Trump Is Right to Punish the Profiteers of Venezuela's Misery: Ana Quintana, Real Clear World, Aug. 31, 2017— It’s been a quite a turnaround for Venezuela.
The Agony of Venezuela: Pierpaolo Barbieri, National Review, Aug. 25, 2017— Closing a speech that was as emotional as it was endless, the president invoked Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Putin’s Latest Anti-American Intervention: Venezuela: Moises Naim & Andrew Weiss, Washington Post, Sept. 6, 2017— A violent crackdown on civilian protesters rallying against an autocratic president leaves scores dead.
Israel and Latin America: It’s Complicated: Emmanuel Navon, Times of Israel, Sept. 13, 2017— Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Latin America is welcome and long-overdue.
How's Socialism Doing in Venezuela? (Video): Debbie D’souza, Prager U, Aug. 28, 2017
US Sanctions to Pile Misery on Moribund Venezuelan Economy: Joshua Goodman, National Post, Aug. 29, 2017
Imperialists Invade Venezuela: Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 14, 2017
I Am in Prison Because I Want Freedom for My Country: Yon Goicoechea, New York Times, Sept. 4, 2017
TRUMP IS RIGHT TO PUNISH THE PROFITEERS OF VENEZUELA'S MISERY
Ana Quintana
Real Clear World, Aug. 31, 2017
It’s been a quite a turnaround for Venezuela. The one-time magnet for world vacationers is now to the top source of U.S. asylum requests. Left unaddressed, the crisis in Caracas will only worsen, leaving ordinary Venezuelans even worse off and increasingly affecting the United States.
The regime of President Nicolas Maduro is the world’s youngest dictatorship, yet already one of the most corrupt. Criminals masquerading as politicians rule with an iron fist and have transformed Venezuela into an international drug trafficking hub. Dozens of current and former senior Venezuelan government officials have been sanctioned by the U.S. government for drug trafficking, rampant violence against anti-government demonstrators, corruption, and undermining of democracy. Those sanctioned include the president, the vice president, the former attorney general, the former secretary of homeland security, and the director of national intelligence.
The same group that turned the oil-rich nation into a narco-dictatorship also set the economy on a crash course. Hugo Chavez used the surplus petrodollars from last decade’s commodities boom to amass a personal fortune, pay off party loyalists, and expand the welfare state. His socialist economic policies and multibillion-dollar corruption sank Venezuela’s economic freedom rankings. In 1995, Venezuela’s score was 59.8 on a scale of 100. Today it is a paltry 27, ranking worse than Cuba and better than only one other nation: North Korea.
Venezuela’s on-hand cash reserves have now dipped below $10 billion and are drying out. For perspective, consider that Bill Gates is worth eight times more than the amount of money the world’s most oil-rich nation was able to save. Oil production, the economic backbone of the country, has declined to unprecedented lows. Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, the state-owned petroleum and natural gas company, theoretically has the ability to produce over 3 million barrels of oil per day. Yet it is producing barely 1.9 million bpd and is receiving payment on less than 1 million of that. The rest of production goes mostly to pay off outstanding debts to China, Russia, and other investors, although some is also given to the regime’s leftist allies in the region.
The regime’s mismanagement has produced one thing in vast quantities: human misery. Venezuelans are fleeing the country in droves into neighboring Colombia and Brazil. For the first time in history, Venezuelans have topped the list of U.S. asylum seekers, thanks to a 160 percent increase from 2015. Another doubling of applicants is expected this year. The government-created economic crisis has manifested itself in widespread food shortages. It is now commonplace to see Venezuelans faint as they wait in bread lines. Also heartrendingly familiar are images of children scrounging in garbage bags for their next meal.
Venezuela’s healthcare system, once the pride of Hugo Chavez, has now collapsed. Basic medical care is unattainable, and crucial medicines such as antibiotics are unavailable. Venezuela’s national drugstore trade group placed medicine shortages at 85 percent in 2016, and matters are not improving.
