"The United States and Cuba are talking about ways to solve the Venezuelan crisis." - Secretary of State John Kerry, August 14, 2015
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| Nicolas Maduro meets with Secretary of State Kerry in Colombia in 2016 |
Originally posted in CubaBrief
Five years ago, the then Secretary of State John Kerry before heading to Cuba on August 14, 2015 in an interview with Argentine journalist Andres Oppenheimer
stated that "the United States and Cuba are talking about ways to solve the Venezuelan crisis."
The situation in Venezuela continued to worsen, and the presence of the Castro regime only served to aggravate the situation in the South American country. Six months after Secretary Kerry announced that the Castro regime and the Obama Administration were seeking to solve the crisis in Venezuela
opposition lawmakers declared a food emergency in February 2015. Despite the thaw with the Cuban dictatorship and efforts to engage the Maduro regime, the Obama Administration was accused by the Venezuelan dictator of being
responsible for the country's instability. In July 2016 reports
emerged of food riots were the police were shooting into hungry crowds.
Ten years ago the Obama Administration, together with other countries in the region, ignoring the Democratic clause of the Organization of American States
welcomed the Castro regime back into the democratic regional body in June 2009. Raul Castro was not interested because the dictator
preferred to strongly back, what he called, "the legitimate government of President Nicolas Maduro," and
denounced the OAS.
This was part of an overall foreign policy by the Obama Administration that Dr. José Azel
in an important April 24, 2015 article published in
El Nuevo Herald titled "The Resurrection of Neville Chamberlain" outlined and identified the policy's architect. The Obama Doctrine was first addressed by Charles A. Kupchan in 2001, and fully fleshed out in his 2010 book,
How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace. Charles A. Kupchan, currently a professor at Georgetown University, served as special assistant to President Obama for national security affairs from 2014 to 2017. Dr.Azel summarized Dr. Kupchan's approach
into four phases:
It must begin, according to Kupchan, by making concessions to our enemies in an act of “unilateral accommodation.” These concessions must be “unusual and costly” to signal benign intent. [...] The second phase entails the practice of “reciprocal restraint” where the adversary nations walk away from rivalry, peace breaks out, and geopolitical competition gives way to cooperation.[...] “Social integration” and “the generation of new narratives and identities” are the third and fourth phases of Kupchan’s sequence towards stable peace.
This approach was a failure in
Russia,
Cuba and
Iran. The abandonment of deterrence and sanctions for a policy of
neo-appeasement led the world to greater instability, the humanitarian and
political crisis in
Venezuela and the
deaths of Americans.
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| Neo-appeasement failed with these three tyrants. |
Today the current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo understands that Cuba is part of the problem, and not a partner to talk with about solving the Venezuelan crisis. On January 2, 2020 the Secretary of State announced that the United States
had sanctioned "Cuba regime official Leopoldo Cintra Frias for his involvement in gross violations of human rights and use of violence to prop up the former Maduro regime in Venezuela."
Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams on January 6, 2020
stated that “[w]e underestimated the importance of the Cuban and Russian support for the regime, which has proved I think to be the two most important pillars of support for the regime and without which it wouldn’t be there, it wouldn’t be in power.”
Thankfully, the team at the State Department today understands the role played by Cuba, and Russia in Venezuela and have returned to an approach that uses sanctions and deterrence.
Bloomberg, January 6, 2020
U.S. ‘Underestimated’ the Importance of Russia and Cuba to Maduro
By
Nick Wadhams
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| President Nicolas Maduro Photographer: Carolina Cabral Fernandez/Bloomberg |
The U.S. has underestimated Russia and Cuba’s ability to prop up the Venezuelan regime, envoy Elliott Abrams told reporters, acknowledging frustration that President Nicolas Maduro has clung to power despite a pressure campaign to oust him.
Russian companies now handle more than 70% of Venezuela’s oil, including in ship-to-ship transfers, and the beleaguered nation’s economy has become more dependent on Moscow generally, Abrams said at a briefing on Monday.
The briefing was held as another political crisis unfolded in Venezuela, with opposition leader Juan Guaido and a Maduro-backed rival both announcing plans to open a session of the National Assembly after security forces had barred Guaido from the building.
U.S. officials have previously criticized Russia and what Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has dubbed Venezuela’s “Cuban Communist overlords” for their support of Maduro, who has remained in office despite harsh sanctions and as the oil-rich nation has descended into chaotic destitution and millions of Venezuelans have fled in desperation.
“We underestimated the importance of the Cuban and Russian support for the regime, which has proved I think to be the two most important pillars of support for the regime and without which it wouldn’t be there, it wouldn’t be in power,” Abrams said.
He had organized the briefing to underscore U.S. support for Guaido after Maduro’s security forces prevented his re-election as leader. Instead, Luis Parra, a former opposition legislator now allied with Maduro, took over Guaido’s Assembly office.
