Spotlight: U.S. accusations against Venezuela aim to justify intervention: observers

By continuing to label Venezuela as a national security threat, the United States is preparing excuses for intervention with the ultimate goal to seize Venezuela's rich oilfields, Venezuelan political observers say.

U.S. President Barack Obama has renewed for another year of an executive order, which he signed in March 2015 to declare Venezuela a national security threat, saying Venezuela's political situation "has not improved."

Extending the decree that imposes sanctions against Venezuela, Obama said the Venezuelan government continued to undermine human rights guarantees by "persecuting" political opponents, curbing press freedom and fueling violent protests.

In protest, Venezuela on Wednesday recalled its top diplomat to the United States.

In an interview with Xinhua on Wednesday, Venezuelan political analyst Alberto Aranguibel said the White House executive order labeling Venezuela as "an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security" was driven by ulterior motives.

Aranguibel said it's unreasonable to consider "a small country like Venezuela, with no nuclear weapons or a powerful army," a threat to the world's largest power.

The United States is pursuing its own interests in Venezuela, not those of average Venezuelans, said Aranguibel, author of a book on Venezuela's late leader Hugo Chavez who brought the socialists to power in 1999.

"It's absurd (to think) Venezuela can be a threat to the United States," said Tony Boza, author of "La guerra contra el pueblo (The War Against the People)."

"That country's war budget is 1.5 times larger than Venezuela's entire gross domestic product, it's practically 30 times larger than our international reserves," he said.

The United States has mounted an aggressive campaign against Venezuela to "obtain underground resources," such as oil and minerals, he said.

The decree is part of the "pretexts" the United States has historically used to "invade" other countries, Boza added.

Venezuelan artists, writers, historians and intellectuals also rapped the U.S. executive order on Wednesday.

"This group of artists ... has prepared a manifesto to repudiate a decree made of bullets, bombs and cannons, with which the United States invariably intimidates whoever it considers to be a rival," Culture Minister Freddy Nanez told an event in Venezuela's capital of Caracas.

"From 'pariah state' or 'failed state' we have graduated to the category of an 'unusual and extraordinary threat,' and this should call for deep reflection and thorough preparation," the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity said in a statement.

"If anyone is a threat to countries around the world, as well as to themselves, it's none other than the United States, which now seems destined by 'providence' to plague the world with misery in the name of liberty," the group said.

Nanez warned that due to the absurd character of the decree, there was a risk that the international community might downplay "the scope and danger hanging over our nation due to this warmongering order, which neither Afghanistan, nor Iraq, nor Libya, nor Syria received." Endi