What's happening with Venezuela? @WikiLeaks' publication of US coup manual FM3-05.130, Unconventional Warfare [UW], provides insight
DOS=Department of State
IC=Intelligence Community
UWOA=UW operations area
ARSOF=US Army Special Operations Forceshttps://file.wikileaks.org/file/us-fm3-05-130.pdf …
In the unconventional warfare manual, Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) wrote that the US “can use financial power as a weapon in times of conflict up to and including large-scale general war.” And it noted that “manipulation of U.S. financial strength can leverage the policies and cooperation of state governments” — that is to say, force those governments to comply with US policy.
Institutions that help the US government accomplish this, ARSOF continued, are the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Examples of “financial weapons,” include “State manipulation of tax and interest rates” and pressure on financial institutions to restrict “loans, grants, or other financial assistance to foreign state and nonstate actors,” ARSOF stated.
“The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has a long history of conducting economic warfare valuable to any ARSOF UW campaign,” the manual concludes.
The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is what oversees sanctions against countries like Venezuela. And on January 28, the day WikiLeaks tweeted the above excerpt, OFAC sanctioned Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).
Targeting Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA
The goal of these latest US sanctions is clear: Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary and the former chief information officer of Goldman Sachs, indicated that Venezuela’s US-backed coup leader Juan Guaidó will use PDVSA and Venezuela’s US-based oil assets to bankroll his unelected parallel government.
OFAC, which ARSOF noted “has a long history of conducting economic warfare,” was careful to point out while it was sanctioning PDVSA that this state oil company is “a primary source of Venezuela’s income and foreign currency.”
As The Grayzone has reported, Guaidó immediately targeted PDVSA within hours of having declared himself “interim president” (with the Trump administration’s blessing). Guaidó and the US-backed right-wing opposition hope to restructure PDVSA and move toward privatization, rewriting Venezuela’s hydrocarbons laws and handing out contracts to allow multinational corporations access to the largest oil reserves on the planet. And Guaidó has sought financial assistance from the IMF, which ARSOF identified as a US ally in its economic warfare strategy.
The ARSOF Unconventional Warfare manual makes it clear that these policies are not just a peaceful pressure campaign; they are part of an explicit strategy of “unconventional warfare” aimed at Venezuela.
These words, straight from the mouth of the US government, confirm that sanctions and other punitive economic policies are not a mere prelude to war; they are a form of war.
The United States is not “considering” a war against Venezuela; the superpower has already been waging a war, for years, on this independent South American nation.
US sanctions “comparable with medieval sieges of towns”
This is precisely what led former UN rapporteur Alfred de Zayas to say, both in an interview with The Independent and in a report on Venezuela that he submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, that the United States, and allies like the European Union and Canada, have waged “economic warfare” on Venezuela.
De Zayas, a legal expert who teaches international law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy, wrote, “Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns.” He added, “Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees.”
The first UN rapporteur to report from Venezuela in a shocking 21 years, de Zayas told The Independent, “When I come and I say the emigration is partly attributable to the economic war waged against Venezuela and is partly attributable to the sanctions, people don’t like to hear that. They just want the simple narrative that socialism failed and it failed the Venezuelan people.”
And the US has not been alone in its aggression. The Bank of England has likewise refused to let the sovereign government of Venezuela withdraw its £1.2 billion of gold reserves. Instead, a UK foreign office minister has sought to give that money to the Trump-appointed coup leader, Juan Guaidó.
Real US foreign policy goals
The ARSOF Unconventional Warfare manual provides further insight into what really motivates the United States to wage economic warfare in Venezuela and beyond.
The document outlines one of the key goals of US foreign policy:
Furthering free trade, unencumbered by tariffs, interdictions, and other economic barriers, and furthering capitalism to foster economic growth, improve living conditions, and promote the sale and mobility of U.S. products to international consumers.
President Trump’s ultra-militaristic National Security Adviser John Bolton echoed these priorities in an interview with Fox Business. “We’re in conversation with major American companies now… I think we’re trying to get to the same end result here,” Bolton declared.
“It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”
Top Photo | Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro fist bumps a worker of the state-run oil company PDVSA during a visit to the Orinoco oil belt in Venezuela in 2013. Miraflores | AP
Source | GrayZone Project
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