War Without Guns: How China Ensures Trump’s Fantasy of Blockading Venezuela Fails

Trump has continually suggested to national security officials that the United States should blockade Venezuela with its navy to prevent goods from entering or leaving the country, according to five former and current officials who have heard or been informed about private comments made by Trump.

The publication refers to sources that have revealed some of Trump’s comments about blockading Venezuela:

“He literally just said we should get the ships out there and do a naval embargo,” said one source who's heard the president’s comments. “Prevent anything going in.”

“I'm assuming he's thinking of the Cuban missile crisis,” the source added. “But Cuba is an island and Venezuela is a massive coastline. And Cuba we knew what we were trying to prevent from getting in. But here what are we talking about? It would need massive, massive amounts of resources; probably more than the US Navy can provide.”

The article also revealed Trump has become increasingly frustrated that the reactionary Venezuelan opposition has not been able to topple President Nicolás Maduro since the failed April 30 coup attempt and since Trump led the world to recognise Guaidó as the so-called legitimate leader of Venezuela on February 23.

It was also revealed that former Defence Secretary James Mattis, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former chief of staff John Kelly collaborated to ignore or hinder what they considered Trump's dangerous requests. Trump also reprimanded his former national security adviser HR McMaster, asking him why he had not produced the Venezuelan military options he had requested, an order Mattis ignored despite being pressured by McMaster to set a deadline.

This dynamic changed once John Bolton and Mike Pompeo took over. Swan says that according to senior administration officials, Trump is no longer interested in sending ground troops to Venezuela. However, he has told them to continue to build pressure on Maduro and to think of creative ways to help [US-recognized Venezuelan President Juan] Guaidó” get Maduro out of power.

After their spectacular failures, the evidence draws a route to the naval blockade with variable pressure increases, it seems that the objective is to increase the distrust of shipping companies and in various links of the naval operation to also deconfigure the economic activity associated with imports and exports.

Traditional invasions like in Afghanistan and Iraq are far more expensive and even sanctions cannot achieve its goal as the decades long survival of Cuba demonstrates. This is especially true since the rise of Russia and China and the resulting multipolar world system allows for besieged states like Venezuela to survive economic aggression. It is for this reason that Trump hopes that by blocking China from accessing its vast investments in Venezuela, the Bolivarian Republic will collapse under financial pressure.

This is of course to return neoliberalism to Venezuela. Although Guaidó has guaranteed to protect Chinese interests in Venezuela, Washington has not made this guarantee, meaning Beijing had no incentive to abandon Maduro.

More importantly, China has built a reputation of encouraging “South-South Cooperation” and would not want to risk its standing with the post-colonial and underdeveloped world. It is unlikely China will want to risk its reputation as a leading trading partner and trustworthy investor in the global south by siding with an illegally US-installed right-wing opposition group that came to power through a coup.

Despite Trump’s suggestion of a military intervention in Venezuela, it is unlikely Trump will actually want to backtrack on his pre-presidential rhetoric of anti-war without good reason, despite close calls with Iran. With sanctions failing to collapse the Bolivarian Republic, thanks to significant Russian and Chinese investments, a full naval blockade is the only option left for Trump to make if he is to continue the aggression against Venezuela without going to war.

Although this obsession has consumed Trump and he is willing to waste billions more of US taxpayer money on regime change operations, any effort now short of a direct invasion will fail. As mentioned, the economic burden this would have on the US Navy is immense and the blockade would be without legal justification. Not that this has stopped the US in the past, but this might be just one step to far, especially with China giving Venezuela a helping hand in resisting US aggression.