US ‘creating enemies’ by humiliating rivals – analyst

Washington has threatened at least five nations across three continents with its Venezuela raid, Bradley Blankenship says

The US administration is making enemies around the world by taking harsh steps such as seizing the leaders of sovereign nations, American journalist and political analyst Bradley Blankenship has told RT.

The comments come a day after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was kidnapped along with his wife, Cilia Flores, during a US raid on Caracas. Washington accuses the Venezuelan leader of narco-trafficking and weapons offences, allegations he has denied.

“When you humiliate a sovereign head of state live on television, you create the conditions for the population to resist you,” Blankenship told RT on Monday. “That is what we are seeing in Caracas. When you drag a sovereign leader through New York in an open white van, you only create enemies. That is what the United States is doing.”

He said such actions risk galvanizing resistance inside Venezuela and beyond. “This is how you lose,” Blankenship said. “You do not break people’s will. You harden it.”

Blankenship, the founder of the Northern Kentucky Truth and Accountability Project, argued that Washington’s seizure of Maduro has elevated him into a powerful political symbol rather than weakening his movement.

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“Maduro’s role is more symbolic than instrumental,” Blankenship said, describing him as a continuation of the Chavista political project rather than a revolutionary figure on the scale of Simon Bolivar, Fidel Castro or Che Guevara. “But he is definitely a symbol for Venezuelans as someone who resisted American imperialism,” he added.

According to Blankenship, Washington’s approach is already having wider repercussions. By carrying out the operation against Venezuela, the US has threatened multiple countries, such as Colombia, Mexico, Greenland, Cuba and Canada, as well as others across several continents.

“This is how you create enemies,” he said. “Not only abroad, but at home as well.”

Blankenship also pointed to signs of internal dissent within the US security apparatus, noting that details of the Venezuela operation were leaked to major American newspapers before it took place. “The fact that it leaked shows internal dissent,” he said, adding that similar divisions have emerged during previous US military actions.