Not all Venezuelans are living in misery. Earlier this year, U.S. President Donald Trump designated Vice President Tareck el Aissami as a drug trafficking kingpin and ordered U.S. authorities to seize his ill-gotten property in the United States. They uncovered illicit property and assets valued at $500 million dollars. Hugo Chavez’s daughter, a darling of her father’s socialist movement, is believed to be the richest person in Venezuela, with a fortune valued at over $4 billion.
Hundreds more in the Venezuelan government continue to bleed their country dry. Following U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s recent visit to Latin America, the Trump administration announced a robust series of sanctions aimed at the profiteers of misery. The U.S. is banning trade in new bonds issued by the Venezuelan government and by PDVSA. There will also be limitations on dividend payments for the Venezuelan government. Rather than a full economic or oil embargo, this strategy brilliantly protects the Venezuelan people from further economic hardship while penalizing the corrupt government officials who are holders of the bonds. It should also serve the dual purpose of peeling away Maduro’s loyalists and enablers.
The socialist paradise of Chavez and Maduro, in reality a criminal-kleptocrat syndicate, is circling the drain. Unfortunately, innocent Venezuelans are paying the heaviest price for their leaders’ failures. The impacts of this debacle are being and will be felt beyond the country’s borders. The Trump administration’s sanctions are a well-calculated exercise in damage control.
Pierpaolo Barbieri
National Review, Aug. 25, 2017
Closing a speech that was as emotional as it was endless, the president invoked Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In the play’s opening scene, a boatswain dares to defy the wind as the storm gathers: “Blow, till thou burst thy wind, if room enough!” The charismatic leader then paraphrased the bard: “Blow, hard wind, blow, hard tempest, I have [a constitutional] assembly to withstand you!” The crowd was enraptured.
The year was 1999, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, shortly after his election victory the previous December, was asking the assembly to deliver a new, “eternal” constitution. He put himself at the “mercy” of a fresh, temporary but all-powerful assembly, conveniently created to supersede a parliament that did not answer to him. Chávez got his way; he almost always did. The resulting constitution — Venezuela’s 26th — did away with the senate, lengthened presidential terms, unshackled military appointments from congressional oversight, and weakened the checks and balances exercised by judges and legislators. It was also the beginning of the end of democracy in Venezuela.
As it turned out, “eternal” did not make it 20 years. The Venezuelan republic breathed its last in July, when Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, enthroned yet another constitutional assembly, to disempower the democratic but opposition-controlled parliament. The one goal that eluded Chávez in life — the establishment of “communal socialism” — might be achieved, in his name, after his death. Despite the marshaling of government cadres eager to fire against unarmed protesters, millions of Venezuelans took to the streets to stop this power grab. Dozens of dead and hundreds of political prisoners later, they endure. The world, meanwhile, looks on, with the United States engaged only peripherally and emerging global powers reluctant to disrupt business. Venezuelans are now engaged in a civil war in which, as one astute observer remarked while being deported, only one side is armed.
Venezuela matters. The modern, media-fueled messianic populism that so worries Western elites was born there in the 1990s. It arose during a unique period when, ever so briefly, history appeared to be over. Liberal democracy and economic neoliberalism enjoyed an intellectual hegemony following the unceremonious collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Communists of the East implemented capitalist reforms, following China’s lead. Meanwhile, the “Washington Consensus” led to privatizations and monetarism across the developing world. In Latin America, a region only recently returned to democracy after decades of military interregnums fueled by a hot Cold War, its dictums were applied with zeal. Only the Cuba of Fidel Castro held out, impoverished, isolated, and devoid of Russian cash.
Venezuela was once an example to follow. The country avoided the murderous military rule that befell the likes of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile in no small part because of Rómulo Betancourt, a thrice-exiled pioneering social democrat who, in the words of Ronald Reagan, “fought dictatorships of the Right and the Left.” Fossil-fuel wealth on par with that of the Persian Gulf allowed for the kind of social redistribution that was never in the cards elsewhere. Despite this affluence, or perhaps because of it, Venezuela was also the kind of “low-intensity democracy” that political scientists worry about, its republican institutions weakened by profound social inequities and rampant corruption.
