[News] Obama Could Face Another Disastrous Summit Due to Sanctions Against Venezuela
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Apr 10 17:25:32 EDT 2015
Obama Could Face Another Disastrous Summit Due to Sanctions Against
Venezuela
*http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11328*
<http://venezuelanalysis.com/printmail/11328><http://venezuelanalysis.com/print/11328>
By Mark Weisbrot - Center for Economic Policy Research, April 10th 2015
The last (2012) Summit of the Americas, in Cartagena, Colombia, was a
disaster for President Obama. There were scandals involving Secret
Service agents and sex workers, an increasing rebellion from the South
against the failed U.S. “War on Drugs,” and—most of all—unanimous
opposition to the U.S. embargo on Cuba.
The most decisive evidence that this was not just the usual suspects
stirring up trouble was the warning from President Manuel Santos of
Colombia—one of Washington’s few “friendlies” in the region —that there
would not be another Summit without Cuba.
So President Obama offered up a surprise Christmas present to its
Southern neighbors last year: after more than a half-century of
aggression against Cuba, he would finally begin to normalize relations.
Welcome to the 21^st century, finally! Although Republican jihadis and
neocons would inevitably delay the process in Congress, the White House
publicly expressed hope that there would at least be embassies open in
the two countries before the Summit on April 10.
But the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. On March 9 the White
House declared a “national emergency” due to the “extraordinary threat
to the national security” posed by Venezuela. The Obama administration
tried to dismiss the language as a mere formality, but the world knows
that such threatening language and accompanying sanctions can be quite
hazardous to the designated country’s health – in the past they have
sometimes even been followed by military action.
Most ominously in the present, at a U.S. Senate hearing
<http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/live-blog-senate-foreign-relations-hearing-on-venezuela> on
March 17, the State Department’s Alex Lee declared that the current
sanctions were just the “first salvo” against Venezuela. Of course, the
world outside of Washington knows that the sanctions have nothing to do
with any alleged human rights violations in Venezuela. From 2000 to
2010, the Colombian military assassinated more than 5700 innocent
civilians; the U.S. government continued to provide literally billions
of dollars of military and police aid. In Honduras, the Obama
administration took numerous steps to help ensure that the 2009 military
coup against the democratically elected government of Mel Zelaya would
succeed. And in Mexico, 43 students were disappeared six months ago with
complicity of local authorities and police, and possibly federal police
and government as well. But the U.S. government does not appear to be
concerned, and will not even consider reducing its military aid to Mexico.
What the sanctions also made clear, for those who didn’t already know,
is that President Obama’s opening to Cuba represented exactly zero
change in Washington’s overall strategy toward the region: The intention
of expanding commercial and diplomatic relations with Cuba was mainly to
pursue a more effective strategy of undermining the Cuban
government--and all of the left governments in the region. This includes
Brazil, where the U.S. State Department funded efforts to weaken the
Workers’ Party (PT) government
<http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/brasil/fc2207200823.htm> in 2005,
according to U.S. government documents.
Representatives of Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and nearly every
country in the Americas spoke out against the sanctions at the
Organization of American States (OAS) last Thursday in Washington. The
Union of South American Nations demanded
<http://www.unasursg.org/node/169> their repeal. So did the Community of
Latin American and Caribbean States, which includes all countries in the
hemisphere except the U.S. and Canada. And on March 26 the opposition
governor of the state of Lara sent a letter
<http://www.panorama.com.ve/politicayeconomia/Gobernador-Henri-Falcon-envio-una-carta-al-presidente-Obama-20150326-0070.html> to
President Obama, asking him to “take a moment of your time to listen to
the voice of the people of Venezuela and the rest of Latin America that
have spoken out in favor of the rescinding of this executive order that
you signed.”
“If there is a country that is a threat in the Americas,” said
Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño
<http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/20/ecuadorean_foreign_minister_the_united_states>,
“it’s the United States, because it has permanently invaded countries,”
“created coups d’état” and “promoted dictatorships.” The Cuban
government also responded forcefully, dashing Obama’s hopes of any deal
before the Summit. Negotiations in Havana that were expected to last
until mid-week ended abruptly
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/world/americas/us-cuba-talks-on-restoring-diplomatic-ties-end-abruptly.html?_r=0> on
Monday, March 16. So Obama will go to the Summit empty-handed and with
some egg on his face because of this ill-considered move.
These sanctions against Venezuela violate the charter of the
Organization of American States, including Article 20, and Article 19,
which states:
No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or
indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs
of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed
force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat
against the personality of the State or against its political, economic,
and cultural elements.
Let’s hope that all of the governments represented at the Summit hammer
it home that this kind of “rogue state” behavior will not be tolerated.
/Mark Weisbrot <http://www.cepr.net/index.php/> is co-director of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. and
president of Just Foreign Policy <http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/>. He
is also the author of the forthcoming book /Failed: What the "Experts"
Got Wrong About the Global Economy/(Oxford University Press, 2015)./
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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