Tensions between the United States of America and Venezuela have increased following Donald Trump’s recent statements that his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolás Maduro his “days are numbered”. Relations between the two countries have not always been tense: during the Cold War, Washington and Caracas enjoyed excellent relations favored by their common militancy in the front of Western and anti-communist countries. Things began to change in 1999, when former Venezuelan army lieutenant colonel Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela on the wave of an anti-American populist political agenda in foreign policy.
This program, which also continued under his successor Maduro, as well as the establishment of collaborative relations between Venezuela and all of Washington’s major adversaries on the international stage and the involvement (not completely clear whether direct or indirect) in international drug trafficking, has meant that a situation of hostility and almost open belligerence has been created between the two previous allies.
The reasons for the tensions between the USA and Venezuela
During the Cold War, both the United States and Venezuela belonged to the Western and anti-communist camp. Bilateral relations were strong at all levels, especially the economic one. The USA gave particular importance to the political stability of Venezuela due to its strategic position straddling the Caribbean and South American areas as well as its large oil reserves, mainly concentrated in the Orinoco area.
Several attempts by Cuba to destabilize Venezuela pushed Washington to also strengthen military and intelligence collaboration. The peak of this “honeymoon” was reached in May 1982, when the Americans sold 24 examples of the General Dynamics F-16A/B Block 15 “Fighting Falcon” fighter to the Venezuelan Air Force, making Venezuela the first, and for a long time the only, Latin American country to have this flagship aircraft of the Stars and Stripes air force supplied.
This special relationship ended in 1999 when the former lieutenant colonel (and organizer, in 1992, of an attempted coup against the government of the time) Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, managed to get elected President of the Republic, then obtaining full powers thanks to a series of constitutional reforms implemented in the following years. The years of the Chávez presidency (1999-2013) marked Venezuela’s separation from the Western camp and a move closer to what is now called the “BRICS bloc”.
Symptomatic of the “great somersault” carried out by the Latin American country was the inauguration of a massive rearmament plan, largely favored by the increase in revenue due to the rising prices of raw materials, which led Caracas to equip itself with some of the most modern Russian-produced armaments such as the Sukhoi Su-30MKV/MK2 AMV “Flanker-G+” fighter-bombers, purchased in 24 examples between 2006 and 2008.
Maduro and the collapse of US-Venezuela relations
The rise to the presidency of Nicolás Maduro Moros, who succeeded Chávez in 2013 after the latter’s death due to illness, saw a further worsening of relations between the two countries which led numerous analysts to hypothesize on several occasions the materialization of armed actions by Washington aimed at implementing a regime change at the top of Venezuelan power.
One of the reasons that worsened relations between Washington and Caracas was the accusation, made several times by the White House against Maduro and other members of his regime, of complicity in international drug trafficking directed towards the United States. It should not be forgotten that the United States currently has a population of over 60 million individuals suffering from drug addiction and treats issues relating to drug trafficking as an attack on national security.
What to expect for the future: is there a risk of conflict between the USA and Venezuela?
Although there have been limited attempts to re-establish dialogue in the past, they all ultimately failed due fundamentally to the parties’ inability to reach a compromise. The Chavista-inspired Venezuelan leadership has consciously carried out a plan to subvert the geopolitical balance in Latin America while on the other hand the American counterparts have become completely hostile towards not only the leaders of Caracas but also everything that can be associated with Chavismo, now identified as an ideology that must be freed from at any cost.
This being the case, the recent increase in tensions that we have witnessed in the last two months in the Caribbean area, with the movement of huge US air and naval assets there – using the relaunch of the fight against drugs as a pretext – portends a new phase of the conflict between Washington and Caracas, this time in a more openly bellicose way.
