‘US punishing Latin American countries because they moving towards independent nations’

The United States is punishing Latin American countries because they are moving towards independent nations, an American political analyst says.

Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV while commenting on a report which says the Donald Trump administration is considering a full-scale oil embargo against Venezuela.

The Trump administration is reviewing a plan to sanction a Venezuelan military-run oil services company and restricting insurance coverage for Venezuelan oil shipments, a US official said on Wednesday.

The possible new sanctions would target Venezuela’s vital oil sector beyond what has been done before, including an eventual full-scale ban on Venezuelan oil shipments to the United States, the US official told Reuters.

Preston said, “The United States seems to be initiating an oil embargo or at least escalating these sanctions that have been imposed on Venezuela in order, I think, to penalize the Venezuelans for their defiance of the American foreign policy objectives in the region.”

“We have to understand that in recent decades there has been a serious shift away from the American influence in the Latin American nations and those nations, many of them, have started to pursue an independent course of their own or they have developed trade relations with the eastern nations. A lot of they are moving towards China, towards Russia and nations of that type,” he stated.

“They are seeking autonomy for their own nations. You know this is in conflict with the variety of the American foreign policy objectives in the region,” the analyst noted.