Titoli di Stato paesi-emergenti VENEZUELA e Petroleos de Venezuela - Cap. 2 (4 lettori)
- Creatore Discussione tommy271
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junior63
Forumer storico
Trump’s dangerous Venezuelan fantasy
by Francisco Toro July 11 at 3:23 PM Email the author
It was hard to suppress a nauseating sense of dread upon hearing that President Trump repeatedly pressed aides on why the United States couldn’t just invade Venezuela. As reported last week by Joshua Goodman of the Associated Press, there was a period last year when Trump just wouldn’t let this go, coming back to the theme again and again and even bringing it up to the audience most likely to be inflamed by it: other Latin American leaders.
One measure of just how desperate the situation in Venezuela has become is that, to many regime opponents, the idea of a U.S. invasion has quietly moved from “unthinkable catastrophe” to “extreme measure that’s arguably better than the alternative.” Over the past six years, Venezuela’s economy has thoroughly collapsed in tandem with its democracy. With per capita GDP now barely half what it was in 2013, inflation rising 46,305 percent in the past 12 months and millions fleeing the country, yesterday’s absolutely crazy ideas have begun to look comparatively sane to some.
They should know better. If there’s one thing Venezuelans ought to have grasped these past 20 years is that no matter how bad things look now, they can always get worse. Much worse. Layering a war on top of what is already a calamitous humanitarian situation risks setting off the kind of outright famine Venezuela’s chronically malnourished people have been tiptoeing around for years.
It’s telling that, in pressing his aides, Trump reportedly recalled the invasions of Grenada and Panama as models of what he had in mind. Americans tend to remember these — when they’re remembered at all — as quick-and-painless operations. The parallels are misleading. For all intents and purposes, Panama came conveniently pre-invaded. Large, permanent U.S. military bases in the canal zone — which was under U.S. control at the time, lest we forget — gave the United States an enormous tactical advantage. Even so, the U.S. attack on the Panamanian army headquarters set off a fire that destroyed a large, densely populated neighborhood directly next door, killing many civilians, although there are no exact figures. All told, between 500 and 700 civilians died, according to human rights organizations. Even the 1983 invasion of minuscule Grenada — population about the same as Burbank, Calif. — wasn’t over before the United States mistakenly attacked a mental-health facility on the island, killing 18.
With antecedents like those, the mind reels at the thought of what might happen in Venezuela. To be sure, Venezuela’s woefully unprepared, undertrained and ill-equipped military wouldn’t last long in a fight, but then, the Maduro government knows this. That’s why, for two decades, its defense doctrine has stressed asymmetrical warfare: tacitly conceding that it would not be able to hold back an initial invasion, but betting that it can use insurgency tactics to wear down the enemy over time. For years, the regime has been arming and training its civilian supporters to prepare them for this kind of fight.
Just think how a leader like Trump might react to reports on Fox News, night after night, of U.S. soldiers being picked off by pro-Maduro snipers hiding in civilian neighborhoods and U.S. convoys attacked with improvised explosive devices. It’s easy to imagine someone who has publicly advocated targeting the families of U.S. adversaries for reprisals hitting back with overwhelming firepower, collateral damage be damned.
Venezuelans who allow themselves to entertain fantasies of deliverance from “chavismo” at the hands of U.S. Marines need to be careful what they wish for. The risk of an absolutely ghastly bloodbath is real, and the vast bulk of the blood would be Venezuelan.
For now, it appears that Trump has ceased fantasizing about amphibious landings in the Caribbean, but with him you can never be too sure. Should he regain interest in a Venezuelan adventure, he could find that the new and much more hawkish Colombian president, Iván Duque, might be willing to countenance the use of his territory as a U.S. staging ground — something that would have been unimaginable under his predecessor.
The decision would revive the interventionist Monroe Doctrine that has done so much damage to U.S.-Latin America relations over the years and bring back the kind of gunboat diplomacy recent U.S. administrations have desperately sought to consign to the past. Then again, there’s little that this U.S. president relishes more than torching the bipartisan consensus upheld by his recent predecessors.
