Biden’s final days: Escalating aggression against Venezuela

After imposing genocidal policies that cost his party the U.S. election, President Joe Biden is filling out his final days of office with a slash-and-burn agenda that is even worse than the one he instigated before the elections.

In an outrageous attack on a sovereign country, the U.S. government is attempting to deny the Venezuelan people the leadership of their freely elected president, Nicolás Maduro. The Biden administration declared its belated recognition of Edmundo Gonzalez, the U.S.-funded candidate and big-time loser, in the July elections four months ago.

Biden waited until after the U.S. elections on Nov. 5 to more fully exercise his powers of “regime change” — a bid to overthrow a democratic election in Venezuela. Gonzalez is an old hand, a mercenary for the U.S. During the 1980s Contra war in Central America, Gonzales, operating from then-President C. A. Pérez’s Venezuelan embassy in El Salvador, was instrumental in running the covert U.S. counter-revolutionary campaign responsible for murdering thousands of Salvadorans.

Even before the Venezuelan election took place, the United States government preemptively declared them illegitimate. Nicolás Maduro succeeded in winning the election despite widespread sabotage and an economy devastated by U.S. sanctions. The election was conducted with internationally recognized standards of transparency. Following Maduro’s victory, the U.S.-backed rightwing opposition encouraged street violence in an attempt to invalidate the election and ignite a civil war. This failed completely, and Gonzalez quickly fled to exile in Spain.

During his first term in office, President Donald Trump imposed harsh punitive actions by tightening sanctions and seizing Venezuelan assets. President Joe Biden maintained the brutal sanctions in punishment for Venezuela’s resistance to the imperialist expropriation of their vast reserve of oil. Opposition in Venezuela is rooted in the oligarchy that profited from their affiliation with the U.S. oil companies.

Sanctions on Venezuela, as on Cuba and at least 13 other countries, have a lethal impact on the general population. Their imposition has been called “A War Without Bombs” in the outstanding book The Social, Political and Economic Impact of Sanctions Against Venezuela. An authorized abridged and edited version of the book is titled U.S. Sanctions Are Killing Venezuelans.