Borrell: US Goal in Venezuela is Resource Seizure, Not Democracy

Former Spanish Minister and former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell stated on Tuesday in an interview with EFE that the ultimate goal of the United States regarding Venezuela is not to restore democracy, but to seize its natural resources. He said that if they have to ally with the remains of the chavist or madurist regime to achieve this, they will not hesitate to do so. "In reality, the United States has never had the objective of restoring democracy in its military interventions," Borrell emphasized. The diplomat also noted that US President Donald Trump wants to install a puppet government in Venezuela, similar to the one Putin wanted to install in Ukraine and already has in Belarus. "Putin doesn't care about international law, and neither does Trump. What kind of world are we getting into?" Borrell wondered. He added that Venezuela, with over 300,000 barrels, "is the largest oil reserve in the world, larger than Saudi Arabia's, and they are willing to exploit and make it theirs." Trump, whom the Spanish diplomat called a "compulsive narcissist," has entrusted the transition after the capture by the US Army of Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores to the second-in-command of chavismo, the current interim president Delcy Rodríguez. "I am here in Chile, what better place to remember American interventions?" Borrell concluded, referring to the support that General Augusto Pinochet received to carry out the coup in 1973. For now, he indicated, "they give him the opportunity to be obedient and do what they want him to do. It is truly an empire's language: as long as you do what I want, you will stay there, but the day you don't, I will remove you as I have removed others." And that is grav serious. In his opinion, such a world resembles a "jungle" where the only rule is "the law of the jungle."