To be sure, a U.S. invasion of Venezuela remains a remote possibility, but it is not the absurd impossibility it looked like a year ago. An impulsive U.S. president in need of a quick win to set off a rally-around-the-flag effect could find the prospect of a relatively fast initial victory in Caracas alluring. The coolheaded advisers who surrounded him when he pushed the idea last year — H.R. McMaster and Rex Tillerson key among them — are no longer in place. Their replacements appear to be far less interested in trying to rein in the boss.
One thing’s for sure, then: The next time Trump decides to ask about a Venezuelan invasion, he will likely get much less determined pushback than he did last year.
- The Washington Post
by Francisco Toro July 11 at 3:23 PM Email the author
It was hard to suppress a nauseating sense of dread upon hearing that President Trump repeatedly pressed aides on why the United States couldn’t just invade Venezuela. As reported last week by Joshua Goodman of the Associated Press, there was a period last year when Trump just wouldn’t let this go, coming back to the theme again and again and even bringing it up to the audience most likely to be inflamed by it: other Latin American leaders.
One measure of just how desperate the situation in Venezuela has become is that, to many regime opponents, the idea of a U.S. invasion has quietly moved from “unthinkable catastrophe” to “extreme measure that’s arguably better than the alternative.” Over the past six years, Venezuela’s economy has thoroughly collapsed in tandem with its democracy. With per capita GDP now barely half what it was in 2013, inflation rising 46,305 percent in the past 12 months and millions fleeing the country, yesterday’s absolutely crazy ideas have begun to look comparatively sane to some.
They should know better. If there’s one thing Venezuelans ought to have grasped these past 20 years is that no matter how bad things look now, they can always get worse. Much worse. Layering a war on top of what is already a calamitous humanitarian situation risks setting off the kind of outright famine Venezuela’s chronically malnourished people have been tiptoeing around for years.
It’s telling that, in pressing his aides, Trump reportedly recalled the invasions of Grenada and Panama as models of what he had in mind. Americans tend to remember these — when they’re remembered at all — as quick-and-painless operations. The parallels are misleading. For all intents and purposes, Panama came conveniently pre-invaded. Large, permanent U.S. military bases in the canal zone — which was under U.S. control at the time, lest we forget — gave the United States an enormous tactical advantage. Even so, the U.S. attack on the Panamanian army headquarters set off a fire that destroyed a large, densely populated neighborhood directly next door, killing many civilians, although there are no exact figures. All told, between 500 and 700 civilians died, according to human rights organizations. Even the 1983 invasion of minuscule Grenada — population about the same as Burbank, Calif. — wasn’t over before the United States mistakenly attacked a mental-health facility on the island, killing 18.
With antecedents like those, the mind reels at the thought of what might happen in Venezuela. To be sure, Venezuela’s woefully unprepared, undertrained and ill-equipped military wouldn’t last long in a fight, but then, the Maduro government knows this. That’s why, for two decades, its defense doctrine has stressed asymmetrical warfare: tacitly conceding that it would not be able to hold back an initial invasion, but betting that it can use insurgency tactics to wear down the enemy over time. For years, the regime has been arming and training its civilian supporters to prepare them for this kind of fight.
Just think how a leader like Trump might react to reports on Fox News, night after night, of U.S. soldiers being picked off by pro-Maduro snipers hiding in civilian neighborhoods and U.S. convoys attacked with improvised explosive devices. It’s easy to imagine someone who has publicly advocated targeting the families of U.S. adversaries for reprisals hitting back with overwhelming firepower, collateral damage be damned.
Venezuelans who allow themselves to entertain fantasies of deliverance from “chavismo” at the hands of U.S. Marines need to be careful what they wish for. The risk of an absolutely ghastly bloodbath is real, and the vast bulk of the blood would be Venezuelan.
For now, it appears that Trump has ceased fantasizing about amphibious landings in the Caribbean, but with him you can never be too sure. Should he regain interest in a Venezuelan adventure, he could find that the new and much more hawkish Colombian president, Iván Duque, might be willing to countenance the use of his territory as a U.S. staging ground — something that would have been unimaginable under his predecessor.
The decision would revive the interventionist Monroe Doctrine that has done so much damage to U.S.-Latin America relations over the years and bring back the kind of gunboat diplomacy recent U.S. administrations have desperately sought to consign to the past. Then again, there’s little that this U.S. president relishes more than torching the bipartisan consensus upheld by his recent predecessors.
