WASHINGTON/HOUSTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration said it would not renew a license set to expire early on Thursday that had broadly eased Venezuela oil sanctions, moving to reimpose punitive measures in response to President Nicolas Maduro’s failure to meet his election commitments. Just hours before the deadline, the U.S. Treasury Department announced on its website that it had issued a replacement license giving companies 45 days to “wind down” their business and transactions in the OPEC country's oil and gas sector. Washington had repeatedly threatened in recent months to reinstate energy sanctions unless Maduro made good on his promises that led to partial U.S. sanctions relief from October, following an election deal reached between the government and the Venezuelan opposition.
Sanctions are, by definition, interventionism, a political act in an attempt to force compliance against free market principles (not that I care all that much about those, mind you, but public American policy says it does)
And even disregarding that, do you honestly believe that is all America is doing in Venezuela?
To be clear, I have little doubt Maduro is a dictator. I just question why he’s the only one America seems able to take an actual stance against, and what, exactly, we hope to gain.
And maybe we should ask ourselves worsening an open humanitarian crisis in a way that always, always affects the poor more than the rich is the right course of action anywhere.
(Not counting countries actively invading their neighbors, anyways)
And don’t ask yourself where all those refugees are going to go if Venezuela collapses completely…
And what political ideology has something to gain from yet another “border crisis”
If you don’t care about that, why bring it up? Either you do actually care, or you’re blatantly and disingenuously trying to create the appearance of a moral issue regarding the principle when none has been brought up by either party.
Nah, we’re probably also doing some funding of opposition parties and passing along intel. But believe it or not, even the CIA isn’t a 24/7 coup machine.
Oh, I know, we’re just punishing Maduro. Singling him out.
Oh, and Assad. And Putin. And Kim. And Lukashenko. And the Ayatollah regime. And elements in the CAR. And Ethiopia. And Mali. And the Sudan. And Afghanistan. And…
As opposed to enabling the Maduro regime to fund their continued authoritarian state by the main source of income for their government? The same Maduro regime which has been threatening to invade one of its neighbors, no less, for oil?
The Venezuelan economy was absolutely fucked before sanctions. After sanctions just means that the government can’t pay off its cronies the way it’s accustomed to, weakening its ability to resist outside influence - whether or their own population or of foreign countries.
My guy, there are already a massive amount of refugees coming in from Venezuela. Colombia is overwhelmed as is. The Venezuelan government is pissed people are running off, and has reacted by tightening its grip further.
One can’t help but note all those dictators are doing just fine, thanks for asking, even the one who just got 500k of his soldiers wounded or killed in a war he’s going to win if America doesn’t remember who actually needs financial and material support (probably not the country doing a genocide)
Exactly how many of those 7 million Venezuelan refugees were to blame for any of Maduro’s sins? The ones fleeing that economy we helped fuck into ground, mind you.
How many more are you willing to see made? How many do you think need to flee before his regime, somehow, actually topples?
Oh, just by the by? America has been sanctioning Venezuela since Chavez was in charge. You’re probably confused because reporting likes to separate talking about post-crisis sanctions in response to the growing red fascism from acknowledging that they existed prior to the crisis as well.
And, obviously, the worse the humanitarian crisis got, the more the cycle of violence kicks in, the more sanctions we piled on (especially under Trump, obviously), the worse it gets, the more sanctions we place…
So now you admit that it’s not about whether Maduro was singled out, that we do actually address a very broad swathe of authoritarian regimes, but now it’s not enough because it hasn’t toppled all of them. Great. Glad we’re making progress in discussing this.
How many of those Venezuelan refugees would have fled even if we did keep funding Maduro’s dictatorship and it’s ability to repress and torture dissidents while it drove the economy into the ground? The ones fleeing the regime that has put boots on the street to murder protesters and make mass arrests to the consternation and objection of all of their neighbors and almost every functioning democracy in the fucking world?
Maybe the oil ISN’T the main problem here?
