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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/10/how-the-u-s-failed-at-its-foreign-policy-toward-venezuela/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/10/how-the-u-s-failed-at-its-foreign-policy-toward-venezuela/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">How the U.S. Failed at Its Foreign Policy Toward Venezuela</h1>
<span class="gmail-post_author_intro">by</span> <span class="gmail-post_author"><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/rkrtgsnj9391/" rel="nofollow">Vijay Prashad – Érika Ortega Sanoja</a></span>- August 10, 2020<br></div>
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<div id="gmail-attachment_109329" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/dropzone/2019/02/99F54423-499F-4D0A-B1CE-3DC6167443E6.png" alt="" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="447" height="277"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-109329" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair</p></div>
<p>On August 4, 2020, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a <a href="https://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/venezuela-in-maduros-grasp-assessing-the-deteriorating-security-and-humanitarian-situation">hearing</a>
on Venezuela. Appearing before the committee was U.S. State Department
Special Representative Elliott Abrams. Abrams, who has had a long—and
controversial—career in the formation of U.S. foreign policy, was
assaulted by almost all the members of the Senate committee. The
senators, almost without exception, suggested that Abrams had been—since
2019—responsible for a failed U.S. attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan
government of President Nicolás Maduro.</p>
<p>From Republican Senator Mitt Romney to Democratic Senator Chris
Murphy, Abrams received a severe tongue-lashing. There was no
disagreement in the committee about the goals of U.S. policy, namely to
overthrow—with force if necessary—the government of President Maduro.
Murphy laid out the timeline of Trump’s policy, which began with the
recognition of minor Venezuelan politician Juan Guaidó as president of
Venezuela in January 2019 to the current moment, including how the
United States—in <a href="https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-us-venezuela-policy-has-been-an-unmitigated-disaster-we-played-all-our-cards-on-day-one-and-its-been-an-embarrassment-ever-since">Murphy’s words</a>—“tried to sort of construct a kind of coup in April of last year.”</p>
<p>Abrams was unfazed. “Obviously we hope that [Maduro] will not survive the year and we are working hard to make that happen,” he <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?474497-1/hearing-political-situation-venezuela">said</a>.
The policy—including “a kind of coup”—remains intact. Abrams has now
added another file to his post: he will be Trump’s special
representative on Iran; the man who failed to conduct regime change in
Venezuela is now going to deepen U.S. attempts to overthrow the
government in Iran.</p>
<p><b>Venezuelan Reaction</b></p>
<p>A <a href="https://twitter.com/erikaosanoja/status/1290799892470923264?s=21">clip</a>
from Murphy’s comments—including the “kind of coup” sentence—circulated
widely on social media inside Venezuela. Senior members of the
Venezuelan government—including Vice President <a href="https://twitter.com/drodriven2/status/1291108784950124544?s=21">Delcy Rodríguez</a> and Foreign Minister <a href="https://twitter.com/jaarreaza/status/1290829788383514624?s=21">Jorge Arreaza</a>—shared it. It was also shared by former Ecuadorian President <a href="https://twitter.com/mashirafael/status/1290999498857222154?s=21">Rafael Correa</a>,
who acidly noted that Senator Murphy “is surely a good person, but he
doesn’t even understand what he is acknowledging.” What he is saying is
that the U.S. government has tried to do a coup in Venezuela. This is
what created outrage in the country.</p>
<p>We asked Foreign Minister Arreaza to comment about Murphy’s use of
the term “coup” in his statement about U.S. policy vis-à-vis Venezuela.
Arreaza told us the following: “U.S. spokespersons continue to openly
admit to their crimes and illegal aggressions against the Venezuelan
people.” It is not only Murphy—a liberal Democrat—who used the language
of a “coup.” Trump’s former national security adviser—John
Bolton—recounts in his <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Room-Where-It-Happened/John-Bolton/9781982148034">book</a> how Trump had said that, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Room_Where_It_Happened/QjTMDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=cool">per John Kelly</a>, “it would be ‘cool’ to invade Venezuela”; Trump also said that <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Room_Where_It_Happened/QjTMDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=venezuela%20is%20part%20of%20the%20united%20states">Venezuela is</a>
“really part of the United States.” Speaking of Murphy’s comment and
Bolton’s book, Arreaza said, “these confessions are priceless evidence
for the complaint we raised at the International Criminal Court.”</p>
<p>Even members of the Venezuelan opposition, such as Enrique Ochoa
Antich, said that the open way in which Abrams and the U.S. senators
spoke of armed action against Venezuela “is painful and unacceptable.”
The entire Trump-Bolton-Abrams policy, he said, has failed to dent the
government of Maduro.</p>
<p><b>Illegal</b></p>
<p>Ecuador’s Correa correctly said that Murphy did not know what he had
acknowledged. It is rare for a U.S. politician to care when they say
things that violate international law. Murphy’s casual statement about a
“coup” is in clear violation of the Charter of the Organization of
American States (OAS), of which the United States is a member. Two
articles from Chapter IV of the OAS <a href="https://bit.ly/2PzhvaI">charter</a> explicitly outlaw a coup:</p>
<blockquote><p>“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.” (Article 19)</p>
<p>“No State may use or encourage the use of coercive measures of an
economic or political character in order to force the sovereign will of
another State and obtain from it advantages of any kind.” (Article 20)</p></blockquote>
<p>There is no need to interpret these articles, because they are
written very plainly. They say that not only is “armed force” forbidden
as a “form of interference,” but so is the “use of coercive measures of
an economic or political character” to violate the sovereignty of a
country. The tenor of the Senate hearing was in total violation of the
spirit and letter of the OAS charter and the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/">Charter of the United Nations</a>.
But this has been the behavior of the U.S. government since at least
1954, when the Central Intelligence Agency overthrew the government of
Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala.</p>
<p><b>Failure</b></p>
<p>The U.S. senators certainly attacked Abrams for his failure. But what
was the failure that bothered them? Not the failure to abide by the
laws and conventions signed by the United States; that was not the
problem.</p>
<p>Universally, the senators attacked Abrams for not being able to
succeed with his coup plans. They gave him advice about how to better
overthrow the government of Maduro. Thus far, the U.S. government has
denied Venezuela access to IMF funds, charged the leadership in
Venezuela of drug-trafficking (with a <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/04/04/trump-sends-gun-boats-to-venezuela-while-the-world-partners-to-fight-a-deadly-pandemic/">hallucinatory</a> indictment), and sent a carrier group to tighten the embargo on the country; none of these <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/studies-2-sanctions-and-coronashock/">policies</a>
have succeeded, despite the full weight of the U.S. government behind
them. Rather than concede that the government of Maduro has popular
support, the United States wants to pursue its policy with even more
draconian methods.</p>
<p>The United States is currently conducting a hybrid war, which
includes an economic war (sanctions and sabotage) and an information war
(coloring the government as authoritarian). Some senators wanted the
Trump administration to go beyond this highly destructive form of
warfare. They wanted the U.S. government to run a full blockade of
Venezuelan ports.</p>
<p>The Trump administration is unwilling to go that far. Such a policy,
Abrams said, would be an “act of war.” Trump wants a war, but not an
open war; the U.S. military knows that it might be able to flatten
Caracas, but it would not be able to win a war against the Venezuelan
people.</p>
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