Channeling
Reagan, Obama continues US pressure on Latin American leftist governments
Yesterday the White House took a new
step toward the theater of the absurd by “declaring a
national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary
threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed
by the situation in Venezuela,” as President Barack Obama put it in a
letter to House Speaker John Boehner.
It remains to be seen whether anyone in
the White House press corps will have the courage to ask what in the world the
nation’s chief executive could mean by that. Is Venezuela financing a coming
terrorist attack on U.S. territory? Planning an invasion? Building a nuclear
weapon?
Who do they think they are kidding?
Some may say that the language is just there because it is necessary under U.S.
law in order to impose the latest round of sanctions on Venezuela. That is
not much of a defense, telling the whole world the rule of law in the United
States is something the president can use lies to get around whenever he finds it
inconvenient.
That was the approach of President
Ronald Reagan in 1985
when he made a similar declaration in order to impose sanctions — including an
economic embargo — on Nicaragua. Like the White House today, he was trying to topple an elected government
that Washington didn’t like. He was able to use paramilitary and
terrorist violence as well as an embargo in a successful effort
to destroy the Nicaraguan economy and ultimately overturn its government. (The
Sandinistas eventually returned to power in 2007 and are the governing party
today.)
The world has moved forward, even
though Washington has not. Venezuela today has very strong backing from its
neighbors against what almost every government in the region sees as an attempt
to destabilize the country.
“The Community of Latin American and
Caribbean States (CELAC) reiterates its strong repudiation of the application
of unilateral coercive measures that are contrary to international law,”
read a statement
from every country in the hemisphere except for the U.S. and Canada on Feb. 11.
They were responding to the U.S. sanctions against Venezuela that Obama
signed into law in December.
Didn’t read any of this in the
English-language media? Well, you probably also didn’t see the immediate reaction
to yesterday’s White House blunder from the head of the Union of South American
Nations, which read, “UNASUR rejects any external or internal attempt at
interference that seeks to disrupt the democratic process in Venezuela.”
The
Obama administration is more isolated today in Latin America than even George
W. Bush’s administration was.
Washington
was involved
in the short-lived 2002 military coup
in Venezuela; it “provided training, institution building and other support to
individuals and organizations understood to be actively involved in the brief
ouster” of President Hugo Chávez and his government, according to the
U.S. State Department.
The U.S. has not changed its policy toward Venezuela since then and has continued
funding opposition groups in the country. So it is only natural that
everyone familiar with this recent history, with the conflict between the U.S.
and the region over the 2009
Honduran military coup and with the current sanctions will
assume that Washington is involved in the ongoing efforts to topple what has
been its No. 1 or 2 target for regime change for more than a decade.
The Venezuelan
government has produced some credible evidence of a coup in the making: the recording
of a former deputy minister of the interior reading what is obviously a
communique to be issued after the military deposes the elected government, the confessions
of some accused military officers and a recorded phone
conversation between opposition leaders acknowledging that a coup is
in the works.
Regardless
of whether one thinks this evidence is sufficient (the U.S. press has not
reported most of it), it is little wonder that the governments in the region
are convinced. Efforts to overthrow the democratically elected government of
Venezuela have been underway for most of the past 15 years. Why would it be any
different now, when the economy is in recession and there was an effort to
force out the government just last year? And has anyone ever seen an
attempted ouster of a leftist government in Latin America that Washington had
nothing to do with?Because I haven’t.
In the major
U.S. and international media, we see that Obama has taken a historic step by
beginning the process of normalizing relations with Cuba. But among Latin
American governments, the sliver of restored credibility that this move has won
has been swiftly negated by the aggression toward Venezuela. You will be hard
pressed to find a foreign minister or president from the region who believes
that U.S. sanctions have anything to do with human rights or democracy. Look at
Mexico,
where human rights workers and journalists are regularly murdered, or Colombia,
which has been a leader for years in the number of trade unionists killed. Nothing
comparable to these human rights nightmares has happened in Venezuela in 16
years under Chávez current President Nicolás Maduro. Yet Mexico and Colombia
have been among the largest recipients of U.S. aid in the region, including
military and police funding and weapons.
The Obama
administration is more isolated today
in Latin America than even George W. Bush’s administration was. Because of the
wide gulf between the major international media and the thinking of regional
governments, this is not obvious to those who are unfamiliar with the details
of hemispheric relations. Look at who co-authored the legislation that imposed
sanctions against Venezuela in December: soon-to-be indicted Sen. Robert
Menendez and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, both ardent defenders of the
embargo against Cuba. Yet the administration proudly
announced that its new sanctions “go beyond the requirements of this
legislation.”
The face of
Washington in Latin America is one of extremism. Despite some changes in other
areas of foreign policy (e.g., Obama’s engagement with Iran), this face has not
changed very much since Reagan warned us
that Nicaragua’s Sandinistas “were just two days’ driving time from Harlingen,
Texas.” He was ridiculed by Garry Trudeau in “Doonesbury” and other satirists.
The Obama White House’s Reagan redux should get the same treatment.
Mark Weisbrot is
a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research in Washington, D.C. He is also the president of Just Foreign Policy.
The views expressed in this article are the author's
own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment