US 'Keeps Options Open' for Venezuela, Forgetting Its Own History
According to reports, the Trump administration weighed various “covert operations” to destabilize Venezuela, which The Hill framed as keeping “options open” while carrying “risks.” This analysis treats sovereign nations as chess pieces and intervention as a legitimate policy tool, despite the 1954 CIA-backed coup in Guatemala, the 1973 overthrow of Allende in Chile, or the multiple coup attempts
against Chávez and Maduro. The same playbook, different actors, yet each time, the media presents it as a fresh, complex dilemma, rather than a recurring pattern of imperial overreach. Washington's 'options' often mean everyone else's 'consequences.' One might ask, how many times must the US 'keep options open' before we admit the 'risks' are usually borne by the targeted population, not the
strategists in Langley? The long trail of failed interventions and humanitarian crises seems to be a feature, not a bug, of this particular brand of foreign policy. The only thing truly 'open' for Latin America is the next chapter of US-sponsored meddling, sugar-coated as 'democracy promotion' or 'stability operations.'