The Colombia/Ecuador/Venezuela Mess or Let's Place Bets on How Long Before the U.S. Backs a Colombian War With Venezuela

https://www.lrb.co.uk/2019/02/08/greg-grandin/whats-at-stake-in-venezuela

If we are to assume that the US backing the Gaido regime a coup, or imperialism, which I don't necessarily agree with but find fair. What name do we give to Rosneft providing billions in loans to PDVSA? The Russia backing of the Maduro regime and his fraudulent elections? The selling of weapons to the Venezuelan military, who are obviously breaking bank while people can't afford basic medicine and hold true power over the citizens? Is that something we can call latin sovereignty? Is that the exercise of democracy?

some of the other greater powers also have a relationship with some latin american states which is neocolonial in nature. not really sure what the aim of such whatabouttery is, mind you.

Well how do you create a democratic situation in Venezuela when a colonial power is acting very hard against it? I believe it is a legit question. Which colonial power has been the most destructive force over the past 5 years? That is another one.

you have the US carry out a coup is your answer i'm assuming?

It is not whatabboutism to debunk the naive understanding that Venezuela is an underdog from latin america facing a colonial power on its own and keeping its precious from oil from it.

sharivari's most recent post is literally just there

It is not whatabboutism to debunk the naive understanding that Venezuela is an underdog from latin america facing a colonial power on its own and keeping its precious from oil from it.

― Van Horn Street, Friday, February 8, 2019 3:13 PM (twenty-eight seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

flag on the play. straw man argument

I'm firmly against US military intervention, I believe in Gaido being used as an interim president that can oversee new fair elections without himself and Maduro as contenders, with Mexico/Uruguay easing transition for the dictatorship and Western nations ending sanctions and providing aid.

I was responding to the article you posted.

point stands

I believe in Gaido being used as an interim president that can oversee new fair elections without himself and Maduro as contenders, with Mexico/Uruguay easing transition

Going in from the perspective that Maduro isn’t legally the President, I can definitely see how this could look like the best-case-scenario at some level. I can’t see how it could be easily executed though.

Guaido clearly doesn’t see his role as just transferring power to the next person who can get elected fairly. He is setting out policy - including completely overhauling the oil industry in a way favourable to the US. He has said he will ‘restore democracy’ but has, afaik, pointedly ruled out giving a timetable for when elections might happen. He has stated that, as part of his ‘interim’ presidency Maduro and other senior figures in the PSUV may, if they are lucky, have a choice between jail or (if they remove themselves from politics) some form of amnesty. He has currently ruled out discussions with Mexico and Uruguay - preferring to work with countries who have had an ongoing, long term project not to guarantee free elections but to destroy Chavismo in Venezuela and remove leftist leaders from the whole of South America.

If he could work with MX and UY to resolve the impasse, giving a clear timetable for both PSUV and the opposition to have a meaningful chance of winning a fair election, I can’t imagine Maduro being on board with it, necessarily, but it would be a show of good faith to the PSUV supporters in the country and potentially increase internal pressure on Maduro to quit in favour of someone less divisive. That is not his plan or the plan for the people engineering his push.

Thanks ShariVari for the updates and clarity you bring to what you comment on.

If we are to assume that the US backing the Gaido regime a coup, or imperialism, which I don't necessarily agree with but find fair.

What's fair about it? Don't be shy to answer now you are bound to look like a genius next to Fred's incoherence.

He's saying that he doesn't agree it's a US backed coup, but finds the interpretation fair. I don't, I find it laughable. And then Jim just goes on and says US is carrying out a coup.

It's really easy to look like a genius when there's such a large rung under me who can't even read. And if I'm an idiot...

The PSUV has rigged the latest elections, and when they couldn't rig the elections to the National Assembly, they just got rid of it in what is still a much clearer 'coup' than anything going on right now. I do get if Guaido isn't that concerned with giving the PSUV a 'meaningful' chance of winning the next election, when they've clearly not done the same, and all the momentum is against them. What on earth does a meaningful chance for the PSUV even look like? They're still allowed to rig it just a little?

I do get if Guaido isn't that concerned with giving the PSUV a 'meaningful' chance of winning the next election, when they've clearly not done the same, and all the momentum is against them

PSUV is the largest party in Venezuela, controls the majority of state governorships, has millions of active members / supporters, has the backing of a substantial amount of the army and, if Maduro stepped aside, would have a decent chance of making any fair presidential election extremely competitive against a divided opposition.

