A senior US military commander today tried to tamp down concerns in the US Congress that President Donald Trump is poised to send troops to Venezuela to advance a government transition there.
"Our leadership has been clear that it should be primarily a democratic transition and we are in total support of diplomacy," US southern command chief, admiral Craig Faller, told the US House of Representatives' Armed Services Committee today.
Faller made the remarks a day after government resistance to a revolt in Caracas apparently caught the US administration by surprise, forcing Washington to consider its next steps in the effort to force President Nicolas Maduro from power.
The administration gave strong backing to the uprising led by National Assembly speaker Juan Guaido, who is recognized as Venezuela's interim leader by the US and most countries in Europe and the western hemisphere. But the anti-Maduro uprising appears to have made only a small dent in the Venezuelan military's support for Maduro, despite the involvement of some enlisted personnel and mid-ranking military commanders.
US officials had believed that Venezuela's defense minister Vladimir Padrino and other senior military commanders promised to back Guaido's uprising. But Padrino yesterday publicly backed Maduro. Secretary of state Mike Pompeo and White House national security adviser John Bolton appealed to Padrino, presidential guard commander Ivan Rafael Hernandez and supreme court chief justice Maikel Moreno to make good on their reputed pledges to step aside — to no avail.
Pompeo and Bolton said the US will ratchet up the sanctions pressure on Venezuela and against its partners Cuba and Russia — notably omitting any mention of Maduro's largest state creditor, China.
Pompeo said yesterday that Maduro was planning to flee to Cuba by plane but "the Russians talked him out of that." Pompeo's statement is "fake news," the Russian foreign ministry said.
"You have seen the work that we have done already to raise the cost for the Cubans," Pompeo said in a televised interview today. "We have taken a handful of actions. There are more that we will continue to work on. We will do the same for the Russians."
Trump via Twitter threatened "a full and complete embargo" against Cuba. Cuba has already been under a partial US economic embargo since the 1960s.
Bolton and Pompeo both reiterated that the US would not rule out a military intervention in Venezuela. But the southern command chief said the thrust of US military effort has focused on intelligence sharing with regional partners. "The second line of effort focused on (prudent planning for) evacuating non combat personnel and protection of American citizens in Venezuela," Faller said.
The Federal Aviation Administration today issued a notice prohibiting all US air carriers and commercial operators from conducting flights in Venezuelan air space below 26,000ft (7,930m). The notice cites "increasing political instability and tensions in Venezuela and the associated inadvertent risk to flight operators."
American Airlines, the last US carrier to operate in Venezuela, already suspended flights between the two countries in March.
