Thursday, January 24, 2019

AOC and Ro Khanna take the worst possible position one could on the latest Venezuela developments

She retweeted fellow House member Ro Khanna's (D-CA) tweet about how the US should "support Uruguay, Mexico, and the Vatican's efforts for a negotiated settlement & end sanctions that are making the hyperinflation worse."

I'll let John Sexton at Hot Air have the floor at this point:

This statement doesn’t mention that neighboring Colombia, which has taken the brunt of the Venezuelan refugee crisis, has called for Maduro to step aside or that Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, and Peru have all sided with the U.S. As for the countries supporting Maduro, that’s Cuba, Bolivia and maybe Mexico. And not surprisingly Maduro’s regime has the support of Russia which is shocked, shocked that any country would interfere in someone else’s dictatorship:
Russia, the source of billions of dollars in loans to Venezuela, insisted that Maduro remains the legitimate president and slammed the U.S. approach. Russian officials and pro-Kremlin lawmakers said that Venezuela — after Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Syria — was becoming the latest victim of global U.S. efforts to foment regime change in violation of international norms.
U.S. recognition of Guaidó was aimed at “deepening the split in Venezuelan society, increasing conflict in the streets, and fundamentally destabilizing the domestic political situation and further escalating the conflict,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said that “attempts to usurp the power in Venezuela are illegitimate and contradict international law.”
As for a negotiated settlement, Maduro has been involved in negotiations with various parties for nearly 3 years. More than a year ago the latest round of negotiations came to an end. The result? Absolutely nothing changed:
Members of Venezuela’s leftist government and opposition leaders concluded a round of talks in the Dominican Republic on Saturday, failing to reach a deal to address the country’s political and economic crisis…
The result prolongs the standoff between the government and the opposition, who have tried and failed for years to strike a pact. The two sides last met for talks in December.
As Foreign Affairs pointed out, these negotiations have been going on since May of 2016:
Since May 2016, the Union of South American Republics (UNASUR), an intergovernmental organization comprising 12 South American states, has attempted to mediate between the government and the opposition, in the hope of averting a meltdown. In October, after the Venezuelan government-controlled electoral commission (CNE) waved off a constitutional referendum and indefinitely suspended local elections—blocking an electoral resolution until the 2018 presidential elections—the Vatican stepped in.
Those mediation efforts have predictably failed, thanks to an inability on the part of the mediators and other outside parties to impose real costs on the government. Since March, the Maduro government has violently repressed street demonstrations, resulting in over 70 deaths, and it continues to imprison at least 120 of its political opponents. The government has resisted calls to hold elections before 2018, refused to recognize the right to a constitutional recall referendum, and, most recently, called for an illegal constituent assembly to revise the constitution. However, it has faced no consequences from the mediators.
Negotiations aren’t a fresh solution, they’re the status quo. And ending sanctions would just make it easier for Maduro to drag things out even longer while his people starve.
Sexton appropriately mentions the fact that AOC recently let loose with a projectile of dog vomit about how her own nation, the United States, is in a "dystopian" state of affairs requiring the "fierce urgency of now." Compared to Venezuela?

Her silliness may play well at Sundance but I don't think the capitals of the above-mentioned nations that have already recognized Juan Guaido as interim Venezuelan president are going to be too impressed.

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