Even if you aren’t particularly bothered about the right of the Venezuelan people to make a meaningful choice about who their leaders are, surely it’s pretty clear that ousting them from power and hobbling their ability to fight elections would be incredibly dangerous. This would all be more straightforward if PSUV was a tiny clique struggling to hold on to power - it isn’t, it’s a mass movement that still represents a huge proportion of Venezuelans. Whether or not that is enough to keep winning elections like they did during the Chavez era under new leadership is debatable, but they can’t be brushed aside without serious consequences.

Equally, if much of the opposition wasn’t transparently trying to turn the clock back 25 years, or embracing the support of fascists in Brazil and the US, they might have a better chance of engaging some of the voters who aren’t keen on Maduro but don’t want to see all the social gains of the Chavez era undone. The only way the Bolsonaro / Abrams vision of a new Venezuelan political landscape, which Guaido has chosen to represent, can come about and be maintained in the long term is undemocratically.

He's saying that he doesn't agree it's a US backed coup, but finds the interpretation fair. I don't, I find it laughable. And then Jim just goes on and says US is carrying out a coup.

― Frederik B, Saturday, 9 February 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There is no finding 'fair' about it - there is a desire for regime change. Just because it isn't moving the army against a government like in Chile (because in this case the US can't quite do that) there are moves to shut Venezuela out economically and to exacerbate people's suffering and turn the clock back.

Is Maduro to be allowed to compete in the elections?

There is currently no plan for new elections - Guaido hasn’t suggested one and the Uruguay / Mexico discussions with Maduro haven’t started yet.

What is clear, however, is that Guaido is intent on removing any possibility that Maduro could run, if he is successful. He has talked about being open to the idea of offering Maduro and colleagues amnesty from criminal prosecution if he steps down immediately - the options would probably be something like exile in Cuba or jail in Venezuela.

I hope we can all agree that one of the punishments for rigging elections should be to lose your electability, right? That's fair, no?

The opposition won the last fair election 56% to 40%, and that was back in 2015. Venezuela hasn't really gotten better since then. In what world does the PSUV stand a chance without cheating?

I’m not going to spend Saturday afternoon explaining Venezuelan domestic politics to someone who has clearly little to no interest in it, but the coalition that won 56% in the parliamentary elections of 2015 no longer exists. The current opposition coalition is a broad church that can unite behind being anti-Maduro, but that doesn’t mean it is going to be able to unite behind a single presidential figurehead - one of the main reasons the main Soc-Dem party left last year is that it was impossible for MUD to agree on who should lead the coalition.

If they can figure out how to have a single viable candidate who can bring together the centre left, liberals, the centre right, the far right, John Bolton, Jair Bolsonaro and enough of the anti-Maduro people who want completely different things to each other, it should be a lock. If they can’t, then a party that can reliablely get 40-45% at national level and substantial majorities at local level, is going to be a threat.

Either way, any approach that cuts a party that can command in the region of 40% out of the process, isn’t going to be able to sustain legitimacy.

teresa may obv

Or Guaido. The idea that we should just continue letting the party that can only get 40-45% at national level run anything is insane to me.

Also, 'can't unite behind a candidate', wasn't the problem that Maduro keeps blocking candidates from being able to stand?

Xp

That’s how it works when you have a multi-party system and a divided opposition. The problem is that there are two radical poles - PSUV and the axis of US-affiliated old money that wants to go back to the 80s - that are stronger than anyone else but lack enough support for a commanding majority. Everyone else, including a fair proportion of voters, is stuck in the middle. You can form alliances of convenience to try and block one or the other from achieving their goals but you can’t get enough people for a decisive path. There is no way that the right, and their international supporters, are going to tolerate a new normal where state ownership, high taxes, an arms-length relationship with the US etc, are on the table even if Maduro goes but there is no legitimate way to reverse Chavismo through democratic structures at the moment, as there are enough PSUV voters, and anti-PSUV leftists, to stop it. That’s one of the reasons that crushing PSUV, jailing leaders, linking them to terrorism, etc, is so essential.

Some form of negotiated solution where PSUV is still involved but there are greater constitutional checks and balances might be a temporary solution if everyone was acting in good faith but it wouldn’t achieve the policy objectives of most of the major players outside of Venezuela pushing the Guaido presidency.

