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.
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.