Caracas (EFE).- Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Tuesday ordered the creation of comprehensive defense commands bringing together citizens, military personnel, and public officials to “be prepared” in the event of an armed conflict.
The move comes in a context marked by the “threat” that, according to the president, is posed by the US military deployment offshore in the Caribbean Sea.
The head of state issued the order upon signing the Law of the Command for the Comprehensive Defense of the Nation, approved Tuesday by the National Assembly (parliament), controlled by the Chavista movement, which establishes the objectives, characteristics, and functions of these bodies.
“The order must be activated to establish, structure, and put the comprehensive defense commands into action so that we are prepared, should we as a republic, as a people, have to engage in armed struggle to defend this sacred heritage of the liberators, both men and women, to be ready to win, to triumph, through patriotism and courage,” Maduro stated.
In an event at Miraflores Palace—the seat of the executive branch in Caracas—broadcast on the state-run channel Venezolana de Televisión (VTV), the leader said that, in these last “fourteen weeks of imperial criminal madness” and “permanent psychological warfare,” the South American country has “made progress” in the military and institutional spheres.
Faced with “these threats,” according to Maduro, the capacity of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) has been strengthened for “any scenario,” and “the entire country has been prepared, in perfect popular-military-police fusion,” with the objective, he maintained, of “being ready, willing, and prepared” to “move from unarmed struggle to a liberating and victorious armed struggle.”
In this process, he noted that “more than eight” million Venezuelans have enlisted in the militia, and there have been citizen training sessions on “military techniques” and FANB deployments “state by state.”
The new law, as read during its discussion process, indicates that an integral defense command “is a unit attached” to the Strategic Operational Command of the Armed Forces (Ceofanb) whose “mission is to integrate, plan, coordinate, direct, supervise, and exercise control” over the so-called Organs of Directorate for Integral Defense (ODDI).
Among its activities, it states “supporting military operations,” as well as “ensuring the continuity of productive activities and the functioning of essential public services and critical infrastructure, once the mobilization is decreed.”
The Venezuelan government announced a new military deployment this Tuesday that includes “land, air, naval, and riverine assets,” in addition to weapons systems and other resources to confront what it considers “imperial threats.”
The US has maintained a military deployment in the Caribbean since August under the pretext of combating drug trafficking, but Caracas insists that it is a “threat” intended to bring about “regime change.”
According to the US Navy, the Pentagon’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and its strike group—more than 4,000 sailors and dozens of tactical aircraft—arrived in Latin America this Tuesday. EFE
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