This Wednesday (24), a White House official told Reuters that the American military will focus almost exclusively on imposing a “quarantine” on Venezuela’s oil over the next two months.
The statement not only seems to indicate that the United States is currently more inclined to oppose Caracas, but it also marks a change in the language adopted by the American government.
At the beginning of the month, President Donald Trump ordered a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela. Since then, two vessels have been seized and the
The decision by the American authority heard by Reuters instead of “blocking” appears to reflect the strategy used by the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when John F. Kennedy’s government wanted to avoid an escalation of the conflict.
Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s defense secretary at the time, said in 2002: “We called it ‘quarantine’ because ‘lockdown’ is a war word.”
an act of war under international law
Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis
A year after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the United States implemented an embargo on Cuba in response to a wave of nationalizations that affected American interests.
This embargo, later expanded, remains in force to this day.
In 1962, and for a brief period, the embargo turned into a total blockade of the island, in the context of the Missile Crisis, triggered by the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuban soil.
It was one of the most tense moments of the Cold War and the culmination of an escalation that began even before the Cuban Revolution, when the United States installed its own nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey.
Tensions intensified in 1961 with the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba by US-backed dissidents.
Soviet missiles in Cuba were discovered in September 1962, and on October 22, then US President John F. Kennedy ordered a naval “quarantine” of the island.
He avoided using the word “blockade” to avoid implying a state of war, according to the State Department.
Conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union was ultimately averted through negotiations between Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
The blockade was only lifted on November 20, 1962, when the Soviets withdrew their last bombers from Cuba.
To blockade Cuba, Washington used two aircraft carriers, the USS Enterprise and the USS Independence, in addition to two squadrons of destroyers and a large number of support and logistics ships as part of Task Force 135, according to the Navy’s official history.
Led by Admiral Robert L. Dennison, this fleet intercepted all Soviet merchant ships and submarines that tried to reach Cuba for a month.
Warships from Argentina, Venezuela, Canada and the United Kingdom, all US allies at the time, also participated in the blockade.
* With information from Germán Padinger, from CNN en Español, and Steve Holland, from Reuters
https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/internacional/por-que-o-governo-trump-esta-pressionando-a-venezuela-entenda-em-5-pontos/