No, it can’t be the authoritarian dictatorship. People LOVE those.
We were perfectly willing to raise sanctions in exchange for the very basic behavior of having free and fair elections. We pre-emptively relaxed sanctions as an incentive towards that. And yet the Maduro regime was unwilling to adhere to that very basic requirement after having already explicitly agreed to it with the US. So what should our reaction have been? Said, “Aw, shucks, you really got us this time! We’ll buy up all your oil, just for humoring us for ten seconds!”
But yes, it is OUR fault for the refugee crisis. God, if only we had kept funding Maduro’s regime without any strings attached, THEN we would TRULY be acting morally. For oil’s sake, of course.
Sanctions during the Chavez administration were on individuals, and individuals related to the drug trade at that. That’s not even close to the same ballpark.
And of course, the alternative, buying oil from Venezuela, directly funding that cycle of violence in favor of the oppressors, is definitely the legitimate and superior option.
One can’t help but note that the dictators America will choose to sanction, but not actually do anything else about, seem to be more about whether they criticize America than what they actually do.
The Chavez era sanctions were far more than individuals, even if Bush waived them in regards to the oil trade. Can’t imagine why Bush didn’t want to disrupt the oil trade in his day, before we turned on our own spigots again, and with the army busy being useful in the Middle East.
And, of course, there were the coups. But, obviously, despite all of history, America had nothing to do with them… After all, we investigated ourselves, and found no wrongdoing. Or anything that is “against policy,” anyways.
Yes, we should have let the sanctions lapse, because all they do is hurt actual Venezuelans while emboldening Maduro’s faction.
Yes, not starving people is moral. I know, that’s a tough one, isn’t? Maybe if we starve a million more we’ll do a regime change?
Fascism, or red fascism, is not weakened with the existence of someone they can conveniently blame all of their problems on. Especially when it’s not entirely a lie.
… what exactly do you think sanctions are for, if not as a tool to apply pressure to our enemies?
You… you do realize that there are other options for applying pressure to cooperative countries, right?
None of which is relevant to whether imposing the sanctions, lifting the sanctions, or letting the sanctions go back down after reneging on an agreement to hold free and fair elections is the correct choice.
Oh, so sanctions on the largest source of government income for a dictatorship doesn’t do anything except hurt actual Venezuelans? Here I thought that maybe an authoritarian regime having FEWER resources might have some effect on them, but clearly I was wrong. I guess I can rescind my position on aid to Israel too, since removing resources from the Israeli government has no effect either, except hurting normal Israelis.
Believe it or not, I happen to think that NOT giving authoritarian regimes money to beat the teeth out of innocent people’s skulls is actually the moral option here. But apparently, America’s money belongs to everyone except America - we aren’t allowed to decide not to fund dictatorships. That would be, what was it? Intervention?
Ah, yes, that’s why it was so important in the late 30s to appease fascist governments and repeatedly reassure them that we wouldn’t let any mean, nasty government retaliation or boycotts effect them. Otherwise we would have just strengthening those authoritarian governments!
We called that very successful policy ‘appeasement’, and it was what caused Zionist ships to raise the fucking swastika in the mid-30s. It was very effective, and that’s why absolutely nothing happened in the late 30s or in the 40s.
Ah, and now we’re agreeing that sanctions are a weapon?
To intervene in geopolitics perhaps? As directly stated by various governments and thinkers in the lead to WW2 as you mentioned? Note that the economic agreement under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact would have made sanctions against the European fascists largely pointless.
America notably did not have an appeasement policy against Japan, and those sanctions worked because Japan didn’t have reserves of oil and steel to run their war machine.
Oil sanctions won’t stop Maduro from flying jets and moving tanks. He’s got that. And he doesn’t seem to be losing a civil war.
It will just stop people from having jobs that pay in something besides their hyper inflated currency.
Exactly how many people are you willing to support dying or having to flee their country because Maduro won’t bow to American pressure, deserved or not?
Personally, I tend to think democracy isn’t best served by starving the demos.