The Venezuela crisis is escalating rapidly as divides sharpen in public opinion worldwide between supporters of socialist President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaido who, last month, declared himself acting president of the oil-rich South American nation against a backdrop of severe economic straits for the country's 30 million people. Guaido has pledged to open humanitarian aid routes for food and medicine after video footage circulated of government soldiers closing a bridge at the border with neighbouring Columbia. Observers doubt that he will be able to fulfil this pledge without outside assistance, which Maduro supporters fear will come from Colombia and Brazil. Both Bogota and Brasilia, which is now governed by the right-wing Jair Bolsonaro, deny any intention to intervene militarily against the Maduro government in Caracas. But a Venezuelan government official declared that humanitarian assistance was a “Trojan horse” and urged the government to defend its borders. The Maduro government maintains that Washington is interested not in democracy for the Venezuelan people but in exploiting Venezuelan oil. Venezuela, which sits atop one of the largest oil reserves in the world, is a founding member of OPEC. On Monday, this week, Reuters reported that Maduro sent a letter, dated 29 January, to OPEC Secretary-General Mohamed Barkindo requesting OPEC's help in the face of US sanctions against Venezuela's oil industry. The previous day Washington had imposed sanctions on Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA. Reuters cited Madura's letter as saying, “our country hopes to receive the solidarity and full support of the member countries of OPEC and its ministerial conference in the fight we are currently having against the illegal and arbitrary intrusion of the United States in the internal affairs of Venezuela.” Maduro also asked for “your firm support and collaboration to jointly denounce and face this shameless dispossession of... important assets of one of the members of OPEC.” Russia, for its part, has denied that the Maduro government requested military support from Moscow to counter a possible US military intervention. When Washington declared its recognition of Guaido as acting president it stated that it did not wish to use force but added that all possibilities were open. The US under former president Bush Jr tried to engineer a coup against Maduro's predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez. The plot failed and Chavez was restored to power within less than 72 hours. In the current crisis, Moscow has cautioned against any military intervention which, it said, would trigger a crisis that would benefit no one. More than 40 countries have followed Washington's lead in recognising opposition leader Guaido as the acting president of Venezuela. The American endorsement seemed coordinated in advance, coming only moments after Guaido declared himself acting president in front of a mass rally in Caracas. Most other Latin Americans have endorsed Guaido, apart from Cuba, Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay and Nicaragua. Russia, China, Iran (also a founding member of OPEC), Turkey (a NATO member) and Syria also refused to recognise Guaido as president. The Western press has sided with the Trump administration in this crisis despite the strained relationship between the Oval Office and the media since the presidential campaigns in 2016. Some Western reports have already circulated conjectures that Maduro was making contingency plans to leave, as though the crisis had already been resolved in favour of his right-wing opponent Guaido. Bloomberg, on Monday, suggested that Maduro is under pressure at home and abroad to go, and that Russia, Turkey, Iran and Cuba have been mooted as possible havens for the leftist president. On the other hand, many American and Western intellectuals signed an open letter condemning American interference in Venezuela's internal politics and warning that military intervention could spark a war that would spread to other parts of South America. The letter also cautioned that this was a war that could not be won by either side, especially given that Venezuela has a standing army of no less than 400,000 soldiers and at least 1.2 million in people's militias ready to defend the country. Venezuela has grown increasingly polarised between the large segments of society that benefited from the social protection and welfare programmes launched by Hugo Chavez and expanded by Maduro and the right-wing segments of the middle class that leftist circles in Latin America believe want to monopolise the country's large oil revenues. Ironically, these large revenues may be a main reason for Venezuela's economic plight. According to an analysis by the Venezuelan Communist Party, Venezuela, under Chavez, had failed to develop an economic base independent from the petroleum sector, keeping the country in the thralls of a rentier economy. The country, therefore, had nothing to buffer or offset the economic damage caused by plummeting oil prices. The Venezuelan army remains the key factor in the crisis. The Venezuelan Ambassador to Cairo Wilmer Omar Barrientos Fernandez, told a press conference at his embassy that the army continues to support the “legitimate” President Maduro. Barrientos dismissed what he described as overblown news about the defections of a couple of Venezuelan military officials. In late January, Colonel Jose Luis Silva, Venezuela's military attache in Washington, announced his decision to split from Maduro and to support the opposition leader, calling on other Venezuelan military officials to do the same. Barrientos, in his press conference in Cairo, compared the Western media's coverage of defections and rifts in the army to Western propaganda against an Arab country (which he left unnamed) at the time of the beginning of “the conflict”, when some officers left the army to join the militant opposition. “They did not resolve the conflict in their favour because, in the end, the people had their say and that was to support the legitimate government, as became clear years later,” he said, adding that Western powers were now repeating that experience in Venezuela. Caracas under both Chavez and Maduro, who came to power in 2013 following the death of the founder of the leftist Bolivarian republic, supports the government of President Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, which may be the country to which the Venezuelan ambassador was alluding to. Officials in Caracas accuse Washington of trying to engineer regime change in Venezuela.
