On January 30, 2019, Allan Nairn, an award-wining American investigative journalist whose opinion I trust, was on “Democracy Now” talking about the current situation in Venezuela. He admitted that the regime of democratically elected Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, has become increasingly unpopular, not only with the rich, the US, and the corporate world, but also with the ordinary and poor Venezuelans who supported former president Hugo Chavez. Nairn reminded us that the US supported a coup in 2002 to topple Chavez, because it can’t accept a government in Latin America that doesn’t go along with the corporate program. That’s the background to today’s situation, in which Maduro tolerates governmental corruption and orders brutal crackdowns on anti-government demonstrations, while the Trump administration maintains sanctions that increase the country’s problems and appears more than willing to invade Venezuela militarily to establish a puppet government.

Nairn told Amy Goodman, “I think the proper role for the U.S. at this moment is, one, to lift the sanctions, lift the stranglehold that’s currently increasing the level of hunger. There’s a level of misery in Venezuela that was already caused by the incompetence of this government, but the U.S. has done everything it can to increase it. And secondly, disavow the invasion option, and then step back. Some people in the Democratic Party are floating the idea of the U.S. trying to mediate a political solution for Venezuela. But that’s not appropriate. The U.S. has no standing to be a mediator, a disinterested third party. It’s on the side of the right and the rich who are trying to topple Maduro’s government. It’s somewhat comparable to Israel-Palestine, where, for years, the U.S. has claimed to be an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians, when in fact, everyone knows the U.S. is on the side of the Israelis and against the aspirations of the Palestinians to have their legal rights under international law enforced.

You would need an outside party as a mediator that has some credibility, maybe a figure like the pope or some outside countries. A couple of years ago the pope was involved in such an effort, but he received no backing from the U.S. at the time, because they don’t really want a political solution that leads to a truly open political field where all options are available, where a different government, one that’s pro-poor and anti-U.S., could gain power. If you had a genuinely open political process in Venezuela, a political outcome like that is conceivable. But the U.S. would never tolerate it. So they’re now trying to engineer a way for the U.S. to regain control. And to do that, they’ll be willing to use violence if and as necessary.”