Venezuela: Obama Provokes Disappointments in the Region

The astonishing U.S. official declaration that Venezuela has become “an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security and foreign policy,” appears to confirm the very poor foreign policy of Obama with this part of the continent. If it were trying to discredit the Chavez regime, was it necessary to affect all of Venezuela, as a state, without differentiating between that respectable country and its reprehensible rulers?

If seven or more officials and ex-officials of the regime hide ill-gotten money in the U.S. banking system or are responsible for condemnable negotiations with terrorists and drug traffickers, wouldn’t it be preferable to denounce specifically these thieves and those crimes so that they would be evident before the world and, in particular, before the rest of Latin America?

For a while now Obama has been battered for his entire foreign policy and, in what concerns our region, in these moments over allegations of softness in the dialogue with the Castro regime. Not only the tea party and the Republican right, but also some Democrats and moderates from both parties have been pushing for stronger measures that balance that supposed weakness in the case of Cuba. The congressional invitation for Netanyahu to talk in Congress without an invitation from the executive [branch] nor an interview with the president, could only be read as a strong censure from the legislature regarding the manner in which certain foreign affairs are being conducted. It doesn’t matter if Obama is right or Congress, what matters is the snub and the grave fissure that it’s betraying.

It is possible that, from a U.S. point of view, it would be through Venezuela that in Latin America, extra-continental powers like Russia are penetrating. Moscow installed in Venezuela two factories of the famous Kalashnikovs, favorite weapon of worldwide terrorism; China is ready to construct a competing canal in Nicaragua to the Panama Canal; and it has been revealed that Chavez would have tried — it is still unknown with what success — [to have] Argentina restart the delivery of nuclear material to Tehran, begun years ago and canceled by Argentina in 1992. The whole world remembers, further, that Chavez formally proposed the recognition of the FARC as legitimate legal combatants and international respect of the resulting “sovereignty” over the vast territories that these drug traffickers dominated.

It is understood that, for the average North American citizen, these actions can be considered threatening to the national security of their country, but, then again, couldn’t only the government be penalized in place of punishing the entire country? It’s the same conceptual error that got Washington to maintain the indefensible embargo on Cuba for 55 years, affecting its residents, without differentiating them from the Castro regime. The coming April 11 in Panama begins the seventh Summit of the Americas (is it necessary to recall the one in Mar del Plata?). There, Obama had the golden opportunity to address all of Latin America in order to invite us all, possibly through the Organization of American States, to participate or at least monitor the immediate negotiation, step by step, of his thaw with Cuba, which he should have done from the beginning, but they preferred, again, to ignore us. He would have withdrawn from the meeting applauded and with a major achievement for the history of his government.

He didn’t take this actions and, punishing Venezuela for offenses that are from its regime, not from the country as such, reinforced the arguments from his populist enemies in the region and obliges those governments that are tired of Chavez to give support to Venezuela, even though it would clear the air for Maduro. Closing regret for the foreign policy of a presidency that, in its moment, aroused so many expectations.

Andrés Cisneros, ex-minister of foreign affairs