To be sure, a U.S. invasion of Venezuela remains a remote possibility, but it is not the absurd impossibility it looked like a year ago. An impulsive U.S. president in need of a quick win to set off a rally-around-the-flag effect could find the prospect of a relatively fast initial victory in Caracas alluring. The coolheaded advisers who surrounded him when he pushed the idea last year — H.R. McMaster and Rex Tillerson key among them — are no longer in place. Their replacements appear to be far less interested in trying to rein in the boss.
One thing’s for sure, then: The next time Trump decides to ask about a Venezuelan invasion, he will likely get much less determined pushback than he did last year.
- The Washington Post
junior63
Forumer storico
Mexico’s new president could help ease pressure on Venezuela
Lopez Obrador campaigned on a promise to return to Mexico’s traditional foreign policy of nonintervention, putting him at odds with his predecessor’s efforts to build a regional alliance to bring pressure against Maduro’s socialist government for taking Venezuela down an increasingly authoritarian path.
“Let the broad avenues of sovereignty and friendship of our peoples be opened,” Maduro said in a congratulatory tweet to Lopez Obrador following his July 1 win. “Truth triumphs over lies, and the hope of the great homeland is renewed.”
Mexican governments in recent years have shifted away from the tread-softly policies of the 20th century. Former President Vicente Fox notably squabbled with both Cuba and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez over their human rights records. Relations grew so frosty between Mexico and Venezuela that they withdrew ambassadors from one another between 2005 and 2009.
Current President Enrique Pena Nieto joined forces with the Trump administration and was leading a push among mostly conservative Latin American governments to put pressure on Maduro.
His government last month sponsored a resolution at the Organization of American States that could pave the way for Venezuela’s suspension from the group over what it considered Maduro’s illegitimate re-election as the oil-rich economy unravels. It’s also working closely with the U.S. to seize assets stolen by corrupt Venezuelan officials.
Last year, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray went on a hushed mission to Cuba to urge the communist island’s leaders to use their influence to create a more meaningful dialogue in Venezuela, their main ideological and economic ally.
By contrast, Lopez Obrador has indicated a desire to return to what’s known as the Estrada Doctrine, a stance dating from the 1930s by which Mexico long refused to judge foreign governments for fear of inviting meddling by the U.S.
“We will be friends of all the world’s people and governments,” Lopez Obrador said in his victory speech from Mexico City’s Zocalo.
“The principles of non-intervention, self-determination and the peaceful settlement of disputes will be applied again,” he said.
Those principles haven’t meant isolation in the past. Mexico played a significant part in efforts to mediate an end to Central America’s civil wars in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Once a wealthy oil nation, Venezuela in the last five years has spiraled deep into a political and economic chaos under Maduro’s rule. Last year, more than 140 people were killed in anti-government protests that were put down by security forces loyal to Maduro.
Meanwhile, widespread shortages of food and medicine and runaway inflation are sending masses of Venezuelans search of a better life abroad. Many of them have headed to Mexico, which last year received more than 4,000 asylum requests from Venezuelans compared to just a single case in 2013.
Lopez Obrador’s pledges to tackle yawning inequality, root out endemic corruption and forgo bodyguards so he can be closer to “the people” have drawn comparisons to Maduro’s mentor and populist predecessor Hugo Chavez.
But analysts said Lopez Obrador is unlikely to emulate Maduro’s policies as he seeks to transform Mexico’s economy, or to join the Bolivarian Alliance of 11 leftist nations that has been Venezuela’s diplomatic spearhead the past 15 years.
Unlike Chavez, who liked to bash the U.S. “Empire,” the target of Lopez Obrador’s scorn has been domestic elites. And he has named a team of mainstream figures to his economic team, saying repeatedly he had no intention to adopt a Venezuelan-style approach.
“Venezuela has become a watchword for economic failure and mismanagement everywhere in the region,” said Patrick Duddy, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela and now a professor of Latin American studies at Duke University. “It would surprise me greatly to see Lopez Obrador embracing Venezuela’s leadership or record.”
But even if Lopez Obrador keeps a safe distance from Maduro, he can still tip the region’s diplomatic balance toward the embattled socialist’s favor.
Maduro’s position in the region has soured as leftist leaders in key countries have been replaced by conservatives with less patience for the chaos in his country and the spillover it has caused into theirs.
