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After losing the hybrid war in Venezuela, Trump himself became the target of Biden's "hybrid warfare."
The former chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and current U.S. President Joe Biden carefully avoids publicly recalling his participation in the 2002 "short-lived coup" in Venezuela. On April 11, 2002, the democratically elected President Hugo Chavez was arrested in a military coup organized, as one would expect, by the CIA.
Mass popular demonstrations in the capital and other cities of Venezuela, as well as the support of military units loyal to the president, forced the conspirators: oligarchs and generals – to release in 48 hours the deposed Chavez.
A few months after these events, Democrat Biden joined Republicans in calling for direct U.S. involvement in early elections in Venezuela. "We have to accelerate this," Biden said. – "We need our man with significant weight in this country in this position." In other words, they needed their own "son of a bitch."
The coup itself, of course, was not new or unusual in the series of coups d'état in South America. But it was the first in the 21st century that showed that the U.S. government has not refused to put its geopolitical interests and the interests of transnational corporations in the region ahead of democracy.
For the first time, hybrid warfare methods were also tested on Venezuela. In particular, to force Venezuela's opposition to unite and agree on a long-term strategy to overthrow the Chavez government, the International Republican Institute (IRI) received an additional $340,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to "work" in Venezuela. This work was supposed to be aimed at "training national and/or local branches of existing and/or newly formed parties on issues such as party structure, management and organization, internal and external party relations, and coalition building."
A similar scenario – NED and its main grantees: the big media, the business community, the military, and often the hierarchy of the Catholic Church – will be realized in subsequent coups in Haiti, Honduras and Bolivia, and even in Serbia.
Meanwhile, the first "pink tide" began in South America with the elections of Lula da Silva in Brazil (2002), Nestor Kirchner in Argentina (2003), Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay (2004), Evo Morales in Bolivia (2005), Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (2006), Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2007), Fernando Lugo in Paraguay (2008).
For the first time, democratic trends in South America have challenged the White House to apply relatively new methods of hybrid warfare to already tried-and-true schemes for fighting against Latin American democracies that threaten American democracy.
In August 2018, José Luis da Costa Fiori, professor emeritus at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, published an article in which he analyzed the new role of so-called "hybrid warfare" as an integral part of Donald Trump's government's geostrategic strategy.
For Professor Fiori, the term "hybrid warfare" identifies the evolution of the traditional U.S. politico-military solution (bombing and Marine invasion, coup d'etat and dictatorship) with "fourth generation warfare."
The State Department, the CIA and the White House are coordinating a simultaneous series of economic, legal, financial, diplomatic, media, political, psychological, subversive and cyber attacks to destabilize the "leftist" Latin American governments, in particular President Maduro, and the destruction of the armed forces in these countries.
For most of his term, Trump has been preparing a coup d'état in Venezuela. The goal of the CIA was to involve Colombia in a civil war in Venezuela, to cause a deep and devastating crisis within the country that could shake the government of Nicolas Maduro, and then to launch a military intervention by the United States.
Having received the explicit support of the liberal-democratic countries of the European Union, in 2019 the Trump government created the so-called "Foundation for the Restoration of Democracy in Venezuela" with a capital of over 120 million dollars. In addition, funds were provided for "top-secret operations" by the CIA in the Bolivarian Republic, reportedly valued at eight hundred million dollars a year.
In fact, it was important for Langley's analysts to know to what extent the various sectors of the opposition were still credible, what mobilization at "hour X" they would be able to carry out, and whether the conditions and ability to create an "urban subversive center" in Venezuela's main cities, while paramilitary groups would organize a "rural subversive center" in the Venezuelan states bordering Colombia, existed.
An important element of this hybrid war was the urgency of Donald Trump's government to activate a complicated set of subversive elements of a "low-intensity war" that was planned to turn into a "real spontaneous popular uprising" capable of "absorbing the army units loyal to the Maduro regime and the most dynamic working sectors of the state energy and oil companies."
A key role in the U.S. hybrid warfare has been played by the computer keyboard. The first power outage in the country was recorded on March 7, 2019 and lasted 60 hours, paralyzing all computer networks in Venezuela. The current administration of Democrat Biden is not shy about these weapons either. Cyber terrorism has severely damaged Venezuela's economy.
After the Bolivarian government managed to bypass most of the financial sanctions with the help of Russia, the CIA, on Trump's orders, launched the "Constitution" operation or, as it was informally called in Langley, the "second Maidan operation" – playing the "interim president" card, with the expectation that the right-wing opposition could make a "color revolution" along the lines of Ukraine and other former Soviet republics and impose a new government, totally dependent on the White House and multinational corporations.
Thus Juan Guaido, president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, appeared on the political scene. His appearance in January 2019 announced and appointed him interim president of the country, referring to the constitutional provision that allows him to come to power in the absence of the legitimate head of state, the opposition-controlled Venezuelan parliament. However, "toward the end" of the Biden administration, he "deflated" and was rejected by almost all the countries that recognized him, including the European Union.
According to the subversive plan, Constitution operation was to be the starting point of a planned U.S. invasion disguised as sending humanitarian aid. However, one of the reasons for abandoning the air part of the operation was Venezuela's readiness to repel the attack.
President Maduro, following the precepts of Hugo Chavez, completed with the help of Russia the defense of the entire airspace of the country with a real "umbrella" equipped with anti-aircraft missiles guided by powerful Russian radars capable of neutralizing any type of electronic jamming at a distance of 300 kilometers.
In one way or another, the Biden administration is not much different from Trump in its treatment of Venezuela. Only the guts are thinner. The Biden administration seeks to move away from Trump's failed "maximum pressure" strategy. But not from the intention to continue the hybrid war against Venezuela and overthrow Maduro's government, as well as all the other leaders of the now second "pink wave" of South America.
Venezuela appears in U.S. national security strategies as a "dictatorship" in the Western Hemisphere, which, along with Cuba and Nicaragua, must be "isolated" to prevent "military and economic expansion" by China and Russia, which are seen as a threat to "strategic reserve countries of the United States," according to Che Guevara.
Venezuela has been and continues to be a laboratory of all possible strategies for regime change, developed by the combined U.S. authorities to a far greater extent than Cuba, if only because it can rely on real opposition in power to the Venezuelan leader. This does not work in Cuba.
Standing on the balcony of the presidential palace, Nicolás Maduro warned his supporters about the U.S. response to the political crisis in the country. "We don't want to go back to the gringo interventions of the 20th century," he said. – "The U.S. is trying to stage a coup d'état and establish a puppet government in its interests in Venezuela."
In 2024, both Venezuela and the U.S. will hold presidential elections. The "democratic" White House administration is preparing for both, not hesitating to use hybrid warfare methods against its opponents. Losing the hybrid war to Maduro, Biden is getting back at Trump.