"¡Don't Cry For Me, Venezuela!"
by Joel Bowman
“Maduro, whom I met, is a dictator, plain and simple.”
~ Joe Biden
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Whoa! What a difference a year makes! On January 10, waaay back in the Olden Days of 2024, Joe Biden’s totally qualified press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, threw some baitfish to the seal-clapping propagandists performing in the White House press cesspool. There she explained, in no uncertain terms and using her very best “serious Obama” voice, the Biden administration’s tough, no-nonsense stance on Nicolás Maduro, a man the administration openly and repeatedly labeled an “illegitimate” president:
“Let us quickly turn to Venezuela, where Maduro once again demonstrated his complete disregard for democratic norms and proceeded with his illegitimate inauguration. As President Biden emphasized earlier, during his meeting with President Elect, Edmundo González, on Monday January 6, we believe that it is essential that the will of the Venezuelan people is respected.” Jean-Pierre then went on to announce that the reward money for information that led to Maduro’s arrest, as part of the United States’ “narcotics rewards program,” would be increased to $25 million.
Gee... for a moment there, it almost seemed like they wanted the man arrested or something? That they did not recognize his legitimacy as Venezuelan president. That rather than a pillar of democracy, Biden & Co. considered him a threat to it.
In Their Own Words: Indeed, Biden’s own state department openly declared as much. Here’s his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken: “Maduro lost clearly the 2024 presidential election and does not have the right to claim the presidency. The United States does not recognize Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela.” And Ned Price, State Department spokesperson: “Again, Maduro is a dictator. His repression, corruption, and mismanagement have created one of the most dire humanitarian crises this hemisphere has seen.”
Their words, dear reader. Of course, Mr. Biden’s administration was not alone in refusing to recognize Maduro’s “illegitimate” claim to the presidency. The European Union likewise refused to legitimize the military strongman’s proclaimed victory and officially withheld participation in his inauguration. The United Kingdom and G7 issued statements denouncing the “lack of democratic legitimacy” in Maduro’s proclaimed continuation in power and resoundingly condemned what they considered his regime’s grave repression of civil liberties.
Neighboring nations Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico all denied Maduro’s election claim, while several countries in the western hemisphere went so far as to officially recognize the opposition leader, Edmundo González Urrutia, as the legitimate president-elect. These countries included The United States, Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, and Uruguay.
Nobel Aside: As astute readers will recall, Edmundo González, who was widely considered to have won by a landslide (and who actually produced the electoral receipts to prove it), had the backing of popular opposition leader María Corina Machado, whom he replaced on the ballot after she was barred from running for office by “officials” from Maduro’s regime. Señora Machado even won a prize for her efforts, a prize enlightened individuals in academia and the legacy media used to care about, no less...
According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, María Corina Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize: “...for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” One can only imagine that things got a bit icy for the Nobel Committee when Machado dedicated the award “to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause.” Hmm...
Strange Bedfellows: Of course, Sr. Maduro was not without support... as a handful of countries with deep interests and ongoing “trade deals” – in drugs, arms, oil, humans... you know, the usual stuff – recognized his claim to the presidency, among them those notable bastions of free and open democracy, Russia, China, Cuba, Nicaragua and Iran. Curiously, these countries are not often at the top of the list when people yammer on about human rights records and civil liberties.
Who, then, would stand beside them... and beside Maduro himself? That is, for those who claim to cherish democracy... if the US, the EU, the UK and the G7, along with the majority of Venezuela’s South American neighbors – to say nothing of the Venezuelan people themselves... eight million of whom were forced into exile in the past decade alone – did not recognize Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president of that country... then the obvious question begs itself: What was he?
Put another way, if Maduro was occupying The Miraflores Palace (Venezuela’s equivalent of The White House) illegally, if he was doing so “against the will of his people,” and creating the “most dire humanitarian crises this hemisphere has seen”...would that not make him, as Mr. Biden so bluntly put it, “a dictator, plain and simple”?
