The Washington House of Representatives on Wednesday rejected two war powers resolutions presented to Congress to prevent United States President Donald Trump from launching unilaterally, without counting on Capitol Hill, against Venezuela. The Republican votes, a party which has a small minority in the lower house, were enough, with the addition of a Democrat, for them not to move forward.
Gregory Meeks (New York) and Jim McGovern (Massachusetts) led both legislative initiatives as ranking Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and Rules Committees.
McGovern later issued a statement: “I am furious that cowardly lawmakers have once again ceded Congress’s constitutional responsibility for war to a would-be dictator in the White House,” he wrote. “The Founding Fathers did not want any president to have the unilateral power to start a war, much less a president like Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to end unnecessary foreign conflicts. Now he is breaking that promise, and his weak and pathetic minions in Congress are allowing him to drag us into another endless war that no one wants except his billionaire friends in the oil industry.”
McGovern was referring to the latest developments in Washington’s growing pressure on Caracas since a campaign of extrajudicial killings of 95 crew members from at least 23 suspected drug boats bombed in the Caribbean and, to a lesser extent, the Pacific began in early September. Since then, the United States has deployed an unprecedented military force in the Caribbean, with the aim, which no one tries to pass off as anything else, of forcing the resignation of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Last week, Washington went a step further by intercepting an oil tanker off the coast of this country. Then came the announcement of new sanctions against half a dozen shipping companies that transport Venezuelan oil and six other similar vessels, which opened the door to further confiscations. Sanctions were also imposed on three of Maduro’s nephews.
This Tuesday, Trump ordered on his social network the “total blockade of sanctioned oil tankers” entering and leaving Venezuela. With this announcement, the form of which it will take beyond the president’s threats on social networks is still unknown, it has at least served to dispel the few doubts that may have remained about Washington’s interest in Venezuelan crude oil as part of the offensive against the Chavista regime.
Trump affirmed in this message on his social network that the phenomenal American naval deployment in the Caribbean would continue “until (Chavismo) returns to the United States of America all the oil, land and other assets” which, according to him, were stolen from them.
“The blockade will not allow anyone to pass who should not pass,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday, the day it was learned that Maduro had ordered the Navy to escort oil tankers leaving their ports.
“They stole all our oil not too long ago,” Trump added for his part. “And we want it back. They took it illegally. They took our land, our oil rights, everything we had, because there was a president who maybe wasn’t paying attention. But they’re not going to get what they want. They kicked out our businesses.”
Trump is apparently referring to assets nationalized by the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez in early 1976, when Gerald Ford, a Republican, was tenant of the White House. Venezuela then took control of the main oil supplier to the United States. Today, Trump says he is ready to regain this control.
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