Saturday, January 26, 2019

Washington Promotes Radicalization and Polarization in Venezuela and Throughout the Region


THE RADICALIZATION OF U.S. POLICY ON VENEZUELA

By Steve Ellner
Article posted by Consortium News
Washington’s recognition of the shadow government headed by Venezuelan National Assembly president Juan Guaidó is one more demonstration of how the Trump administration has radicalized foreign policy positions and in doing so violates international law, including the OAS charter. 
On this issue like others, the Obama administration laid the groundwork for Trump’s radicalization, but it was usually more discrete. Obama issued an executive order calling Venezuela a threat to U.S. national security and created a list of Venezuelan officials who were sanctioned. The Trump administration’s escalation included financial sanctions against the Venezuelan government and measures against the nation’s oil industry. In addition, top administration officials have played an openly activist role by traveling throughout the continent to promote the campaign to isolate Venezuela. 
The first signal that the pro-U.S. international community would recognize the Guaidó government came from Washington along with its most right-wing ally, the Jair Bolsonaro government of Brazil. As of last year, Great Britain had intended to not recognize Maduro after he took office for his second term on January 10, but it intended to maintain diplomatic relations. Washington pushed for a more radical position, that of not only not recognizing Maduro but establishing diplomatic relations with a shadow government. 
The activist approach to diplomacy was put in evidence the day after the January 23 opposition protests, when Secretary of State Pompeyo offered 20 million dollars of “humanitarian assistance” to the Venezuelan population. Many Venezuelans see this as humiliating and nothing short of a bribe designed to pressure the country into submission. 
Never since the Cuban revolution, has the U.S. government played such an overtly activist role throughout the continent in favor of the isolation of a government that is not to its liking. In the process it has further polarized Venezuela and the continent as a whole. The moderates in the Venezuelan opposition, including two former presidential candidates of the two main traditional parties, Claudio Fermín and Eduardo Fernández, have favored electoral participation and recognition of the legitimacy of the Maduro government. Washington’s actions pull the rug from under the moderates and strengthen the hands of the extremists in the opposition. 
In August 2017, opposition parties accepted the National Constituent Assembly’s (ANC) call for gubernatorial elections in October of that year. Now most of those same parties refuse to recognize the Maduro government on grounds that the ANC, which convened the presidential elections, is an illegitimate body.
The Trump administration has promoted a similar radicalization throughout the hemisphere. Most of the countries that have recognized Guaidó are on the right (as opposed to the center). But previously the rightist presidents of Chile (Sebasián Piñera), Argentina (Mauricio Macri) and Brazil  (under then president Michel Temer) rejected the statement by OAS secretary general Luis Almagro that military intervention in Venezuela should be considered. Trump, Bolsonaro and recently elected Colombian president Iván Duque have pushed these rightist presidents to an even more extreme position on Venezuela. 
But just as there are moderates in the Venezuelan opposition who support dialogue, which the mainstream media have pretty much ignored, there are moderates in the international community who are also in favor of dialogue. These figures include Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Pope Francis, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, and the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights and ex-president of Chile Michelle Bachelet. What they are proposing represents the best hope for this battered nation.

Steve Ellner is Associate Managing Editor of “Latin American Perspectives” and is the editor of “The Pink Tide Experiences: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings in Twenty-First Century Latin America” (2019).

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

A link to the book "La izquierda latinoamericana en el poder: cambios y enfrentamientos en el siglo XXI"



My edited book La izquierda latinoamericana en el poder: cambios y enfrentamientos en el siglo XXI contains chapters on Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, social movements and the media written by the following authors: the late Roger Burbach, David Raby, Marcel Nelson, Federico Fuentes, Héctor Perla, Héctor Cruz Feliciano, Camila Piñera Harnecker, Kevin Young and Pascal Lupien and William Robinson.




https://geopoliticaleconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/La-izquierda-latinoamericana-Steve-Ellner.pdf

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yxxsdyf0puqxdhg/La%20izquierda%20latinoamericana%20book.pdf?dl=0

Friday, January 11, 2019

Contrary to What the Right Claims, the OAS-Resolution on Venezuela was Hardly a Victory for the Anti-Chavistas.

Yesterday’s vote in the OAS “not to recognize the legitimacy” of Nicolás Maduro’s new term in office was too narrow to be considered a victory for anyone: 19 yes votes against 15 nations that did not sign on. Furthermore, consider the democratic credentials of some of the governments that supported the resolution: Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro who has talked fondly of torture and murder of adversaries and considers members of the environmental movement in the Amazon region as “terrorists”; Honduras’s Juan Orlando Hernández whose re-election last year was widely considered fraudulent, even by the OAS itself, and whose close family members are big-time narco traffickers; Chile’s Sabastián Piñera – the two main parties that backed his presidential candidacy were closely tied to the Pinochet government; Colombia’s Iván Duque whose party is led by Alvaro Uribe with his well-documented ties with narco traffickers and military and paramilitary forces responsible for massive land dispossession; the Paraguay government which is in power thanks to a soft coup. If you subtract these votes from the OAS tally, the resolution against Venezuela was defeated. Yesterday, RT interviewed me on the subject.