Come on ShariVari, if PSUV had felt comfortable about winning presidential elections, they wouldn't have rigged the last one. And more constitutional checks and balances wouldn't do anything to change the fact that the PSUV has completely wrecked the Venezuelan economy and turned the country into a kleptocracy. How to get out of that without reforms?

The idea that the only people who rig elections are the ones who are worried about losing doesn’t stand up to a great deal of scrutiny. There is no guarantee that they would win a fair election but there is also no guarantee that they wouldn’t - and there are enough people in the country who don’t think that they rigged the last one to make unilaterally invalidating it a huge practical problem. As I said, if the opposition was uniformly after one thing, PSUV probably wouldn’t stand a chance of retaining power in the short term.

Equally, within the left you have a large cohort who blame external agents for creating the economic crisis and another group that believes in PSUV’s underlying goals are valid but ‘Maduro has betrayed the legacy of Chavez’, etc. If the case for completely overhauling the Venezuelan economy, as the US would like, was clear-cut, PSUV would be a niche party. The are too many people who remember what the country was like prior to Chavez with horror to make blindly trusting the anointed son of the US and Brazil a viable option. There is no easy answer to any of this.

The case for completely overhauling the Venezuelan economy is absolutely clearcut, come on. The country is wrecked by hyper-inflation? Clearly something must change?

That’s for the people of Venezuela to decide, but to start with, Colombia, the US and Brazil could stop waging economic war against them. You could almost ask why, if they’re so convinced the economy will fail on its own, they’re so keen to rig it...

Either way, there is probably a decent majority of people in favour of some kind of reform at this stage. What that reform should look like is the question.

SV otm

Fred - now annoying people on three continents.

the man from del monte el hottakeo .. he says yes .. to Trump regime intervention.

Oh come on, sanctions aren't meant to wreck the economy, they're punishments for turning into a dictatorship. Stop playing dumb.

Yes, there’s nothing Trump, Bolsonaro, Abrams, et al like less than a dictatorship. The recent sanctions are a pretty transparent attempt to ratchet up domestic pressure on Maduro by making an already bad situation worse.

It would be much easier to take the US’ actions in good faith as a defence of democracy had they not spent the last 20 years backing coup attempts, pumping money into anti-PSUV groups, etc, even if you did have Bolton on TV saying the quiet parts about oil out loud.

Oh come on, sanctions aren't meant to wreck the economy, they're punishments for turning into a dictatorship.

It would be much easier to take the US’ actions in good faith as a defence of democracy had they not spent the last 20 years backing coup attempts

This is the weirdest and stupidest thing you've written yet. Only 20?

In terms of power politics, whatever policies Guaido favored early on in this struggle, it is inevitable that he would seek the US as an ally and move his policy toward accommodating US desires. Because atm Trump (and Bolton) form US policy, the required level of accommodation will be thinly disguised capitulation. Whether or not this started as a US-backed coup, it seems unavoidable that US greed will seize the opportunity to reshape it into one. The Venezuelan people will be lucky to get out of this without sinking into a puppet government and debt-slavery for half a century.

wait so now you're saying we *shouldn't* take the US' actions in good faith? and yet you were defending the sanctions before?

pro tip: US interventions are never for the reasons we say they are, follow the money

I keep coming back to Alfred's "Maduro is shit, but he's OUR shit" sentiment that was, y'know, expressed by actual people living in Venezuela

this whole situation is radiaating bad vibes from every crevice. it's giving me hives if i allow myself to catastrophize :(
i basically don't trust much of anything the USA has ever done wrt Latin America

radiaaaaaating lol

I keep coming back to Alfred's "Maduro is shit, but he's OUR shit" sentiment that was, y'know, expressed by actual people living in Venezuela

― sleeve, Saturday, February 9, 2019 2:07 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As I said upthread, this is far from the truth. You have competing imperial interests in Venezuelan oil.

Fred you're way out of line.

I never said that! Students living here whose families thread Chavez and Maduro shaped my perspective.

I meant Fred B in case that wasn't clear :)

no, not you, the sleeve quote.

sorry, I thought that was you quoting other people you knew earlier? my apologies if incorrect but I remember the quote distinctly - "he's shit, but he's our shit, keep your nose out of our shit"