Thomas A. Shannon, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to Brazil and Co-chair of the Inter-American Dialogue Board of Directors, was featured on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown,” discussing the Trump administration’s developing approach to Venezuela days after it announced the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Comments from Shannon Jr.:
“What we have here is not an effort at regime change, but an effort at leadership change in Venezuela and an effort to create some kind of government in Venezuela that would be more compliant with what President Trump is trying to accomplish in the region.”
“To a certain extent, the Trump administration is stepping away from being a global hegemon to being a regional hegemon, to one which focuses entirely on our near neighborhood and how we protect the immediate access points to the United States, for both commercial reasons and security reasons.”
“This is a government that over more than 25 years, first with Hugo Chavez and then Nicolas Maduro, have created a state which is Chavista. It’s committed to an ideology. It’s committed to an approach. And however corrupt and criminalized it has become over time, they still understand themselves in revolutionary terms, and they see themselves as the last remnants of South American anti-imperialists. And I do not see them being helpful partners in the long term.”
