Washington pundits jump the gun on China-Venezuelan relations

U.S. pundits celebrate alleged signs that China is distancing itself from Venezuela. Certainly the U.S. draconian regime of secondary sanctions weighs heavily on Beijing’s decision-making. But the Chinese still support the Maduro government and firmly criticize the U.S. war of aggression against Venezuela. Today the Inter-American Dialogue’s “Latin America Advisor” published this piece of mine: 

Latin America Advisor published by the Inter-American Dialogue

by Steve Ellner
January 27, 2020

The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s statement regarding the “slowing down” of cooperation ventures with Venezuela should not be surprising given the success of U.S. secondary sanctions in isolating that nation economically from the rest of the world. A year ago, for instance, the Russian bank Gazprombank announced it would halt transactions with the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, in spite of the close relations between Moscow and the Maduro government. Nevertheless, even though the Chinese government’s foreign investment decisions are guided by commercial criteria, Beijing leaders are far from apolitical when it comes to economic ties abroad. Indeed, the same statement by the Foreign Ministry noted that the “sanctions are the root cause behind the deterioration of the Venezuelan people’s daily lives” and went on to insist on the lifting of “unilateral sanctions against Venezuela.” The Chinese are well aware that the Trump administration’s discourse toward Latin America has been aggressively anti-Chinese – an attitude that has found a receptive ear in Brazil with Jair Bolsonaro -- and that their most reliable allies have been the “Pink Tide” governments including that of Venezuela.

Juan Guaidó’s efforts to block what he calls Venezuelan “blood gold” is based on a correct assessment of the importance that this source of revenue has assumed for the Venezuelan economy. What Guaidó doesn’t consider, however, is that his ongoing effort to topple Maduro with foreign help has backfired. Many Venezuelans resent such blatant U.S. interference. This is one reason why Guaidó’s popularity has declined precipitously and why a new group of opposition “dissidents” have emerged who favor negotiations with the government to solve immediate problems rather than harping on regime change.

Steve Ellner, associate managing editor of Latin American Perspectives and editor of Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings (2020).

Only the arm's industry benefits from bellicosity toward Iran

Code Pink and other groups are holding rallies today, Jan. 25, to call for hands-off Iran and a sensible policy for the Middle East, one based on negotiations, and the scaling down of tensions. Trump’s gun happy policy only favors the arms industry, but hurts everyone else, including U.S. tax payers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptsLoWLOPuI

First book review of "Latin America's Pink Tide: Breakthroughts and Shortcomings"

The following is the first review of my edited “Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings” published by Rowman and Littlefield, 2020. The review is by Cynthia McClintock 

As the momentum behind Latin America’s left recedes, this important, cohesive, timely volume, edited by Ellner, a well-known scholar of Latin America, takes stock of the successes and failures of the Pink Tide. Separate chapters consider “radical" Pink Tide governments (Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador), “pragmatic” Pink Tide governments (the Workers’ Party in Brazil, the Frente Amplio in Uruguay, and "Kirchnerism" in Argentina), and the left in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Mexico. One of the volume's core arguments is that aspirations for structural transformation were severely constrained by the hegemony of global capitalism as Pink Tide governments largely maintained "extractivist" economic models based on commodity exports. However, despite these constraints, these governments sought to reduce social and economic injustice and succeeded, according to the authors. Contributing scholars hail from diverse countries, providing a wealth of valuable information for each case study. They effectively engage with questions regarding the implications of global capitalism's hegemony for the political economy of Latin America, though this reviewer would have liked them to wrestle more vigorously with questions drawn from the dictum “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals.