Next Steps in the Venezuelan Coup

It's worthwhile to read Grayzone's "The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela's Coup Leader," by Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal, as a palliative to the latest putrid bit of Guaidó puffery from The New York Times' Ernesto Londoño, "Guaidó Steers Venezuela to a Perilous Crossroads."

Both reports are at least in sync at the bottom line: The Guaidó coup is meant to crack the Venezuela state. Cohen and Blumenthal make plain that:

“‘These radical leaders [of the opposition] have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls,” wrote Luis Vicente León, Venezuela’s leading pollster. According to León, Guaidó’s party remains isolated because the majority of the population “does not want war. ‘What they want is a solution.’”

But this is precisely why Guaidó was selected by Washington: He is not expected to lead Venezuela toward democracy, but to collapse a country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance to US hegemony. His unlikely rise signals the culmination of a two decades-long project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.

Lorenzo outlines the coup's next steps:

Oil sanctions imposed by the United States last week will soon strangle the country’s already-devastated economy, which will most likely cause shortages of fuel and make food and medicine even more scarce.

Bracing for the destabilizing effects of the sanctions, Mr. Guaidó and his allies in the international community said they intended to start pumping humanitarian aid into the country this week. Doing so would undermine Mr. Maduro, who recently scoffed at the prospect by saying “we’re not a country of beggars.”

Mr. Guaidó and his allies see the coming week, and the arrival of aid, as a potential make-or-break moment for a movement that has stirred hope for millions of Venezuelans, but has yet to take steps that meaningfully improve their lives.

[snip]

“This is not the time for dialogue,” Mr. Guaidó said firmly.

Mr. Guaidó said a lot was riding on establishing pipelines of aid that would include food, medicine and hospital supplies. His team’s hope is to rely on the Catholic relief agency Caritas and other volunteers to get the first deliveries started this week.

The convergence of the effects of American oil sanctions, which are expected to cut off significant sources of revenue for Mr. Maduro, and the attempted delivery of humanitarian aid will escalate the standoff. Economists believe fuel and food shortages are likely to worsen in the short run.

Starvation followed by aid. One cannot be too cynical here. Expect the worst. Guaidó is frightened of the colectivos:

Even if the armed forces were to throw their weight behind Mr. Guaidó, which would almost certainly spell the end of Mr. Maduro’s reign, Mr. Guaidó said he worried about the actions of the paramilitary forces that would be likely to stay loyal to Mr. Maduro.

“We cannot allow that to proliferate,” he said, drawing a parallel with the struggle that neighboring Colombia has faced from guerrilla and paramilitary groups over the years. “It could portend very serious consequences, even in the short term.”

Does the United States have the ability to mobilize death squads targeting the colectivos? I don't think so.