An
internal government document reveals tactics of “economic warfare”
and “financial weapons” the US is using against Venezuela in the
name of “furthering capitalism.”
by
Ben Norton
Part
2 - US “financial weapons” and “economic warfare”
With the
coup raging in Venezuela, WikiLeaks published an excerpt from what it
described as the “US coup manual,” the Army Special Operations
Forces Unconventional Warfare booklet.
WikiLeaks
drew particular attention to a segment of the publication entitled
“Financial Instrument of U.S. National Power and Unconventional
Warfare.” This section outlines how the US government, in its own
words, uses “financial weapons” to wage “economic warfare”
against foreign governments that try to pursue an independent path.
What's happening with Venezuela? @WikiLeaks' publication of US coup manual FM3-05.130, Unconventional Warfare [UW], provides insight— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 28, 2019
DOS=Department of State
IC=Intelligence Community
UWOA=UW operations area
ARSOF=US Army Special Operations Forceshttps://t.co/8q4oQfsMzY pic.twitter.com/ez0tGqheSw
In the
unconventional warfare manual, Army Special Operations Forces
(ARSOF) wrote that the US “can use financial power as a weapon
in times of conflict up to and including large-scale general war.”
And it noted that “manipulation of U.S. financial strength can
leverage the policies and cooperation of state governments” —
that is to say, force those governments to comply with US policy.
Institutions
that help the US government accomplish this, ARSOF continued, are the
World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Examples
of “financial weapons,” include “State manipulation
of tax and interest rates” and pressure on financial
institutions to restrict “loans, grants, or other financial
assistance to foreign state and nonstate actors,” ARSOF stated.
“The
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has a long history of
conducting economic warfare valuable to any ARSOF UW campaign,”
the manual concludes.
The
US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control
is what oversees sanctions against countries like Venezuela. And on
January 28, the day WikiLeaks tweeted the above excerpt, OFAC
sanctioned Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos de
Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).
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