NEW YORK TIMES ADMITS US SANCTIONS ARE DESTROYING VENEZUELA
By Peter Bolton, Counterpunch.
June 12, 2021 | EDUCATE!
Above Photo: tomscoffin.
The facile right-wing talking point that the economic crisis facing
Venezuela proves that socialism always ends in failure has become so
hackneyed by overuse that it has attained its own tongue-in-cheek name. The
ad Venezuelum, as it has come to be known, has slowly developed into such a
tedious and predictable right-wing tactic that it seems to now serve as an
all-purpose retort to try to discredit even the most modest of
left-of-center proposals. In October 2018, for instance, then-President
Trump responded to a plan by progressive Democrats in congress to introduce
a bill to establish a system of universal public healthcare something
which every industrialized country other than the US already has by
stating: Its going to be a disaster for our country. It will turn our
country into a Venezuela.
Analysts on the left have long toiled against the ad Venezuelum by pointing
out the myriad genuine explanations behind the economic crisis that has been
roiling the country since around 2014. Caleb Maupin, for instance, has
argued that falling oil prices were a key factor in the collapse of
Venezuelas economy. This is hardly a controversial point given that
Venezuelas dependence on oil, which was first discovered in the 1920s, has
led to a highly unstable economy featuring regular bouts of economic chaos
caused by a sudden drop in the price of crude. In the early 1980s, during
the government of Luis Herrera (of the right-wing COPEI party), for example,
there was a huge economic crisis with many of the same features as the one
confronting the country today. Needless to say, no one at the time tried to
pass this off as proof that capitalism doesnt work.
Ryan Mallet-Outtrim, who himself lived in Venezuela for several years, has
argued that the governments monetary policy has been one of the main
factors behind the crisis. In particular, he pointed out that the fixed
exchange rate, which of course is hardly socialistic in nature, had an
unintended effect on demand for currency that in turn led to an inflationary
spiral. He is not alone is his criticism of the fixed exchange rate;
economist Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
(CEPR), who like Mallet-Outtrim is broadly sympathetic to the Chavista
government, has argued for years that Venezuela should drop it in favor of a
floating exchange rate.
I myself argued in a 2016 essay for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs that
an economic war waged by a domestic societal elite, and abetted by the
United States, has been a major cause of the crisis. Though dismissed by
critics of Chavismo as a conspiracy theory, there is, in fact, ample
evidence of an economic war against the Venezuelan government ever since
Hugo Chavez was first elected in 1998. The so-called oil strike, for
instance, (in reality a management-led lockout) was a transparent attempt to
bring about regime change by crippling the economy. Cases of hoarding goods
and deliberately disrupting supply chains on the part of the
opposition-friendly private business sector, meanwhile, have been
well-documented.
All of these explanations have undoubtedly formed part of the rich tapestry
of causation behind Venezuelas economic woes. But what is equally
undeniable is that US-imposed sanctions have augmented these factors as well
as compounded the suffering felt by ordinary Venezuelans. As Roger Harris
pointed out in a May 4 essay for CounterPunch, even a US government-authored
report admits that sanctions, particularly on the state oil company in
2019, likely contributed to the steeper decline of the Venezuelan economy.
Now, in addition to the US government itself, one its major organs of
interventionist propaganda has conceded this exact same point.
In a May 30 article in The New York Times about how organized crime groups
have stepped in to provide services in certain Caracas neighborhoods, Isayen
Herrera and Anatoly Kurmanaev seem to almost inadvertently acknowledge that
Venezuela is disintegrat[ing] under the weight of Mr. Maduros corrupt
leadership and American [sic] sanctions. This is quite an admission from a
publication that has been at the cutting edge of disseminating the ad
Venzuelum as well as propagandizing for the US-orchestrated coup led by
so-called interim president Juan Guaidó and for US interventionism more
broadly.
Outside the Alice in Wonderland world of the US corporate-owned media,
however, this claim is uncontroversial. In addition to the aforementioned US
government report that openly admits that US sanctions have exacerbated the
crisis, a 2019 CEPR study authored by Weisbrot and development economist
Jeffrey Sachs found the number of deaths caused by these sanctions to have
stood at 40,000 between 2017 and 2018 (that is, before the coup had even
begun). In early 2020, United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur for Venezuela,
Alfred de Zayas, estimated civilian deaths caused by sanctions to stand at
around 100,000. This would almost certainly need to be revised up
significantly as of June 2021 not least because Venezuela, like the rest
of Latin America, has been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus
pandemic.
The US governments intention behind the sanctions, meanwhile, is
straightforward. Its goal is to goad the countrys populace into turning
against its government via a brutal form of collective punishment
something which is illegal according to international law. Since the 1960s,
successive US administrations in Washington have honed this tactic via the
so-called trade embargo against Cuba. This crippling form of non-military
warfare, more accurately described as an economic blockade, has led to
roughly $130 billion in damage to Cubas economy according to UN figures and
has inflicted severe suffering on Cubas civilian population according to
mainstream human rights organizations and academic research.
The Times other claim that corruption is a major factor in the economic
crisis facing Venezuela also discredits the ad Venezuelum. As international
relations scholars point out, corruption is often endemic to resource rich
countries, especially those in the developing world, and irrespective of the
ideological stripe of their governments. Perhaps due to its indispensable
importance for modern economies, of all the natural resources, oil seems to
be the worst in its corrupting effects on a country in which it exists in
abundance. Indeed, corruption hardly began in Venezuela upon Chavezs
election, but rather has been a recurring feature of its history that has
debilitated the countrys economy under governments of both the left and the
right.
There is a degree of irony to the Times reference to corruption as well.
Because academic studies have demonstrated that sanctions actually lead to
increases in corruption and organized criminal activity in the countries
they target. Writing in Quartz, political scientist Bryan R. Early of the
University of Albany, SUNY, points out that: Not only are sanctions
frequently ineffective, they also can be counterproductive
[because they]
encourage government corruption and the development of transnational
organized crime. So, apparently the Times authors are oblivious to the fact
that US sanctions are ipso factopartly to blame for the phenomenon they
describe in their article. Early adds: Recent studies have shown
that
sanctioned governments tend to become less democratic and are more likely to
engage in human rights abuses, restrict womens rights, and curb media
freedoms.
Note the cruel irony that these are some of the very alleged pathologies on
which Washington bases its sanctions against Venezuela in the first place.
And this shines a light on the fundamental duplicity and dishonesty that
lies behind the USs entire sanctions regime, whether it be against
Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba or any other US adversary. Concerns about alleged
corruption, alleged organized criminal activity, alleged human rights
abuses, alleged deficits in media freedom or womens rights, or, indeed,
alleged breakdowns in democracy are not, and never have been, the factors on
which Washington bases its decision to place sanctions on another country.
If they were, then how come it not only issues no punitive measures
whatsoever against the brutal Saudi dictatorship or the murderous
narco-state in Honduras, but rather enters into lucrative arms deals with
the former and lavishes the latter with generous funding for its state
security forces?
Rather, Washington bases its decision to impose sanctions on a very simple
criterion whether or not a country is obediently serving its economic and
geostrategic interests and accommodating its preferred neoliberal economic
system. All of the aforementioned publicly proclaimed motivations are just
post-hoc bogus justifications to give a veneer of credibility to (and
manufacture consent for) its global campaign of naked coercion. We will
surely never hear the likes of The New York Timespoint that out. But its
admission that sanctions and corruption, rather than the purported inherent
failures of socialism, are amongst the major causal factors of Venezuelas
economic crisis is surely a step in the right direction.