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

IF BERNIE SANDERS WERE TO OPPOSE SANCTIONS AGAINST VENEZUELA, WHAT WOULD BE HIS TALKING POINTS?

As Nicolás Maduro is sworn in for a new presidential term on January 10, Washington is bound to ratchet up its campaign to isolate Venezuela politically and economically. A few days earlier, U.S. Congressional Representatives belonging to the Democratic Party – with somewhat of a new face – initiated their term 2019-2021. Its Progressive Caucus now has 98 congressional members, by far the party’s largest.

If the Progressive Caucus were to place the issue of Venezuela on the table for discussion as part of its critique of the policies of the Trump Administration, it would be doing a great service to the campaign against the illegal financial sanctions that have caused so much suffering to the people of Venezuela. In particular, Bernie Sanders, who needs to assume bold and principled positions as he did in 2016 to differentiate himself from other Democratic politicians with presidential ambitions, would do well to take up the issue.
Of course, Sanders and other Democrats cannot – even if they wanted to – use the arguments employed by those further to their left. If Sanders were to point to the progressive policies initiated by Hugo Chávez which Maduro has retained - such as his nationalistic foreign policies and social programs empowering the poor - the Democratic National Committee aided by the mainstream media would show Sanders to the party 's door.
So if Sanders were to take up the issue, how would he respond to the predictable objections from the media as well as political adversaries to his right? The following are the politically-charged questions which Sanders would likely get from the press, along with his possible - and hypothetical - responses.
Press. You oppose sanctions against the Maduro dictatorship, but you support measures against Saudi Arabia for the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Isn't that contradictory, if not hypocritical?
Sanders. No one in Washington is talking about regime change in the case of Saudi Arabia. That's up to the Saudi people. In the case of Venezuela that’s what the sanctions are all about: getting rid of Maduro. If there’s anything hypocritical, it’s Washington’s activism in favor of regime change of governments we don’t like, while maintaining friendly relations with others which are anything but democratic. To make matters worse, we provide generous amounts of aid, including military aid, to those same regimes. 
Press. Are you opposed to trying to remove an unpopular regime?
Sanders. I wouldn’t say it’s out of the question, but history shows that such a strategy needs to be carefully thought out because the results have often been disastrous. One factor that has to be taken into account is whether there is a united opposition with recognized credibility that can take over and maintain stability. That certainly wasn’t the case in Libya and Syria. And it doesn’t appear to be the case in Venezuela. The Venezuelan opposition is divided between those who favor participation in elections and those who oppose it, between those who support a military option and those who are against it. Furthermore, some of the opposition parties have lost credibility because they went so quickly from backing demonstrations to oust Maduro, which resulted in scores of deaths, to participating in elections. I am told that many of those who are adamantly opposed to Maduro are also extremely skeptical of the opposition. 
Press: But shouldn't Maduro be placed in the same category as that of the Saudi government and other brutal dictatorial regime? 
Sanders. First, let me make clear, I am no defender of the Maduro government. But it seems to me that distinctions need to be made. Khashoggi was murdered even though he wasn’t leading a movement to overthrow the government. In fact, he was a moderate. While police brutality has to be condemned regardless of circumstances - and there’s been plenty of it in Venezuela under Maduro - nevertheless, the context has to be considered. In the protests in Venezuela there has been extremes on both sides. Six national guardsmen and two policemen were killed in the protests in 2014 calling for regime change. What would happen here in the U.S. if protesters attempting to overthrow the government killed policemen? Venezuela and Saudi Arabia are separate cases and have to be considered separately.  
Press. Then the U.S. should turn a blind eye to what is happening in Venezuela? Are you an isolationist?anw
Sanders. Definitely not. I think Washington should play an active role in its relations with Venezuela, but of a different nature. The prime minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, is no buddy of Maduro, but he has stated that he wants Spain to help broker negotiations between both sides in Venezuela and reach a consensus as to what needs to be done. Venezuela is in a crisis-type situation economically and no side has magical answers for getting the country out of it. Only through some kind of consensus can the country move forward. If that doesn’t happen Venezuelans of all classes and political persuasions will suffer and they will continue to leave the country, thus aggravating instability throughout the region. We have to think of an effective approach to reverse this trend. Trump’s policy of sanctions, threats of military intervention and support for a military coup has been anything but effective.   
These, in short, are arguments that Bernie Sanders and other members of the Progressive Caucus can use to counter the inevitable barrage of attacks that any opposition to sanctions on the Hill will invite. Fear of facing these issues has made criticism of U.S. policy toward Venezuela virtually taboo, even for bold politicians like Sanders. Given the major blunders in U.S. foreign policy over the recent past, revision and debate are in order. Specifically, in the case of Venezuela, the issue of international sanctions needs to be placed on the table.