Neoliberal economics failed to strengthen the republic. With Betancourt long gone, the ruling two-party system was in decay. In 1989, a harsh IMF-sponsored economic austerity program lit up the capital in what became known as the “Caracazo.” Protests, lootings, and riots were met with force by the government, resulting in scores of deaths at the hands of the military. Soon enough, a charismatic young colonel espousing anti-establishment ideas improvised a coup d’état while his neoliberal commander in chief traveled to the nascent World Economic Forum at Davos. The telegenic Hugo Chávez failed, but he also failed to go away. As he was taken into custody, he addressed the TV cameras: “Regrettably, for now, we did not achieve our . . . objectives.”
“For now” was accurate. When Chávez was released from prison by a misguided president, he organized a democratic “movement” that cut across party lines, promising Manichaean deliverance: freeing “the people” from an entitled and corrupt “oligarchy.” He was eventually elected to the presidency, in 1998 — and he never left it until he died in office in 2013. His government has deservedly been praised for its anti-poverty efforts, later emulated by like-minded governments elsewhere. When he came to power, extreme poverty hovered at around 24 percent of the population, a staggering number given Venezuela’s natural endowment; according to the World Bank, it had fallen to around 9 percent by 2011. Similarly, unemployment declined from 14.5 percent in 1999 to 7.6 percent a decade later, a figure boosted by radical growth of the public sector. Infant mortality was almost halved during Chávez’s first decade in power, from 20 per 1,000 live births to 13.
His televised paternalism exalted the state at a time when it was being restrained elsewhere. Like other populist governments before him, however, his preferred jobs and free housing to improved education. He never sought to heal social wounds; his Manichaean revolution, after all, depended on them. Chávez’s economic strategy was supported by a decade-long rise in commodity prices — in particular, oil prices. Nationalized oil behemoth Petróleos de Venezuela became progressively less professional and more politicized under chavismo. There was a months-long strike in 2002–03 against the government’s management of the company; Chávez eventually fired the strikers. Devoid of its best managers, the company saw its oil production steadily decline thereafter. Yet the value of Venezuela’s net crude exports boomed for a decade, rising from (in 2017 dollars) $21 billion when Chávez was inaugurated to $66 billion in 2011. These oil exports accounted for a staggering 96 percent of Venezuela’s hard currency. As historian Enrique Krauze has accurately observed, chavismo’s belief in high oil prices was as zealous as its socialism…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
PUTIN’S LATEST ANTI-AMERICAN INTERVENTION: VENEZUELA
Moises Naim & Andrew Weiss
Washington Post, Sept. 6, 2017
A violent crackdown on civilian protesters rallying against an autocratic president leaves scores dead. The repression pushes even more people into the streets, triggering a spiral of violence and an urgent humanitarian crisis. A U.S. president unequivocally states that the brutal dictator needs to go. The European Union agrees, but no major power has any stomach for direct military intervention. Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, Vladimir Putin decisively inserts Russia into the crisis, ensuring that the repressive dictator stays in power. The U.S. president is ridiculed for his fecklessness. Unfortunately for President Trump, the above scenario is playing out again, this time not in Syria but in Venezuela. For all its bellicose talk and new sanctions against Nicolás Maduro’s government, the Trump administration has been oddly silent about Russia’s role, perhaps preferring not to draw attention to the fact that Moscow is now the bankrupt nation’s lender of last resort.
On the surface it may seem odd that that Russia would intervene in a country so far from its borders that appears to be hurtling toward collapse. Yet friendly ties between the Russian government and Venezuela run deep, stretching back to former leader Hugo Chávez’s first trip to Moscow in May 2001. He returned 10 times before his death from cancer in 2013. Over that period Venezuela became one of the world’s top clients of the Russian arms industry. Between 2001 and 2011 it purchased $11 billion worth of Russian weapons.
