{"id":46282,"date":"2019-03-19T11:02:28","date_gmt":"2019-03-19T00:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=46282"},"modified":"2019-04-11T09:32:42","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T23:32:42","slug":"maduros-useful-idiots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/maduros-useful-idiots\/","title":{"rendered":"Maduro\u2019s useful idiots"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

In his 1982 Nobel lecture<\/a>, the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez condemned the West\u2019s insistence on \u2018measuring us with the yardstick that they use for themselves\u2019 and \u2018forgetting that the ravages of life are not the same for all\u2019. That is, in a sense, what the West\u2019s progressive left is doing when, caught up in an outdated narrative about Latin American revolutions, it fails to recognise the associated devastation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s because of this failure that, until fairly recently, the most heinous\u2014and long-lasting\u2014insurgency in Latin America\u2019s history, waged by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), had advocates in the European parliament. Now, the story is repeating itself, with many Western leftists rejecting any international effort to push back against President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s disastrous leadership.<\/p>\n

The scale of the disaster should not be underestimated. Severe food and medication shortages are the new normal. The International Monetary Fund estimates<\/a> that inflation will reach 10 million per cent this year. The result is a desperate people, 10% of whom have already fled the country. Among those who remain, 90% live below the poverty line.<\/p>\n

A revolutionary delusion has collapsed, leaving behind only the tyrannical rule of a class of corrupt tycoons\u2014effectively a mafia\u2014that has purchased the military\u2019s loyalty with massive cash bonuses and lucrative oil-smuggling and drug-trafficking deals. The mafia\u2019s opponents are repressed, often brutally. In terms of the number of political prisoners<\/a>, Maduro\u2019s Venezuela has joined the ranks of China, Cuba and Turkey.<\/p>\n

One might expect US President Donald Trump\u2019s administration to minimise Maduro\u2019s repressive practices. But Trump was also quick to recognise the leader of the opposition, Juan Guaid\u00f3, as interim head of state, after Guaid\u00f3, with widespread support among Venezuelans, invoked a constitutional provision to challenge Maduro\u2019s legitimacy.<\/p>\n

Practically all of Venezuela\u2019s democratic neighbours\u2014including socialists in these countries\u2014have spoken out against Maduro\u2019s tragic parody of a revolution. Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla and Colombia\u2019s most emblematic far-left politician, has labelled<\/a> Maduro \u2018a dictator\u2019. Brazil\u2019s Socialist Party denounced<\/a> his regime as \u2018crazy\u2019 and \u2018a totalitarian state\u2019, while the country\u2019s former left-wing president, Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, distanced<\/a> himself from his Workers\u2019 Party\u2019s endorsement of Maduro. Even the Venezuelan socialist group Marea Socialista denounced<\/a> Maduro\u2019s \u2018totalitarian tendencies\u2019.<\/p>\n

But leftist politicians in the West resist taking a similar stand. America\u2019s rising socialist stars staunchly oppose this approach. Representative Ilhan Omar has warned<\/a> of a \u2018US-backed coup\u2019 aimed at picking<\/a> a leader \u2018on behalf of multinational corporate interests\u2019, and ignorantly defined the opposition as \u2018far right\u2019. (Guaid\u00f3 is a member of a social-democratic party.) Likewise, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agreed<\/a> that the large-scale, human-rights-violating crisis is an \u2018internal polarized conflict\u2019, and argued that the United States should not recognise Guaid\u00f3 as head of state.<\/p>\n

Senator Bernie Sanders, for his part, invokes<\/a> America\u2019s dark history of interventions in Latin America when discussing Venezuela. In the United Kingdom, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who memorialised<\/a> Maduro\u2019s mentor Hugo Ch\u00e1vez in 2013 for his \u2018massive contributions to Venezuela and a very wide world\u2019, also opposes<\/a> \u2018outside interference in Venezuela\u2019.<\/p>\n

These leaders subscribe to a Cold War world view, in which virtually any domestic revolution stands in direct opposition to the ultimate enemy: Western imperialism. By not recognising the nuances of the current crisis, they end up effectively advancing the interests of multiple dictatorships, including those in Iran, Nicaragua, Syria and Turkey, as well as the real colonial powers in Venezuela right now: China, Cuba and Russia.<\/p>\n

In Venezuela, Russia is following its playbook from Syria, where it intervened not to save besieged people, but to prop up the tyrant they were trying to escape, Bashar al-Assad. Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping want to secure repayment of the massive loans they issued to Venezuela\u2019s Chavista regime. And free oil from Venezuela has been vital to Cuba\u2019s economic survival.<\/p>\n

These ties mean that Maduro\u2019s regime poses a legitimate national security risk to the US. Though Trump himself was probably motivated to recognise Guaid\u00f3 more by his desire to win support from Hispanic voters, the fact is that Russia\u2019s deepening military cooperation with Venezuela could conceivably result in a modern rendition of the Cuban missile crisis.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a more fundamental issue at play. The world\u2019s dictatorships support Maduro because they want to undercut the principle, adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005, that the international community has a responsibility to protect<\/a> populations from atrocities carried out by their own governments. By backing Maduro, they seek immunity for themselves. Defending the spirit of the so-called R2P principle, which the left should cherish, was a key motivation behind the decision by many other democracies\u2014including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and the UK\u2014to recognise Guaid\u00f3.<\/p>\n

Rather than stick to their old political dogma, leftist political figures should heed the voice of Toshiko Sakurai, a Venezuelan exile. \u2018I am sick of you\u2019, she told<\/a> the Spanish left. \u2018We both believe in public universal education and health care financed with taxes\u2019 and \u2018a safety net and wealth redistribution\u2019. But, she continued, \u2018supporting socialist policies doesn\u2019t keep me from denouncing the brutal monstrosity being inflicted upon my country<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n

The 2008 economic crisis has fuelled the rise of a new political class that revived the social-democratic call for a fairer society. These figures are right to reject any consideration of a potentially calamitous foreign military intervention in Venezuela. But\u2014for the sake of their own political credibility, as much as the principles of human rights and democracy\u2014they must abandon well-meaning but obsolete assumptions in foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Instead, the left should support increased international pressure on the Maduro regime, including through the sanctioning and isolation of its core leadership. Efforts to boost the capabilities of Venezuela\u2019s suppressed democratic opposition would also help.<\/p>\n

Western non-intervention killed Spanish democracy in the 1930s. More recently, it sustained Assad\u2019s appalling tyranny. Venezuela must not be next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his 1982 Nobel lecture, the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez condemned the West\u2019s insistence on \u2018measuring us with the yardstick that they use for themselves\u2019 and \u2018forgetting that the ravages of life are not …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":484,"featured_media":46285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106,1428,163,2081,1553,2276],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMaduro\u2019s useful idiots | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/maduros-useful-idiots\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Maduro\u2019s useful idiots | The Strategist\" 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