Yes, Venezuela is a security threat

Yes, Venezuela is a security threat
BY CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER ELBLOGDEMONTANER.COM
03/16/2015 6:16 PM 03/16/2015 7:49 PM

President Obama signed an executive order last week declaring the regime
in Venezuela a danger to U.S. security. Why? Because it violated the
human rights of the democratic opposition. He followed up by imposing
sanctions against several military officers and functionaries.

A strange move. He did it a few weeks after starting to cancel the
sanctions against the Cuban dictatorship, which, for the past half a
century or longer, has mistreated dissidents with the same or greater
viciousness than that shown by the Nicolás Maduro government in Venezuela.

There is, besides, a matter of hierarchy. Cuba is the nanny. Venezuela
behaves as it does at the behest of the Cuban advisers who rule the
country. This is the expertise that Cuba sells to Venezuela:
intelligence, social control and tough-fisted governability.

Naturally, Fidel and Raúl Castro immediately came out in impassioned
defense of Maduro. The Castro brothers know perfectly well that the $13
billion a year in subsidies, aid and business furnished by their large
political colony is worth more than the recent shows of affection and
promises they got from the United States.

"Venezuela is not alone," said the official Cuban note, meant to suggest
that if it comes to a fight, the soldiers of the Cuban motherland will
show up.

Of course, that's just talk, gestures for the balcony. The Castros know
that the United States is not the least interested in turning to
violence to liquidate Venezuela's "revolution." Nobody is going to
invade Venezuela.

What is generally ignored is why Obama has taken this contradictory step
that only serves to give Maduro a pretext for nationalism, increase
repression and stir the Latin American hornet's nest.

And yet, there are good reasons behind the move. Venezuela is indeed a
risk to the security of the United States, not because it violated the
democrats' human rights — that was the excuse — but because of three
activities that are codified in the doctrinary definition that indicates
where the danger to U.S. society begins or intensifies.

Whoever wants to know the vision that prevails in Washington on this
issue should read the book Reconceptualizing Security in the Americas in
the 21st Century, with special attention to the chapter titled
Venezuela: Trends in Organized Crime, written by analyst Joseph M. Humire.

The movement started by the late Hugo Chávez and inherited by Maduro has
crossed three red lines.

▪ First, Venezuelan complicity with the Islamist terrorists in Iran. The
governor of the state of Aragua, Tareck El Aissami, of Arab origin, is a
former Interior minister said to have strong connections to the Iran
government. He has used his posts to create a network of Middle East
terrorists fed by drug trafficking.

▪ The second boundary crossed by Caracas is, precisely, drug
trafficking. There are Venezuelan generals who are up to their eyebrows
in that murky trade. Out of the 700 tons of cocaine produced annually
worldwide, 300 go through Venezuela to Europe via Africa or to the
United States via Central America. Diosdado Cabello, the president of
Parliament, has been accused of being the chief of the main cartel.

▪ Third is the widespread laundering of ill-gotten cash. Petróleos de
Venezuela, the state-owned oil company known by the acronym PDVSA, is
where most of the crooked transactions take place, including the
emission of bonds. More than a business, PDVSA is Ali Baba's cave but
with a lot more than 40 thieves. That money serves to corrupt
politicians, buy influence and pay criminals for their services.

The White House knows all this in detail.

It has learned it from diplomats, intelligence services and defectors.
Walid Makled García, a Venezuelan drug-trafficking capo as big as the
late Pablo Escobar in his prime, was interrogated intensely by DEA
agents before his Colombian captors deported him to Venezuela.

"The Turk," as he is called, sang La Traviata. He spilled everything.
The latest member of the chorus is Leamsy Salazar, Cabello and Chávez's
right-hand man, who asked for asylum in the United States and confirmed
all that. He also contributed new data. It could no longer be said that
"Venezuela is not a danger but a nuisance."

Actually, Venezuela is a danger to the security of the United States and
the hemisphere. Obama's mistake was not to confront his enemy and call
things by their rightful name but to choose an oblique accusation and
formulate it poorly, so that most people could not understand it. He
wanted to satisfy everybody and managed to do exactly the opposite. A pity.

Source: Yes, Venezuela is a security threat | Miami Herald Miami Herald
- http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article14674460.html