Feb. 15 and Washington’s asymmetric war

By
Carlos Fazio                                                                     Read Spanish Version     

From
La Jornada, Feb. 23, 2009.

The
approval of the constitutional amendment that will allow successive
candidacies to all posts of popular election in Venezuela revalidated
at the polls the leadership of Hugo Chávez and gave legitimacy to
the project of 21st-Century socialism. That is bad news for
Washington and its intellectual footmen, who consider Chávez a
"negative force" in the hemispheric concert, according to
the view endorsed by President Barack Obama.

A
process of peaceful change is occurring in Venezuela, a process that
combines State-led capitalism with social reforms and direct
democracy. The latter is not just voting, but participating actively
in the creation of projects and the making of local and national
decisions.

The
opponents of that model, the sectors linked to international
financial capital and the owners of the big media outlets, have been
promoting a sharp class struggle based on ideology, disinformation
and racism. With good reason, Chávez said during the campaign that
to vote "Yes" was to vote for peace. On the contrary, if
the "No" triumphed, there would be a spreading of the
scenarios of violence, media war and ideological confrontation — a
systematic effort by the opposition’s putschist sectors to ignore the
nation’s democratic institutions.

We
can predict what’s ahead. Given that Venezuela is among the "global
threats" to the national security of the United States, Obama
will persist in an asymmetric war against Chávez. In January, during
his confirmation hearing in the Capitol, the No. 2 man at the State
Department, James Steinberg, said that Washington for too long had
ceded "the playing field" to Chávez.

According
to the former national security adviser at the White House and former
analyst for the Rand Corporation — a think tank in the Pentagon’s
service — Chávez’s actions and vision "do not serve the
interests" of the Venezuelans or the population of Latin
America. That, in Orwellian language, means that Chávez is hostile
to the empire’s and the military-industrial complex’s geostrategic
interests. That is why Washington will insist on its covert war,
without rules or prohibitions, a war some military experts have
defined as "a fourth-generation conflict."

In
contrast with traditional military wars, lightning wars and wars of
attrition, the fourth-generation war — which can take psychological
and physical dimensions, uses communications and marketing
techniques, and makes a psychoanalytical use of biopower — takes
advantage of the strategic asymmetry between the parties to obtain
advantages. That was Washington’s modus operandi toward Venezuela
before and during the failed coup d’état of April 2002 and it
continued with the oil sabotage and the impeachment referendum.

Faced
with the Feb. 15 reelection referendum, the circles of intelligence
in the U.S. implemented Operation Checkmate, a conspiracy plotted in
Puerto Rico on Jan. 9. There, in the presence of Globovision chairman
Alberto Federico Ravell, Primero Justicia chief Julio Borges and
other Venezuelan putschists, and with the participation of leaders of
Chile’s Social-Christian Party, led by presidential candidate Eduardo
Frei, U.S. strategists developed new plans for destabilization.

They
know that Hugo Chávez’s eventual reelection in 2012 would mean the
consolidation of the processes of change in several Andean countries
and the subregional alliances, to the detriment of the White House’s
economic and class interests, the corporations and their native
allies.

The
reaction of the Venezuelan plutocracy and the large media involved in
the media war designed by the U.S. allows us to see a new phase of
the confrontation. In an effort to position itself in the new
scenario, the right-wing command under Washington’s advisement
boasted of a partial victory because it exceeded the historic ceiling
of 5 million anti-Chávez votes.

On
that basis, and with the support of U.S. and European conservative
foundations (Cato Institute, Heritage, Konrad Adenauer, Spain’s
FAES), conservative politicians (Madeleine Albright, José María
Aznar, Eduardo Frei, Václav Havel, Lech Walesa) and intellectual
messiahs in the service of the counterrevolution (Mario Vargas Llosa,
Carlos Alberto Montaner, Enrique Krauze) the right-wingers will try
to influence public opinion with a tired slogan: the totalitarian
Chávez vs. a right wing disguised as a left wing.

That
right-wing front uses tools like the International Committee for
Democracy in Cuba, aligned with the Bush Plan (the Commission for
Assistance to a Free Cuba) and the Christian-Democratic Organization
of America (ODCA). All of those have supported the "color
revolutions" and "soft coups" in the former Soviet
republics and encouraged subversion in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and
Ecuador.

We
can expect the Obama administration to intensify the activities of
intelligence, counterintelligence and the financial strangulation of
Venezuela, while it generates political destabilization through
street protests and acts of planned chaos.

In
this regard, former Venezuelan Vice President José Vicente Rangel
denounced a plan that consists of strengthening certain
installations, such as Tocumen International Airport in Panama, where
a terminal has been set aside for "a permanent headquarters for
an operational unit of air surveillance and electronic espionage
using AWAC aircraft." In that context, Feb. 15, 2009, was a new
battle won by Hugo Chávez, but the war goes on.