Venezuela: The Truth About U.S. Intervention and Economic Sanctions
Sarah M. E.
twitter: @sarahmarieel
The United States’ relationship with Latin America throughout history has been a tumultuous one, defined by an imbalance of power and exploitative institutions forced upon people since the beginning of colonization. The US’s presence in Latin America has also morphed over the decades, with the expansionist movements of 19th century onward being guided by the notions of Manifest Destiny to acquire new territory, to “civilize” according to US standards, and to restructure economies entirely to bend to the will of the American elite. This quickly transformed into a 21st century venture to gain access to precious resources, to expand US capital, and to establish an even stronger foothold in the region via both economic and military means.
Greg Grandin explains in his book, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of New Imperialism, that modern day imperialism in Latin America is given its “moral force” through punitive idealism and free-market absolutism. He writes that US foreign policy in the region has been justified not just by the need to maintain “national security,” but to advance US American ideals of “freedom” and “democracy.” This has translated into anything but freedom and democracy, and instead these hollow words are simply code for the implementation of unencumbered free market policies that allow the US to maintain economic, political, and military dominance over nations stripped of any and all self-determination.
The 2019 Failed Coup Attempt
We must be honest about the United States’ track record when it comes to the Latin America and the entirety of the Global South. The US government has routinely backed dictators and death squads that have murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of people, while driving thousands more into exile. Countless illegal coups have been backed and directly carried out by the CIA in countries such as Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and so on. In Empire’s Workshop, Greg Grandin goes into vivid detail about the horrific atrocities committed during these interventions. The result of this, as well as the austerity policies that undemocratically installed dictators unleash, is clear and proven: soaring poverty rates, widespread hunger, violence, drug trafficking, a lack of basic resources, and a complete demolition of all democratic institutions.
At the beginning of 2019, the US attempted to back another coup in Venezuela to oust democratically elected president, Nicolás Maduro, and to prop up Juan Guaidó, President of the National Assembly. The US’s involvement in Venezuela spans many years, and past coup attempts such as the one in 2002 intended to overthrow Hugo Chavez exemplify where past presidents have stood on foreign policy in the region. It is worth noting that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world and access to these reserves is in the US’s interest, as John Bolton, expressed in his statement: “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.” In other words, the US chose the path of extracting profit from the destabilization of a nation over the path to upholding democracy and the people’s basic right to self-determination.While this is nothing new, the elites of Washington are open about their profit-making motives and do not try to veil their nefarious intentions.
During this attempted coup — which ultimately failed leaving President Maduro in power — the United States expressed its clear support for Juan Guaidó, who illegally declared himself interim president. In January when events unfolded Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, tweeted: “Today interim President Juan Guaido announced the start of Operación Libertad [Operation Liberty]. The U.S. Government fully supports the Venezuelan people in their quest for freedom and democracy. Democracy cannot be defeated.”
This was not an empty or symbolic statement and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with its headquarters in Washington, also sent “humanitarian aid” to Guaidó’s opposition forces. They claimed this “aid” was to assist Venezuelans supposedly suffering from human rights abuses, hunger, and a lack of basic necessities. However, in reality this served another objective. Both Venezuelan opposition leaders and U.S. officials admitted that the mission was also intended to induce military officers to turn away from the Maduro government. Obscuring political agendas under the label of humanitarian aid is a tactic that has been used in past US foreign policy, a humanitarian-aid program was used in Nicaragua in the 1980s to hide $27 million in weapons for right-wing groups such as the Contras fighting the Sandinista government. Interestingly, this event involved Elliott Abrams, who is now the special envoy for Venezuela, demonstrating that the US’s old tactics of destabilization are still alive today.
The issue with the US actively encouraging and partcipating in this attempted coup, besides being morally reprehensible and antithetical to the “democracy” Washington preaches, is that it is illegal according to the Venezuelan Constitution which does not in any section legitimize self-appointed presidents. The right wing opposition justified the coup by claiming that the 2018 elections were fraudulent, yet the opposition also refused to allow U.N. international observers into the country to oversee these very elections as requested by Maduro. Meanwhile, the CNE (national electoral council) insists that the country’s voting system is “transparent, reliable (and) rigorously verifiable in all its phases”, while other international observers present during the elections concurred with this statement.