Earlier: Venezuela Congressional Showdown Looms After Maduro Maneuver
That move earned the scorn of most of Latin America including the leftist governments of Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay. Guaido won re-election in an off-site vote, garnering felicitations from the U.S. and other allies who have said that he is the country’s rightful leader.
Vice President Mike Pence congratulated Guaido in a telephone call on Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Pence reaffirmed that Guaido is the legitimate president, the person said.
“Obviously, if the regime had had the votes, it would not have ordered soldiers to keep elected deputies out of the National Assembly,” Abrams said. “This is a struggle against a regime that as we saw yesterday will do anything to prevent the return of democracy.”
Abrams said the U.S. was weighing new ways to support Guaido and was also considering new sanctions against the Maduro government.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-06/u-s-underestimated-importance-of-russia-cuba-to-maduro
In case you missed it.
El Nuevo Herald, April 24, 2015
The Resurrection of Neville Chamberlain*
By José Azel
British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain died in 1940, but his failed foreign policy of appeasing the enemies of democratic governance has been resurrected. The current incarnation of the appeasement approach to foreign policy- which I am labeling neo-appeasement- is best articulated by professor Charles Kupchan of Georgetown University in his book:
How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace.
The exploration of unconventional ideas is a hallmark of academic work, and professor Kupchan’s scholarship may offer theoretical insights into the study of international relations. But international relations are not in the domain of the physical sciences where benign laboratory experimentation can take place without negatively impacting the lives of millions of individuals. Social science experimentation, of the kind offered by Kupchan, is best kept in the Ivory Tower- preferably under lock and key- where we can argue its merits to the point of nausea without imperiling lives.
Unfortunately, Kupchan’s hypotheses have moved with him to the U.S. National Security Council where he serves as senior director for European affairs and his neo-appeasement appears to be in full display in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. He asserts as much in the first chapter of his book noting that: “The Obama administration clearly believes that enemies can become friends.”
So what is the professor’s and the administration’s road map for turning enemies into friends?
The neo-appeasement prescription entails a sequential four-phased process. It must begin, according to Kupchan, by making concessions to our enemies in an act of “unilateral accommodation.” These concessions must be “unusual and costly” to signal benign intent. I imagine this is what Prime Minister Chamberlain had in mind when he conceded the German speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler in the Munich Agreement of 1938.
The second phase entails the practice of “reciprocal restraint” where the adversary nations walk away from rivalry, peace breaks out, and geopolitical competition gives way to cooperation. This must have been Hitler’s mindset when Germany occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia six months after the Munich Agreement, and followed with the invasion of Poland in 1939 unleashing World War II.
“Social integration” and “the generation of new narratives and identities” are the third and fourth phases of Kupchan’s sequence towards stable peace. He and President Obama believe that deepened transactions between adversaries somehow lead them to change their identities and the “distinctions between self and other erode, giving way to communal identities and a shared sense of solidarity.”
I cannot tell if this assertion is naïve or just plain silly, but let’s hold on to it for a paragraph or two as we explore another troubling thesis of the professor’s work where he argues that democracy is not necessary for stable peace. In his view, the United States should assess whether countries are enemies or friends based on their diplomacy (that is, on what they say) and not on the nature of their domestic institutions-what they do.
I suppose this explains the administration’s diplomatic choices in marginalizing friendly democratic allies like Israel and appeasing hostile repressive regimes like Russia, Iran and Cuba.
Democracies do not usually go to war with each other, and recognizing that democracies will have enemies is not synonymous with being bellicose. Polity matters and we should not seek, as neo-appeasement prescribes, a communal identity and a shared sense of solidarity, with the likes of supreme leaders Ali Khamenei, Kim Jung-un, Vladimir Putin, or Raul Castro.
Neo-appeasement seems to be the intellectual foundation of the administration’s foreign policy. Under its banner we accommodated Putin’s occupation of Georgian territory, just as Chamberlain accommodated Hitler. We gave up our missile defense plans in Eastern Europe; we may have delayed, but ultimately accepted, Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon, and the President is using his executive power to unconditionally normalize relations with the Cuban regime. Mind you, this is a regime that in 1962 urged the Soviet Union to launch a preemptive nuclear attack on the United States with missiles from Cuba.
When challenged on his foreign policy, the President is cavalier in dismissing historical experience by repeatedly noting that “he is not interested in having battles that started before he was born,” intimating that world peace hinges on a calculus of before and after Obama’s birth.
In resurrecting Chamberlains’ approach of appeasing the mortal enemies of democratic governance, the President would do well to humbly ponder Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana’s admonishment that: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
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Dr. José Azel is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami and the author of the book “Mañana in Cuba”.
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