legitimate target. And then that's going to bring in the broader uh Caribbean. Um, additionally, sort of if Maduro does go, if Maduro does get deposed, I mean the US's own war games projections have said that likely chaos is going to uh ensue. So there's a whole host of like you know, there's always a cause and effect with these actions. Um and of course the danger is not just what's taking place, but it's also the great unknown of what all of this actually leads to.
Husain Husaini:Yes. And I guess the key to that is Maduro, then. So what do we know about his likelihood to say, I'm gonna stick it out, or to I mean, I think that the suggestion is he might just flee. He might go, by enough of this, I'm gonna go to a third country where I can be saved from Donald Trump and uh spend some of the money I've managed to take away with me.
Jon Bonfiglio:Well, I think actually, if there is there's been a number of misreadings by the US administration in this, and perhaps the biggest one uh is as regards uh Maduro's stickability. One of the reasons why the Trump administration has gone very specifically for Venezuela is because they assume that actually it was an easy target, a soft target, because it is generally unaligned. It doesn't have much in the way of like nobody in the Americas is fond of Maduro. It's pretty clear what kind of sort of um authoritarian leader he is. But what what the Trump administration has failed to understand is the fact that it's not just Maduro, but it's Maduro's entire infrastructure in Venezuela, which he set up and has led to him remaining in power against all odds for this entire period of time because of the structures that he's put into place. So the Maduro regime is emphatically not just about Nicholas Maduro, added to which I would also say that Maduro also knows that Trump is not going to invade. That Trump politically cannot send foot soldiers into Venezuela to bring about this kind of change. And it's also no accident that actually Maduro increasingly, Maduro historically has always said he doesn't speak in English. He's not interested in speaking in English, so he could he conveys his anti-imperialist message in Spanish. That's changed recently because he he's specifically going for sort of bite-sized clips in English, which can be played on US primetime cable, uh television, and news, in which he says very key things about Trump's political weakness as regards regime change in potential regime change in Venezuela.
Husain Husaini:Yes. It still seems very unpredictable. Uh, so I won't ask you to make predictions. We'll just have to see how it all plays out. John Bonfilio, last American correspondent, thank you very much. No problem, Tiko. Cheers, bye bye now.