Documents show US and Latin American officials secretly planned military attack on Venezuela

According to documents revealed by the Grayzone, Washington-based right-wing thinktank the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) held a secret meeting with top US and Latin American officials to discuss a military attack on Venezuela. The attendees included close advisers to Donald Trump, senior Colombian and Brazilian embassy officials, and allies of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

“Military options”

The topic of the CSIS round-table, reportedly held on 10 April, was “Assessing the Use of Military Force in Venezuela”. The Grayzone‘s Max Blumenthal spoke to one of the attendees, Sarah Baumunk, who confirmed that:

We talked about military… uh… military options in Venezuela.

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Exclusive: US military attack on Venezuela mulled by top Trump advisors and Latin American officials at private meeting of DC think tank @CSIS https://t.co/6L9Bl6s4KM via @MaxBlumenthal pic.twitter.com/3jccZEHKOh

— The Grayzone (@GrayzoneProject) April 14, 2019

Regarding the presence of Guaidó allies at the event, Grayzone journalist Anya Parampil said:

Guaidó coup regime tools went to a secret meeting "assessing" military options in VZLA at a weapons industry funded think tank.

If US "officials" explored ways to invade the US from a foreign country, what would we call them? Traitors? @Fmarquez77?https://t.co/6x4nyk9BTZ

— Anya Parampil (@anyaparampil) April 14, 2019

US seriously considering invasion?

Just over a month ago, US special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams revealed that the threat of military intervention was only being used to keep the Venezuelan military nervous. But the CSIS meeting suggests that the US government, which officially continues to keep “all options on the table”, may now be seriously considering military intervention.

Washington’s attempts to topple Venezuela’s government have thus far failed. On 23 January, Trump’s recognition of opposition leader Guaidó as ‘interim president’ failed to provoke the kind of popular support and military defections Washington likely expected. Exactly one month later, on 23 February, Washington’s ‘humanitarian aid‘ stunt similarly failed to remove Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.

The US, which often operates along the lines of ‘soft coup if possible, hard coup if necessary’, now seems to be mulling over the latter.

Vietnam or Afghanistan

CODEPINK‘s Medea Benjamin, who has been railing against US intervention in Venezuela for months, claims that a US-backed military attack would result in “chaos, civil war, massive casualties”.

Indeed, Venezuela’s military is demonstrably loyal to its government. And Venezuelan civil militias are preparing en masse for the possibility of external intervention. So any outside intervention would surely be a repeat of Vietnam or Afghanistan – or worse.

It must not happen.

Featured image via Kremlin and Canciller de Venezuela