New Delhi: Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro called on his nation’s military leaders to prepare for war against the U.S. days after the Trump administration banned Venezuelan officials from entering the nation.
Maduro joined his army top brass at a military exercise near the northern city of Maracay, where he reminded them of their duty to defend the country.
“We have been shamelessly threatened by the most criminal empire that ever existed and we have the obligation to prepare ourselves to guarantee peace,” said Maduro.
Maduro’s speech came two days after Trump signed a decree adding a raft of top Venezuelan officials to a travel ban encompassing eight countries that Washington says pose a security threat.
The US in August banned American financial institutions from lending new currency to Venezuela’s government or its state oil company PDVSA. It has also imposed financial sanctions on Maduro and about 20 top officials.
Last week, speaking at the UN General Assembly, Donald Trump said, “We have also imposed tough calibrated sanctions on the socialist Maduro regime in Venezuela, which has brought a once thriving nation to the brink of total collapse. The socialist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro has inflicted terrible pain and suffering on the good people of that country.”
He further attacked the regime by calling it corrupt. “This corrupt regime destroyed a prosperous nation by imposing a failed ideology that has produced poverty and misery everywhere it has been tried. To make matters worse, Maduro has defied his own people, stealing power from their elected representatives, to preserve his disastrous rule. The Venezuelan people are starving, and their country is collapsing. Their democratic institutions are being destroyed. The situation is completely unacceptable, and we cannot stand by and watch,” he said.
Maduro has tried to consolidate his control over the government, including through a new Constituent Assembly that has wrested power from the opposition-dominated legislature, a move heavily criticized by the international community.
Maduro said in his speech at the Libertador airbase that his government wanted prosperity for the nation “but to realize it we need to have rifles, missiles and well-oiled tanks at the ready….to defend every inch of the territory if needs be.”
“The future of humanity cannot be the world of illegal sanctions, of economic persecution,” he said in a reference to a US travel ban imposed on officials from a list of government agencies and their families.
Venezuela is facing a humanitarian crisis as food shortages have led the regime to start distributing rabbits, and to ask people to let them reproduce and eat them amid growing international sanctions.
Venezuela before Maduro was governed by Hugo Chávez, the populist firebrand who served as president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. Under Chávez, Venezuela’s political and economic landscape transformed rapidly and radically. Industries were nationalized and enormous amount of government money was poured into social programs. Under his rule, Venezuela’s unemployment rate halved, income per capita more than doubled, the poverty rate fell by more than half, education improved, and infant mortality rates declined.
Maduro has tried to replicate his predecessor’s antiques but has largely failed. The big question is how far he will go in trying to ensure that he maintains power after the recent U.S. sanctions and economic problems at home.