(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Con Maduro caerán otros)
The only thing that can prevent American military action to behead and liquidate the criminal power that has held Venezuela hostage for the past twenty-five years is for the current supreme chief of that organisation, Nicolás Maduro, to announce, very soon, his withdrawal, resignation, flight or suicide. And that, immediately afterwards, his accomplices, the leading cadres of the narco-socialist regime, civilian and military, should solemnly announce that they accept the results of the elections of 28 July, that they recognise Edmundo González as the legitimate president of the Republic of Venezuela, and that they place themselves at the orders of the government presented by the president and María Corina Machado, the undisputed leader of the great battle that brings the unappealable defeat of the criminal regime.
Then Machado and those responsible for the beautiful and incredible feat of last summer following the elections, with the operation to save the tally sheets, will take up the reins of power. Their chief problem will no longer be Maduro’s hired killers, whose leaders will possibly all die in a single day. They will be replaced as a threat by the hordes of traitors already forming in an attempt to maintain a criminal system as brutal and immensely lucrative as the one that has sustained the regime until now.
If this does not happen, if Nicolás Maduro does not announce his withdrawal, resignation, flight or suicide very soon, other things are going to happen. Forceful and indispensable things. Because, fortunately for all those who still believe in freedom and in the necessity of a commitment to truth for the survival of Western civilisation, in Washington today some people are in charge who consider that the criminals of the transnational regime of narco-socialism are not “merely” a terrible torture lasting a quarter of a century, a monstrous tragedy for three generations of Venezuelans and a political, social and economic catastrophe affecting the entire subcontinent
Maduro’s criminal regime, which is not a government but an organised crime cartel, is a threat to the whole reasonably free world and, what matters most in Washington, it is a ferocious and hyperactive enemy of the United States. And not only because of its fundamental role in mass drug trafficking. Venezuela and Cuba are the two main military bases of all the enemies of the United States installed in its “backyard”. Without forgetting, of course, Mexico, which in the delirious drift of AMLO and Sheinbaum is striving to be ever more of an enemy of its big neighbour to the north. It does not look like a good calculation, even though the cocaine business cartels rule in Mexico City as they have never ruled before.
From China to Iran, Hezbollah or North Korea, from the narco-communists of the cartels of the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group to Vladimir Putin and his henchmen, organised crime and destabilising Islamist penetration, all of them have a lair, launch pads and financing in Venezuelan territory and in the great financing fund that is the production and trafficking of cocaine. These do nothing but increase in neighbouring Colombia, whose president Gustavo Petro is by full right very high on the list of Maduro’s accomplices who may share his fate. Although cocaine is the star by volume, to the business of this great transactional orchestra must be added other drugs, trafficking in hydrocarbons in breach of sanctions, and other illegal, semi-legal or even official enterprises.
In Europe there is no country more affected by the international criminal activities of the powerful Cartel de los Soles of Nicolás Maduro, Vladimir Padrino and company than Spain, where they have bought the goodwill of individuals, of groups, of a couple of parties and even of the government when they have needed it.
Spain lives under a government intimately linked to transnational organised crime, to which it renders services as a sanctuary, as a rearguard for investment and laundering and of course as political influence in the European Union. Ever since Pedro Sánchez came to power the socialists have been at every moment the most uninhibited representation, in the European Parliament and in the institutions of Brussels, of the narco and criminal axis of Caracas and Havana, later extended to Bogotá and Brasília. The European Commission, its external service and its embassies, which are a reflection of the alliance of socialists and the People’s Party, are an authentic disgrace as permanent accomplices of all the regimes and forces integrated into the international organisations of narco-socialism such as the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group.
Well, all of that is very probably going to collapse before Christmas. Let us hope only the minimum force will be necessary. That only those who deserve it will die and that Venezuela will make a peaceful transition with a firm and at last legitimate government that neutralises all the threats. The effect of the fall of the narco-socialist regime will without doubt be felt throughout the Americas. The front that has held in check the democracies and all decent people who defend freedom and truth in the countries threatened by this immense federation of forces combining totalitarian vocation and organised crime will thus be left terribly weakened.
Among them, let us insist, must be included the Spanish government of Pedro Sánchez, the PSOE and the whole rabble of separatist, pro-terrorist and communist parties which for years have joined in the Chavista feast of the “bundles” of blood-stained dollars. Maduro’s fall is going to be a very hard blow to a whole world of accomplices the regime made for itself over a quarter of a century. Let us hope that in Spain too it ends up sweeping away those who profited from the suffering and plundering of Venezuelans and who are trying to guarantee impunity for their crimes by methods ever more similar to those of the murderers whose twilight is being announced.
Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.