“The fear,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, “is that under the banner of non-intervention, Lopez Obrador will break the solid consensus among the region’s top democracies to treat Maduro as a pariah dictator responsible for gross violations of human rights.”
Mexico's new president could help ease pressure on Venezuela
Lopez Obrador campaigned on a promise to return to Mexico’s traditional foreign policy of nonintervention, putting him at odds with his predecessor’s efforts to build a regional alliance to bring pressure against Maduro’s socialist government for taking Venezuela down an increasingly authoritarian path.
“Let the broad avenues of sovereignty and friendship of our peoples be opened,” Maduro said in a congratulatory tweet to Lopez Obrador following his July 1 win. “Truth triumphs over lies, and the hope of the great homeland is renewed.”
Mexican governments in recent years have shifted away from the tread-softly policies of the 20th century. Former President Vicente Fox notably squabbled with both Cuba and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez over their human rights records. Relations grew so frosty between Mexico and Venezuela that they withdrew ambassadors from one another between 2005 and 2009.
Current President Enrique Pena Nieto joined forces with the Trump administration and was leading a push among mostly conservative Latin American governments to put pressure on Maduro.
His government last month sponsored a resolution at the Organization of American States that could pave the way for Venezuela’s suspension from the group over what it considered Maduro’s illegitimate re-election as the oil-rich economy unravels. It’s also working closely with the U.S. to seize assets stolen by corrupt Venezuelan officials.
Last year, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray went on a hushed mission to Cuba to urge the communist island’s leaders to use their influence to create a more meaningful dialogue in Venezuela, their main ideological and economic ally.
By contrast, Lopez Obrador has indicated a desire to return to what’s known as the Estrada Doctrine, a stance dating from the 1930s by which Mexico long refused to judge foreign governments for fear of inviting meddling by the U.S.
“We will be friends of all the world’s people and governments,” Lopez Obrador said in his victory speech from Mexico City’s Zocalo.
“The principles of non-intervention, self-determination and the peaceful settlement of disputes will be applied again,” he said.
Those principles haven’t meant isolation in the past. Mexico played a significant part in efforts to mediate an end to Central America’s civil wars in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Once a wealthy oil nation, Venezuela in the last five years has spiraled deep into a political and economic chaos under Maduro’s rule. Last year, more than 140 people were killed in anti-government protests that were put down by security forces loyal to Maduro.
Meanwhile, widespread shortages of food and medicine and runaway inflation are sending masses of Venezuelans search of a better life abroad. Many of them have headed to Mexico, which last year received more than 4,000 asylum requests from Venezuelans compared to just a single case in 2013.
Lopez Obrador’s pledges to tackle yawning inequality, root out endemic corruption and forgo bodyguards so he can be closer to “the people” have drawn comparisons to Maduro’s mentor and populist predecessor Hugo Chavez.
But analysts said Lopez Obrador is unlikely to emulate Maduro’s policies as he seeks to transform Mexico’s economy, or to join the Bolivarian Alliance of 11 leftist nations that has been Venezuela’s diplomatic spearhead the past 15 years.
Unlike Chavez, who liked to bash the U.S. “Empire,” the target of Lopez Obrador’s scorn has been domestic elites. And he has named a team of mainstream figures to his economic team, saying repeatedly he had no intention to adopt a Venezuelan-style approach.
“Venezuela has become a watchword for economic failure and mismanagement everywhere in the region,” said Patrick Duddy, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela and now a professor of Latin American studies at Duke University. “It would surprise me greatly to see Lopez Obrador embracing Venezuela’s leadership or record.”
But even if Lopez Obrador keeps a safe distance from Maduro, he can still tip the region’s diplomatic balance toward the embattled socialist’s favor.
Maduro’s position in the region has soured as leftist leaders in key countries have been replaced by conservatives with less patience for the chaos in his country and the spillover it has caused into theirs.
“The fear,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, “is that under the banner of non-intervention, Lopez Obrador will break the solid consensus among the region’s top democracies to treat Maduro as a pariah dictator responsible for gross violations of human rights.”
Mexico's new president could help ease pressure on Venezuela
junior63
Forumer storico
AN o ANC?
sandrino
Forumer storico
Llukas
Frangar non Flectar
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