The Jimmy Carter Foundation even posited that, “As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” Since there is no valid evidence of fraud, it is constitutionally illegal for Guaidó to declare himself president, thus making it also illegal for the United States to back an illegitimate coup. Something for Americans to consider is to juxtapose this situation: If a person in government, let’s say Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, one day decides she has the power to declare herself president, Washington would never allow this as it is clearly illegal and invalid. The same standard should be held for Venezuela and any other country in the world.
Economic Warfare and Sanctions
While time cannot be reversed to address the US’s involvement in the attempted overthrow of a democratically elected leader, one major ongoing policy that can and must be addressed is economic sanctions. The Congressional Research Service writes that, “For more than a decade, the United States has employed sanctions as a policy tool in response to the activities of the Venezuelan government and Venezuelan individuals…the Trump Administration has significantly expanded sanctions.” This was also a reality under Obama, and with Trump now as President the Treasury Department has placed sanctions on an additional 82 Venezuelan officials. This includes President Maduro, his wife, Cilia Flores, his son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez, President of the Socialist Party, Diosdado Cabello, eight supreme court judges, the leaders of Venezuela’s army, national guard, and national police, four state governors, the director of the central bank, and the foreign minister. The former head of Venezuela’s intelligence service, General Manuel Cristopher Figuera, who previously had sanctions placed against him, had them lifted on May 7, 2019 when he defected from Maduro and fled to the United States. Overall, the Treasury Department currently has sanctions on at least 132 Venezuelan or Venezuelan-connected individuals as well as Venezuela’s state oil company (Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., or PdVSA) and central bank. There has been bipartisan support for these sanctions.
How Sanctions Affect Citizens
While the Congressional Research Service states that, “It remains unclear whether the most recent sanctions will hinder efforts to foster a negotiated solution to the political crisis,” the effect of blocking billions of dollars of assets has been very obvious. They have done nothing but exacerbate tensions, both economic and political. Naturally, cutting a nation off economically results in an inability to function as it normally should. The ones to suffer are everyday people simply trying to survive.
In a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, researchers concluded that as many as 40,000 people may have died in Venezuela as a result of US sanctions that make it harder for ordinary citizens to access food, medicine and medical equipment. This study also showed that more than 300,000 people are currently considered at risk due to a lack of access to medicine or treatments. People are being deprived of essential goods necessary to live. As sanctions target main industries like oil production that provide Venezuela with the majority of its wealth, less revenue means less resources to go towards food programs, medicine, and improving living conditions. Between 2017 and 2018 alone there was a 31 percent increase in general mortality. When a country is economically strangled by denying them billions of their own dollars and by blocking them from international markets, the reality is that people die. If it were true that the US is concerned about human rights, then it should not contribute directly to the disintegration of human rights abroad. We must call this for what it is: a deliberate attempt to weaken and kill off anyone who stands in the way of US hegemony.
How Economic Sanctions Hold Up Under International Law
There are other factors to take into account besides moral considerations, such as the legality of unilateral sanctions under international law. Martin Pastor writes that the application of unilateral economic sanctions is an explicit violation of international law protected under the United Nations (U.N.) and Organization of American States’s (OAS) charters, human rights stipulations, and even national United States (U.S.) law. According to Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, sanctions are to be imposed by the U.N. Security Council, and only following a determination that there is a threat to or breach of international peace and security. In other words, a singular U.N. member state such as the US is not entitled to impose economic sanctions upon another member or any sovereign state. This violates the U.N.’s Declaration on the Principles of International Law which was adopted in 1970 and discusses “the duty of States to refrain in their international relations from military, political, economic or any other form of coercion aimed against the political independence or territorial integrity of any State.”