Again, these are not our words, dear reader... but those of our enlightened moral and political betters, who let us know whether we are “at war with Oceana or Eurasia,” as George Orwell had it in his classic novel, "1984". After all, democracy is not our favorite plaything, nor have we spent the last eight years telling anyone who would listen that “democracy is on the ballot.” We’re simply asking the obvious question...
As for “taking out” brutal dictators (or escorting them on non-military aircraft to courts of law where they have been formally indicted on criminal charges), it would be beyond naive to pretend that superpowers do not do what they please, when they please, so-called “international law” be damned.
We do not say this is right... only that it has been the way of the world, observably, since the dawn of time. It’s what governments – and the psychopathic actors who typically head them – do. Statists gonna State, in other words. It’s what men in dark suits sometimes call “realpolitik.”
Heads of State: Indeed, compared to the treatment of similar dictators this century, Maduro may come to feel rather fortunate to find himself in a New York courtroom, with his head still attached to his shoulders, and not dragged through the streets, publicly tortured and executed... or at the bottom of the deep, blue sea.
According to the United Nations (ESCWA) data, Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s scalp is said to have cost the United States just over $1 trillion (including ongoing regional instability through 2025), with between ~14,500 and ~18,900 deaths (all sides). Gaddafi was dragged through the streets, publicly beaten, tortured and then executed for his troubles.
Sadam Hussein’s head cost the US$1.7 trillion dollars and 4,500 American soldiers... not to mention 268,000-295,000 total deaths (which is a low estimate; The Lancet reckons closer to 600,000 “excess deaths” over the entire Iraq War, with all its dubious casus belli). Hussein was later hanged and his body destroyed.
But the costliest scalp of the 21st century (so far) goes to Osama bin Laden. Until his capture and killing in 2011, according to estimates from Brown University, the War in Afghanistan cost the United States empire between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion.
The Costs of War Project estimates roughly 176,000 total deaths in the Afghanistan War, including civilians, Afghan security forces, and opposition fighters. Within hours of bin Laden’s killing (according to the official story), he was transported by helicopter to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, then to the USS Carl Vinson, from which his body was dumped in the North Arabian Sea, never to be seen again...
Readers will no doubt notice that all of these killings were carried out on the other side of the world, in poor and backward places that could not conceivably have posed a serious, existential threat to the mighty US Empire. And yet, they were dealt with mercilessly. As for this latest scalp, captured in what might be called America’s “near abroad,” there are certainly many questions outstanding...
The Latest Scalp: If Maduro was, indeed, an illegitimate dictator, why hand the leadership baton to his equally illegitimate Vice President, Delcy Rodríguez, and not to the candidate who was, until five minutes ago, officially recognized by the US (and many others) as the country’s true leader, Edmundo González (or his Nobel Prize winning backer, María Corina Machado)?
Was Maduro’s capture “pre-arranged,” as some have suggested, staged for all the world to see? Did Rodríguez serve her former boss up to Trump as part of a power negotiation, in which she would tow Washington’s line while he would grant her some level of immunity? What of the remaining power brokers and cartel henchmen in the country and around the region? They are unlikely to go along with any of Trump’s plans that do not involve a significant slice of the lucre.
And what of Maduro himself? Now that he is in US custody, what fates do the Powers That Be have in store for him? Will he be banished to a Five Star retreat for his remaining days... or will he be “suicided,” Epstein style?
What does this mean for the global balance of power, in particular vis-á-vis Maduro’s staunchest supporters/trading partners in Russia, China, Cuba, Iran? And what of the long-suffering Venezuelan people themselves, who not only endured the worst humanitarian crisis of the present century, but now have to hear about how the rights of a man the world once knew as a “brutal dictator” are suddenly more precious than their right to live peacefully in their own country? See their hopeful celebrations here in Buenos Aires in our weekend Note, here.)
Given the rhetoric from both sides of the political aisle over the past few years, we are not at all surprised that Maduro’s head was the latest to roll (if only metaphorically)... but we will be shocked if it is the last. Power plays in Venezuela… rumblings from Greenland to Colombia… and now news that the UK and France are mulling a “coalition of the willing” to put boots on ground in the Ukraine... And 2026 is barely a week old!"
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