In a two-hour speech on Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro used recent U.S. sanctions targeting his top political lieutenants as a pretense for expanding executive power.
“President Barack Obama, representing the US imperialist elite, has personally decided to take on the task of defeating my government and intervening in Venezuela to control it,” Maduro said, in reference to Obama’s recent Executive Order.
"I'm going to ask for an anti-imperialist Enabling Law ... to preserve the nation's peace, integrity and sovereignty,” he added. It was one of many statements made in recent months by Venezuelan officials identifying the U.S. as an existential threat to its security. Last month, Maduro accused Vice President Biden of involvement in an alleged coup attempt to topple his socialist government.
The U.S. has almost certainly supported anti-communist opposition groups in Venezuela and neighboring Cuba, but there’s little evidence that they have supported a violent coup, or that one even occurred. Yet Venezuela isn’t the only country guilty of hyperbole. When Obama announced sanctions against Venezuela, he called the small Latin American country an “extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela.”
With a $4 billion dollar budget, Venezuela’s military might ranks around 50th in the world, somewhere between Angola and Finland, according to GlobalFirePower.com. The U.S, by contrast, has a defense budget of around $600 billion, by far the largest in the world.
"[The North American empire] feels threatened. What weapons do we possibly have to threaten the United States,” said Diosdado Cabello, head of Maduro’s leading PSUV party, according to Al-Jazeera. "These types of measures only help to galvanize us.”
Despite the limited scope of the sanctions, inflamed U.S. rhetoric has inspired comradery among Venezuela’s traditional allies in Latin America including Bolivia and Ecuador.
The Cuban government issued a statement offering “unconditional support” of Maduro, asking “How does Venezuela threaten the United States?” Also from Cuba, Fidel Castro showed support in a short note.
“I congratulate you on your brilliant and courageous speech against the brutal plans of the U.S. government,” Castro wrote. “Your words go down in history as proof that humanity can and must know the truth.”
Top White House and State Department officials were unable to explain what Obama meant by saying that Venezuela was a “threat to national security,” despite multiple questions from the press during briefings. Meanwhile, traditional U.S. allies have been less than enthusiastic to join in the largely rhetorical spat. A European Union spokesperson announced that the political block would not support the U.S. and has no plans to offer sanctions of its own.
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