US 'Very Committed' to Destroying Venezuela Government - Political Analyst

US President Donald Trump has said that Russia has to ‘get out of Venezuela’ as he met with the wife of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido in the White House yesterday. He gave her assurances that he would sort out the political crisis in the Latin American country.

This comes as the President Maduro has accused the US of orchestrating another power outage, something which Juan Guaido has said people should take to the streets to protest about. Sputnik has discussed the issue with political analyst George Szamuely.

Sputnik: How seriously should we take Trump’s words that Russia should get out of Venezuela – is it simply bombastic rhetoric or in fact a direct threat?

George Szamuely: Well I think we should take it very seriously because every US President takes upon himself as a special project to topple some government somewhere so now Trump is obviously very committed to destroying the government of Venezuela.

What is extraordinary is the extent to which Donald Trump has completely gone back on all the things he promised during his election campaign, because this is about nothing.

He can’t even, as in the case of say North Korea, say that it poses some sort of vague threat to the US or its neighbours; Venezuela poses no threat to anybody, least of all the United States, so this is entirely about regime change – the very thing he was attacking during the campaign.

Sputnik: Do you think Trump is  pretty much at the mercy of the hawks around him who are driving this foreign policy?

George Szamuely: Particularly John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, probably, yes, they told Trump: ‘Look, this guy’s a socialist, he wants to expropriate big capitalists like you’ and once they told him, ‘Hey, there is something called the Monroe doctrine, you know Latin America is supposed to be America’s backyard’ and ‘Maduro’s sitting on this huge gold mine, oil reserves, they should belong to America’ – that’s the way to get on to Trump’s wavelength and obviously Bolton and Pompeo know how to play Trump.

Sputnik: Given the fact that neither side appears willing to back down on this issue, what further escalation of the crisis could we expect?

George Szamuely: Well, I think that the Americans will try to apply as much economic pressure as possible, they will also apply all kinds of subversion, cyber warfare, propaganda opportunities, any way in order to demoralize the public in Venezuela, demoralize the army, in the hope that they will eventually turn on Maduro.

Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of George Szamuely and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.