As its economic situation worsened, the volume of Venezuela’s arms purchases dwindled and its main relationship with Russia shifted from weapons to energy. At first, most of the deals were loans guaranteed by Venezuela’s oil sales. Soon, these largely commercial deals became more complex as the Russians demanded more real assets as guarantees. Caracas obliged, and the Russian companies that were the vehicles for these deals got shares of oil companies and even the right to operate entire Venezuelan oil fields.
While the essence of the relationship between Russia and Venezuela has largely been economic, international and domestic politics are never far away. The Venezuelan government’s move to neuter the elected National Assembly, which triggered an escalation of street protests by the opposition in the past few months, was motivated by, of all things, the need to secure a Russian loan. The National Assembly is the only lever of power that Maduro does not control. By law, all international credits and sales of the nation’s assets have to be approved by this body. The opposition leaders who run it are strongly opposed to the deals the government was offering to foreigners – mostly to Rosneft, the Russian state-owned energy behemoth. The government, in dire need of cash, decided to bypass this step by having the Supreme Court, which it controls, issue a decision grabbing the National Assembly’s authority — including the power to approve the new asset transfers to Russian entities.
Today the Maduro government is scrambling to service roughly $5 billion in foreign debt due over the next 12 months. In the wake of newly announced U.S. financial sanctions on Venezuela, the national oil company PDVSA, the chief generator of hard currency, has effectively lost the ability to borrow from U.S. or European banks to pay off or refinance most of these debts. That highlights the importance of the fact that Rosneft loaned PDVSA more than $1 billion in April, bringing the total amount of Russian loans and credits to upward of $5 billion total in the past few years.
Moscow has also offered political support. Russia was among just a handful of foreign governments that endorsed the recent dissolution of the National Assembly, and top Russian diplomats like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov routinely complain about the hidden hand of the United States in fostering Venezuela’s domestic crisis. But the Kremlin’s help doesn’t come cheap. PDVSA reportedly is in talks to sell to Rosneft stakes in other lucrative oil and gas projects at a deep discount. Rosneft has also taken over from PDVSA the profitable job of marketing Venezuelan crude to customers in the United States, Asia, and beyond.
In the wake of Putin’s successful streak of geopolitical adventurism, the big question is whether he sees another opening in Venezuela. An inveterate opportunist, he surely knows that Donald Trump’s recent bombshell statement about possible military options for the Venezuela crisis was an empty threat. On the restive streets of Caracas, it is also increasingly clear that the regime has the upper hand and is unlikely to collapse any time soon. What we don’t know is whether the financial and political costs of keeping Maduro in power will turn out to be affordable for the Kremlin. But it would surprise us if Putin passes up a chance to throw his weight around in America’s backyard — and build some healthy income streams on the side. In Syria, Putin flipped a messy civil war on its head and prevented a U.S. policy goal of regime change from becoming reality. Exposing the hollowness of the Trump administration’s bombastic brand of foreign policy in Venezuela could be a reward in and of itself.
ISRAEL AND LATIN AMERICA: IT’S COMPLICATED
Emmanuel Navon
Times of Israel, Sept. 13, 2017
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Latin America is welcome and long-overdue. Indeed, it is astonishing that no Israeli prime minister before him ever paid an official visit there. As Israel is trying to counter Iran’s global reach and to crack the “automatic majority” at the United Nations, investing diplomatic efforts in Latin America is the right thing to do.
Latin America played an important role in the birth of Israel. Three of the eleven countries that constituted the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) were Latin American (Guatemala, Peru, and Uruguay). The representative of Guatemala at UNSCOP was George Garcia Granados, a pro-Zionist who had met twice with Menachem Begin in secret when the British were trying to kill him. Granados pushed hard to get UNSCOP to adopt partition and to get it approved by the General Assembly.