Even in a hypothetical wartime scenario (which this cannot be considered since Venezuela poses no direct threat to the United States), the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions “prohibits any wartime measure that has the effect of depriving a civilian population of objects indispensable to its survival, be it food, water or medicine.” More specifically, based on the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts Protocol I, “states are prohibited from imposing a blockade, siege or regime of economic sanctions with the purpose of causing starvation among the civilian population.” Moreover, according to the OAS charter, chapter IV, articles 19 and 20, states are prohibited from intervening in a foreign country, “not only by armed force but also any other form of interference against its political, economic, and cultural elements…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.”
Columbia University economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot have also pointed out that sanctions even go so far as to violate US law. But to first give some history, the Harvard Belfer Center explains that prior to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which somewhat limits the president’s national emergency powers, “the president used the authority granted to him under the 1917 Trading With the Enemy Act to regulate international trade and commerce in times of national crisis.” This Act, however, was not clear in terms of its scope and duration. For example, Richard Nixon used the statute in 1970 to call in the National Guard to deliver mail during a postal-workers strike. The IEEPA was created to limit when the president could use the Trading With the Enemy Act, as many in Congress saw Nixon’s action as an overreach of executive power.
They also explain that, “Practically, IEEPA and the Trading With the Enemy Act are the same, but with one notable difference: While the United States must be in a state of war for the president to regulate trade and commerce under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the President has complete discretion to declare a national emergency under IEEPA.” The only requirement is that the emergency be an “unusual and extraordinary” threat that emanates in whole or substantially outside of the United States. What exactly constitutes ‘unusual’ or ‘extraordinary,’ however, is unclear. As soon as the president concludes a legitimate “threat”, he can investigate, regulate, or prohibit a range of transactions and economic activities.
Since the IEEPA was passed, presidents have relied on it to enact financial and economic sanctions against countries including Iran, North Korea, Syria, South Sudan, Russia, and Cuba. For example, it was used against Iran in 1979 over the hostage crisis and signed by Jimmy Carter, with the resulting economic sanctions effectively freezing Iranian assets and properties within the United States. Another example is Executive Order 13382, which President Bush signed in 2005, freezing assets and blocking transactions within the US of “those who contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” Since 2000, presidents have used IEEPA in more than 400 executive actions. Unilateral power is more at the hands of presidents today than ever before, but it has been wielded to purposefully cause destruction and economic destabilization, all of which do nothing to help ease tumultuous international relationships and cultivate international mutual respect.
In the context of Venezuela, all sanctions under the Trump administration have been made through executive orders invoking the IEEPA. This administration has argued that the Bolivarian government of Venezuela represents an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” of the U.S, but this does not hold any validity in reality and cannot be used as a legal justification. Another nation simply existing does not constitute a threat to the national security of our nation. The Maduro government does not have missiles aimed at our nation, has not threatened to invade our nation, has not threatened or otherwise acted to harm the people of our nation in any way, and therefore any executive action taken to initiate economic warfare based on the IEEPA is not legally justified.
Changing the Legacy of the US
Besides taking into consideration the legality (or illegality in this case) of these policies, as the country that is supposed to be the “greatest in the world”, we cannot continue to threaten diplomatic relationships with other nations out of sheer belligerency. Now is the time to break the cycle of the past and present, and establish a new order focused not on the intervention into internal affairs of other nations, but rather on non interventionism and an end to aggressive economic and military warfare that continues to claim lives. The solution is simple: it is to lift all economic sanctions in Venezuela. Just as sanctions can be imposed with unilateral action, they can be lifted in the same way. Sanctions should not be the default response to international crises and it is important that as a nation that prides itself on supposedly respecting the democratic process, that we actually do so, both at home and abroad.
However, this is a pipe dream as long as the US empire continues to exist as it does — as a force of destruction with its number one export being misery-inducing imperialist ideals. We cannot count on our elected officials to put an end to the late stage capitalist dystopia we live in, nor to end the suffering caused by Washington abroad. No candidate for president will be our savior, especially if they are complicit in these egregious crimes, whether directly by voting for them or indirectly by staying silent and allowing them to take place. The people must be their own liberators, and this starts with the realization that working within the very structures that cultivate these issues in the first place will only bring us farther away from a real solution.
