Latest on US-Venezuela Stand-Off

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks to Darryl Morris for Times Radio. 

Transcript

Darryl Morris: 0:03

Hi, good evening. The US has seized an oil tanker that had recently departed from Venezuela in the last couple of hours. That's according to the US Department of Homeland Security. It's the second time this month the US has seized an oil carrying ship off the country's coast. It comes after US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he was ordering a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. Let's speak to Jon Bonfiglio, who is with us from Latin America on Times Radio tonight. Jon, just okay, just I I wonder if those people haven't been following overly closely. Just give us a sort of plotted history up to where we are tonight.

Jon Bonfiglio: 0:39

Well, it's been rumbling since uh since the summer, and uh Christmas in Venezuela is not going according to plan, even though for a few years now it's been mandated as being Christmas officially for a quarter of the year. Christmas in Venezuela officially starts 1st of October at the moment, in order to attempt to move the economy and uplift the mood in the in the stricken nation. Yeah, there you go. And uh this year, under overwhelming pressure from the USA, it's likely to be bleaker than ever. And this pressure from the USA nominally began in the summer under the argument, under the, I think it's fair to say, uh, pretense, because nobody takes it at face value, that the USA uh was at war uh with a non-state military actor, uh, the cartels, uh, and as a result was going to take military action against drug trafficking vessels, small skiffs in the Southern Caribbean, uh, at the behest um at the hands of the biggest naval force uh gathered in uh Latin America since the invasion of Panama in 1989. Uh the US has now actually, interestingly, in the last few days, evolved its discourse. It's no longer even disguising its thirst for Venezuelan oil. It's now even saying, actually, that Venezuelan oil actually belongs to the US, and that Venezuela stole its own oil from the country, from the US in an expropriation two generations ago, and that the resource rightly belongs to to the USA. And it is with this in mind that the US now seized a second oil tanker leaving Venezuela today, after Trump's declaration, as you said, of the of the blockade. It is, I understand, a Panamanian flag vessel, named at least nominally as Centuries, uh, but it's also recently flown under the flags of Greece and and Liberia. Interestingly, it is not on the US list of Venezuelan sanctioned vessels. Uh, and the then the last thing I'd say of note, I think, is that as with the first seized tanker, the operation has been undertaken by the US Coast Guard in international waters, uh, nominally at least moving the Trump administration away from perceived military action and towards a sort of a perception of sanctions-based uh uh activity.

Darryl Morris: 2:44

Right. And how's that going to go down in Venezuela?

Jon Bonfiglio: 2:48

Uh I mean, as you can imagine, not so not so well. Venezuela just a couple of days ago denounced acts of piracy uh to the UN Security Council. What's interesting is that for the last 20 years, Venezuela has, uh under Hugo Chavez and then his successor, current president Nicolas Maduro, have been very vocal and bombastic about the imperial foe that is the USA, um, to a really sort of almost cartoonish extent. But actually, recent actions by the US have almost given some kind of sense to um uh to the Venezuelan position and and and discourse. I think it's also interesting that there are increasing international misgivings around the really high-profile award, of course, of the Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Carino Machado, given her support of military actions in in the country. And that's perhaps uh most in evidence in the last couple of days with the fact that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have filed a complaint against the Nobel Foundation. Um, all the while, of course, these small skiffs continue to be blown out of the water in the Southern Caribbean. We've had two more strikes and another ten dead uh in the last this week alone, and uh so those uh the fatalities are now reaching a hundred.

Darryl Morris: 3:59

Right. And it it it is sort of difficult, isn't it, on that note, to figure out what what the sort of rights and wrongs of American foreign policy on this.

Jon Bonfiglio: 4:10

I mean, if you are Latin American, if you are a Latin American observer, you uh know there is a pretty long studied history of these kinds of interventions. This is not a new a new act by any stretch of the imagination. Uh what has taken people by surprise here is the the sort of the brazenness of the of this particular uh action uh and the fact that it leaves nothing, it leaves really no grey area. There is a very clear motive. I mean it was sort of shrouded perhaps a little bit at the beginning, but it is pretty clear what what um what the administration, what the Trump administration is is after. And it is not sort of a noble, again, uncontroversial. So I think it's not sort of a noble purpose of democracy or human rights. Of course, it is regime change, but it is regime change under its own uh desires and agenda in order to be able to uh to access virgin Venezuelan uh markets. And it is not a policy which is exclusive to Venezuela. We're seeing these actions now right across um the hemisphere. And it is undoubtedly, I mean, now the Trump administration is openly speaking once again of the Monroe Doctrine, which they term, well, which critics are terming the Donroe Doctrine, in which the US wants um very clearly to be the single operating superpower in the hemisphere.