The President of the General Assembly at the time of the vote on partition was Oswaldo Aranha from Brazil. Like Granados, Aranha also had strong Zionist sympathies. The vote on UNSCOP’s partition proposal had been scheduled to take place on the 27th of November 1947. As the vote was approaching, however, it became clear that there was no majority for the approval of partition. More time was needed to gather support, especially among Latin American countries. Aranha came up with an idea that saved the day: November 28 was Thanksgiving, he reminded delegates, and it would be unfair to keep American workers at the UN. He therefore suggested renewing the debates and votes over the UNSCOP proposal after Thanksgiving. His proposal was accepted, and the extra 48 hours enabled the Jewish Agency to gather more support among UN delegations. During the vote, the support of Latin American countries was critical. At the General Assembly, 33 countries voted “yes,” 13 voted “no,” and 10 abstained. Of the 33 “yes” votes, 13 were from Latin America (i.e. 40%).
Despite this diplomatic support, however, relations were overshadowed by the shelter offered by Latin American governments to senior Nazi criminals such as Adolph Eichmann, Klaus Barbie, and Joseph Mengele. After Israel captured Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, the Argentinian government complained that Israel had violated diplomatic étiquette, but it did not apologize for granting Eichmann a save heaven in the first place. Other Nazis lived a happy life in Argentina and died in old age, such as Erich Priebke who died in October 2013 at age 100. Like many other Nazis, he lived a comfortable life in the Argentinian ski resort of Bariloche, where Joseph Mengele took his driving test and where Erich Priebke ran a deli. It was said to be the best in town, and customers used to call it “the Nazi deli.”
While most Latin American countries voted in favor of partition at the UN in 1947, their voting patterns at the General Assembly became unfavorable to Israel from the 1960s onward. In 1964, a voting group of third world countries (known as “Group of 77”) was formed at the General Assembly. Latin American countries were part of this bloc, which was very much influenced by its Arab and Muslim members. To Israel, Latin America was “lost” diplomatically but it still mattered economically because of its oil reserves. After the Iranian revolution of 1979 Israel lost a major oil supplier and oil exporters such as Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil and Ecuador became valuable alternatives.
In addition, Latin America once again became diplomatically relevant to Israel after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Due to the oil embargo, most African countries cut their diplomatic ties with Israel, while Western Europe and Japan kowtowed to Arab demands. Israel tried to bypass its diplomatic isolation by leveraging common interests with unsavory regimes. In the case of Latin America, this policy meant selling weapons to anti-Soviet and authoritarian countries. Of all Latin American states, only Cuba severed its diplomatic relations with Israel after the Yom Kippur War. Latin America became the last bastion of Israel’s presence in the Third World after 1973: Israel was isolated from Africa, and it had no diplomatic relations with China and India. Except for Cuba after 1959 and Nicaragua after 1979, Latin America did not become “red” during the Cold War. The United States was eager to prevent a Communist “domino effect” in what it considered to be its backyard…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
How's Socialism Doing in Venezuela? (Video): Debbie D’souza, Prager U, Aug. 28, 2017—Venezuela is falling apart. Its economy? Ruined. Its people? Hungry. Its government? Corrupt. What happened? In a word, socialism. Debbie D'Souza, a native Venezuelan and political activist, explains.
US Sanctions to Pile Misery on Moribund Venezuelan Economy: Joshua Goodman, National Post, Aug. 29, 2017—A small army of red-shirted workers mop the linoleum floors as their supervisors, sitting under a giant portrait of Hugo Chavez, look on. By the meltdown standards of Venezuela’s economy, the shelves around the workers at the state-run Bicentenario supermarket in eastern Caracas are brimming with staples like rice and pasta.
Imperialists Invade Venezuela: Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 14, 2017—Asked on Friday about the deteriorating situation in Venezuela, President Trump said “I’m not going to rule out a military option.” But he has yet to articulate the geopolitical dimension of the Venezuelan crisis.
I Am in Prison Because I Want Freedom for My Country: Yon Goicoechea, New York Times, Sept. 4, 2017—I write this from my cell in the dungeons of the Venezuelan secret police. I’m 32 and I’ve been a democratic activist for 12 years. I have two children, 8 and 5, who are my sun and moon. I have a wife whom I love and who now has to carry the burden of being married to a political prisoner.
