It was the year 2000. Saddam Hussein was driving the car himself. His guest, Hugo Chavez, was in the passenger’s seat. The Iraqi president took his Venezuelan counterpart on a tour of Baghdad that included the banks of the Tigris river. The two men discussed their dream of a “multipolar world,” denounced American hegemony, and agreed to coordinate regarding oil prices.
In those days, those who raised their fist in defiance of America found friends across the world. Chavez forged an “intimate friendship” with Muammar Gaddafi, who was imitating Fidel Castro’s attempt to set fire to the cloak America had laid across the continents. Nuri al-Masmari, the Libyan chief of protocol and the “shadow of the Colonel,” recalls a visit Castro had made to Libya.
“Gaddafi admired Castro and helped him a great deal. On the last day of his visit to Libya, Aisha, the Colonel’s mother, passed away. I asked the Cuban leader if he wanted to offer his condolences, so he came to the Colonel’s office. He said to him: ‘I’m astonished; your mother has died and you have been so calm?’ Muammar replied: ‘This is fate, and her time had come.’” A strong thread tied the two men together: hostility to America.
Nicolas Maduro murmurs so the guards won’t hear him. Castro was lucky he didn’t fall into their hands. Chavez was lucky that cancer got to him before the Marines. Castro had Soviet immunity, which remained in force even after the great collapse. Today, the Soviet Union sighs in museums. Vladimir Putin sits on the throne of Catherine the Great and Peter the Great, not on that of Lenin and Stalin. The invasion of Ukraine was a limited stab to the body of the West, regardless of its connotations. A slain empire the size of the Soviet Union deserves sharper and more sweeping vengeance, but these times are not like those times.
When Donald Trump announced the closure of Venezuelan airspace, security chiefs huddled around Maduro. They reiterated their determination and expressed confidence. Still, he smelled apprehension. What does Trump want? No one knows precisely what he wants. Does he want a deal? At what price? Does he want to strike? What could be done in retaliation?
He was troubled by the claims that his regime had become a vast narcotics factory. He remembered that just a year earlier, the name of Syria’s president had been Bashar al-Assad, and that he had been accused of mass-producing Captagon. He knows that some of his supporters say “Maduro forever” and “Maduro or we burn the country,” but such slogans are not enough when you are facing America, mistress of the fleets and home to the world’s largest economy. Aggravating the battle is the difficulty of predicting the direction of the winds unleashed by the man with a red tie sitting in the Oval Office, who can launch tweets that do more damage than missiles.
It is not easy to be America’s enemy, especially when you’re close by. Your misfortune doubles in line with the American policeman’s eagerness to punish you for your policies and the words of hostility you direct at the world’s sole superpower.
It is agonizing to be America’s enemy. It has a digital memory and never forgets. It killed the Soviet Union with the model it offered, with open windows and media. It did not fire a bullet nor spill a drop of blood. And where is Saddam Hussein? Where is Muammar Gaddafi? Where is Qassem Soleimani? Where is Osama bin Laden? Where is “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi”?
They accuse him of all sorts of things. They accuse him of overseeing a narcotics business that poisons millions of Americans, of rigging elections and embracing the slogan “the palace or the grave,” of spinning threads with Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and all of America’s enemies- the enemies of its model, its role, and its hegemony. They also accuse him of being responsible for the persistence of a sea of poor people in a land that sleeps atop a sea of oil, and for causing the migration of millions of Venezuelans in protest against the same dark game repeating itself. It is not easy for a man who sees himself as heir to the dreams of Simon Bolívar and the path laid by Castro and Chavez, to find himself accused of manufacturing and exporting narcotics. The currency has deteriorated, the aura has deteriorated, and the balance is nearing depletion.
Anger comes to him. I am not Manuel Noriega. America invaded his country, Panama, then took him away, tried him, and imprisoned him. Venezuela is not Panama, and I am not Noriega. There are bullets in my pistol, and I am saving the last one for my temple. I will not allow the media to delight at seeing me in the defendant’s cage, nor will I allow this foreign-backed opposition to occupy the streets and uproot this defiant regime. I am of the people. I was a bus driver; I lived in the neighborhoods of Caracas. I have known the suffering of its inhabitants. I took the path of labor unions and embraced the Bolivarian dream. When Chavez’s cancer returned, he realized I was the man who could be trusted with the fortress and shielding it from the winds blowing from Washington. A real mandate does not come from ballot boxes. It comes from the spirit of the nation.
Trump has a peculiar temperament and style. He considered the export of narcotics a kind of export of terrorism. The Trump administration personally accused Maduro of running the “Cartel of the Suns” and designated it a foreign terrorist organization. The American president hinted at “an imminent ground operation” after blood was spilled from the smuggling boats into Caribbean waters.
The omens of a storm pile up.
The man who sent bombers to pound Iranian nuclear facilities might not hesitate to use them to strike drug factories. The regime’s apparent helplessness could tempt the opposition to paralyze the country in order to get rid of Chavez’s heir. Can Maduro strike a deal with the man in the White House? Or would he prefer to satisfy Bolivar and Chavez, insisting on the palace or the grave? Maduro breathes on Trump’s time. And the American president is full of surprises.
