In
a remarkable eruption of sanity in Washington, there is finally some
pushback from Congress against the far-right and “center” on U.S. policy
toward Venezuela and Latin America -- something that has not happened
under the McCarthyite pall that has prevailed for years.
A letter
from members of Congress to President Obama last Tuesday expressed
strong opposition to legislation that will impose economic sanctions
against Venezuelan officials. In an election year in which there is
nothing for politicians to gain from standing up to the bullies of the
recently merged anti-Cuba and anti-Venezuela lobbies, this is
significant. But even more striking were some of the points that the
letter made about U.S. policy in the region.
The members of
Congress noted that the U.S. government typically “takes European or
African governments’ opinions into account in those regions,” and put
forth the proposition that it should do the same for Latin America. Now
this might seem like a no-brainer, but the White House and State
Department routinely take decisions and actions on regional issues
without any consultation whatsoever with other governments. Secretary
of State John Kerry’s initial decision to not recognize
last year’s presidential election results in Venezuela – which he later
reversed under pressure from South America – comes to mind as an
example. The U.S. government’s numerous actions in support
of the 2009 coup government in Honduras – which were vehemently opposed
in the region – are another example of unilateral actions that caused
much resentment in the hemisphere.
In a move sure to infuriate the
right, the letter also called for the Obama administration to accept
Venezuela’s ambassador, and to appoint one for Venezuela. The members
of Congress also noted:
"The Union of South American Nations
(UNASUR), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and the Organization of
American States (by a 29-3 vote) have all issued statements that are in
various ways supportive of the Venezuelan government and that call for
the respect of the country’s democratic institutions. A number of
presidents and governments, including Michelle Bachelet of Chile, have
publicly warned against attempts to forcibly remove the democratically
elected government of Venezuela."
Again, this is an attempt to
insert the views of the majority of governments in the hemisphere into
the public discourse, a rarity in Congress. UNASUR issued a statement
last week that…"rejects the initiative that continues trying to impose
unilateral sanctions on Venezuelan government officials, which violates
the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of other
states, and adversely affects this dialogue and is an obstacle to the
Venezuelan people in overcoming their difficulties through independence,
peace and democracy."
What makes this congressional letter so
important is that it is the first recognition by members of Congress –
including Democratic leadership such as Chief Deputy Whip Rep. Jan
Schakowsky (Ill.), Rep. John Conyers (Mich.), ranking Democrat on the
House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), co-chair of
the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission -- that U.S. hostility toward
Venezuela is isolating Washington in the hemisphere. Of course anyone
who has not been in a coma for the past 12 years should know this. But
U.S. foreign policy is all about denial.
This particular
initiative, to impose economic sanctions on Venezuelan government
officials, comes from the far-right of the political spectrum here: an
alliance of neo-conservatives and the anti-Cuba/anti-Venezuela lobby.
The Obama administration opposed these sanctions in a May 8 Senate hearing
on the legislation. The hearing was something of a circus, with only
certified haters of Venezuela invited to testify – not surprising
because the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Robert
Menendez (D-N.J.), is a hard-liner obsessed with regime change in Cuba.
(He has also been involved in a couple of influence-peddling scandals
in the past year, with one of his major campaign contributors – a Miami
doctor for whom the senator has done favors – setting a national record of more than $20 million received from Medicare in one year.)
The
split between the Obama administration and various dinosaurs in
Congress mirrored a split within the opposition in Venezuela. Testifying
to the Senate, the top U.S. State Department official for the
hemisphere, Roberta Jacobson, opposed the sanctions
on the grounds that their allies in Venezuela were against them.
Senators like Menendez and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), by contrast, were more
sympathetic to those in the opposition who boycotted dialogue and sought
to overthrow the government.
But this split is largely a tactical
one – at least in Washington – and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
has gone back and forth between supporting either faction of the
opposition. Recently he hinted that he could possibly support the sanctions.
Washington’s
efforts to destabilize the government of Venezuela over the past 12
years have never been an isolated series of events but part of an
overall strategy of “containment” and “rollback” in the region. To this
day the foreign policy establishment here has still not accepted that
the region’s shift toward more independent and left governments is a permanent change, like the move away from dictatorships in the last decade of the 20th
century. Of course Venezuela is a big target because it sits on the
world’s largest oil reserves and will therefore always be an important
player in the region. But Washington would like to get rid of all of the left governments, and these people see this as a realistic intermediate to long-term goal.
For
these reasons, last week’s congressional letter is a breakthrough in
that it recognizes that U.S. Venezuela policy is part of an overall
strategy that has increasingly isolated the U.S.
in the region. The U.S. does not have ambassadorial relations with
Bolivia and Ecuador, as well as Venezuela, and its relations with Brazil
have been at a low point for decades, far worse than during the Bush
years. If these members of Congress provoke a new debate, it is one
that the Obama administration – and its allies to the right – will
surely lose.
Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. (www.cepr.net ). He is also president of Just Foreign Policy ( www.justforeignpolicy.org )
Source: The Hill