Obama's Wake-Up Call to Venezuela's Neighbors
Mar 10, 2015 12:04 PM EDT
By The Editors
The White House's executive order on Monday authorizing sanctions on Venezuelan officials names only seven people. Its real target may be Venezuela's neighbors, whose tacit acceptance of the Bolivarian Republic's bad behavior undermines U.S. efforts to change it.
No one can accuse the U.S. of acting hastily. Even as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro cracked down on anti-government protesters and opposition members last year, U.S. President Barack Obama let other Latin American nations take the lead in trying to ease tensions, with nugatory results. Only in July, as Congress considered sanctions legislation, did the State Department restrict travel to the U.S. by Venezuelan officials it deemed complicit in human-rights abuses. In February, it expanded that list to 56. Monday's executive order comes three months after Congress passed a law calling for sanctions, and goes beyond it by also taking aim at those involved in corruption.
Predictably, Maduro has responded to escalating U.S. pressure by blaming it for the shortages and inflation that have made Venezuela the world's most miserable economy. Sputtering about an “endless coup,” he ordered the U.S. Embassy to cut its staff in Caracas to 17 from 100 and imposed a visa requirement on U.S. citizens.
But the U.S. has pointedly not sanctioned either Venezuela's economy or its citizenry. It has frozen or blocked the U.S. assets of a handful of officials, barred them from the U.S., and forbade any U.S. citizen from doing business with them.
That can still have a powerful pariah effect, however, and it establishes a legal framework allowing the Treasury Department to add more names to the list. Moreover, in not targeting those at the top of the bureaucratic hierarchy, the sanctions put midlevel operational personnel -- the kind more likely to jet off to Miami than be greeted with red carpets in Moscow and Beijing -- on notice that they're vulnerable.
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http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-10/obama-s-wake-up-call-to-venezuela-s-neighbors
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