Only the UN can prevent Venezuela's collapse

On May 1 the Globe and Mail published an op-ed with that title. It was signed by the following:

• Joe Clark, former PM of Canada and Vice Chair of the Global Leadership Foundation, a US based non-profit financed by big business (motto: "Helping Leaders Govern")
• Lloyd Axworthy, former Canadian foreign minister and busy-body at large. Lloyd is best know for his tireless promotion of the R2P doctrine which makes it the responsibility of America and its allies to protect people around the world from leaders America doesn't approve of
• Ricardo Luna, another GLF worthy who co-founded, with Chrystia Freeland, the Lima Group of US vassal states dedicated to removing the Maduro government in Venezuela
• Thomas Pickering, a forty year veteran of the US State Department whose "diplomatic" postings included the ambassadorship to El Salvador at the height of the US sponsored civil war. In retirement he had a brief but lucrative sojourn as a senior VP at Boeing, before joining Clark and Luna at the GLF
• Keith Mines, a former US special forces officer who spent sixteen years delivering peace and democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, among others. He's now in charge of the Venezuela - Columbia desk at the impishly named "United States Peace Institute."

The article itself is the typical sanctimonious twaddle one would expect from such a pack of America- Firsters, except for one thing; they offer an olive branch of sorts to Russia and China. If those two authoritarian troublemakers play along, their "interests" in Venezuela will be protected. 

On May 2, a flotilla of small boats left Columbia packed with mercenaries and their weapons. Led by former US special forces officers, their mission was to seize President Maduro, whisk him off to Washington, and install US flunky Juan Guaido in his place. We know how that ended.

What's curious to me is the timing of the article. Could that really have been a coincidence? The other question that comes to mind is this. From everything I've ever heard, guys who did time in the special forces together tend to make very tight bonds. How probable or improbable is it that the special forces guy at the Institute for Peace had no idea what his former comrades-in-arms were up to?