Trying to track the course of U.S. policy toward Venezuela is enough to give one whiplash. Where a few weeks ago Barack Obama’s administration appeared to take a principled stand behind opposition protests asserting that this April’s presidential election to elect Hugo Chávez’s successor was stolen, today it seems to have tossed the opposition overboard as it seeks to normalize relations with the disputed government of Nicolás Maduro.

Even as opposition leader Henrique Capriles has been traveling to regional capitals seeking support for his campaign for a clean election, someone at the State Department evidently thought it was perfect timing for a smiling, handshaking photo op between Secretary of State John Kerry and Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elías Jaua at last week’s Organization of American States meeting in Guatemala.

Certainly it would be understandable if a U.S.-Venezuelan rapprochement was the product of some identifiable change in that government’s behavior — some nod to the legitimacy ... Read More

Many in Washington have been expressing growing alarm over the devastating toll that drug trafficking and gang activity have taken on the countries of Central America, primarily in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Caught between more robust counter-narcotics efforts in Colombia and Mexico that have forced drug-trafficking organizations to expand operations elsewhere and having to absorb convicted gang deportees from the U.S., these countries’ already weak law enforcement and judicial institutions have simply been overwhelmed.

It is in this context that controversial and risky policy prescriptions such as calls for drug legalization by Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina or El Salvador’s “truce” with criminal gangs are being met with less skepticism than they deserve. It is not always true that desperate situations demand desperate actions. In many cases, they only make matters worse.

This week, the Washington Post weighed in with an editorial endorsing El Salvador’s gang truce (and Honduras’s decision to follow the same path) as ... Read More

The headline is as tendentious as it was predictable. The surprise is that it should appear on a mainstream site like that of ABC News and not some fringe outlet of the fevered left. Indeed, the headline is the holy grail for those legions of activists who have been egging on the recentconviction of former Guatemalan military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt on charges of genocide stemming from the country’s bloody civil war in the 1980s.

The activists claim that what they have wanted all along is justice for civilians who died in that terrible conflict, but it is clear their ulterior motive has been seeking an indictment of U.S. policy in Central America to resist Soviet- and Cuban-sponsored subversion. Now, in their minds, they have it. Guilty as charged: The United States, under President Ronald Reagan, aided and abetted “genocide.”

The charge is without merit. Here’s the real story: Ríos Montt came to power in ... Read More

Last year, in the run-up to what would be Hugo Chávez’s final election, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter provided the ultimate cover for the late caudillo when he called the Venezuelan election process “the best in the world.”  Today, as the country roils in the aftermath of a contested election to elect Chávez’s successor, we now know that is not the case.

Who says? Carter’s own election-monitoring organization. Last week, an official at the Carter Center told the Washington Post, ”The concerns are not about the [voting] machines and whether they counted accurately. The questions are much more about who voted. Was there double voting? Was there impersonation of voters? And was there coerced voting?”

All good questions, ones which anyone should expect to be assessed before making pronouncements about any electoral process as the “best in the world.” This is no small matter, since the Carter Center, perhaps more than any other organization outside Venezuela, has repeatedly granted legitimacy to Hugo Chávez’s successive reelections, even as ... Read More

After an ill-advised overture to Hugo Chávez’s government last November, the Obama administration has regained its footing with a strong, principled stance on Venezuela’s contested election. Based on the razor-thin margin and opposition protests of irregularities, the administration has yet to recognize as the winner Vice President Nicolas Maduro, Chávez’s anointed successor, and has instead supported a review of the vote count.

In appearances before both the House and Senate in recent days, Secretary of State John Kerry re-affirmed that position “so that the people of Venezuela who participated in such a closely divided and important election can have the confidence that they have the legitimacy that is necessary in the government going forward.”

He said, “I don’t know whether it’s going to happen. … [But] obviously, if there are huge irregularities, we are going to have serious questions about the viability of that government.”

Kerry’s statements brought the predictable howls of protest from Venezuela. “It’s ... Read More

The shocking, razor-thin result in Sunday’s presidential election in Venezuela demonstrates that the future of the late President Hugo Chavez’s movement is anything but certain and that the country could be heading into another period of political crises not seen since 2002, when Chavez was briefly ousted from power.

The larger-than-life Chavez, who died of cancer last month, had anointed Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his successor, and the conventional wisdom was that the sympathy vote, massive social spending, and lopsided electoral playing field would guarantee an easy victory for Chavismo.

It was not to be. Challenger Henrique Capriles, who lost the last election to Chavez by 11 percentage points, nearly pulled off an epic upset before falling just short with 49.1 percent of the vote to Mr. Maduro’s 50.7 percent.

Mr. Capriles has rejected the official tally and demanded a recount of the paper receipts of each Venezuelan vote. “We are not ... Read More

True to form, the Venezuelan government and its Cuban minders have spared no effort or expense to ensure the outcome of Sunday’s snap election to elect the late Hugo Chávez’s chosen successor. Challenger Henrique Capriles has been game (and his singular effort to revive the fortunes of the Venezuelan opposition commendable), but in the end his lot has been to be cast as a mere prop in Venezuela’s version of “casino democracy,” where the house always wins.

Ironically, Capriles should privately be relieved that Chávez’s appointed successor, the dour and robotic Nicolas Maduro, and not he, will inherit the ticking economic time bomb that Chávez has bequeathed his country. Most sober observers of the Venezuelan scene give the country’s economy 12 months at most before the wheels start coming off. As I have written before, some may remember Chávez for his embrace of the country’s marginalized, but all Venezuelans are now poised to reap the ... Read More

More than 60 dignitaries and pro-democracy advocates from around the world have signed an open letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon requesting that the world body conduct an investigation into the tragic deaths of Cuban dissidents Osvaldo Paya and Harold Cepero in an automobile accident in July 2012. It’s the least anyone can do.

The letter was prompted by a tour of European capitals by Paya’s daughter, Rosa Maria, and the blockbuster revelations by Spanish political activist Angel Carrameo, who was with Paya and Cepero at the time of the accident. Now out of Cuba, Mr. Carrameo went public with the truth that the accident was caused by a Cuban state security vehicle that rammed the car in which they were riding, forcing it off the road into a tree. The two Europeans survived, but Paya and Cepero, sitting in the back of the car, were killed.

Since Paya’s death, his family ... Read More

Residents of the Falklands Islands in the South Atlantic went to the polls over the past two days to deliver a resounding rejection of Argentina’s bullying campaign to assert a historically dubious claim to sovereignty over the archipelago. With turnout over 90 percent, some 99.8 percent of islanders voted in favor of remaining an overseas territory of Britain.

The referendum comes thirty years after Argentina’s disastrous military invasion of the islands was repelled by British forces at the cost of some 1,000 lives. Reasonable people can be forgiven for thinking that skirmish should have ended for the foreseeable future any dispute regarding sovereignty over the islands.

But reasonableness is not a quality in abundant supply among today’s Latin American populists. It seems the government of Cristina Kirchner has dusted off the Falklands chestnut just as the country’s economic fortunes — and her popularity ratings — are going even further south than the Falklands.

After riding ... Read More

By Roger F. Noriega and Jose R. Cardenas

Hugo Chavez’s death could very well result in an uncertain and unstable succession battle that will define Venezuela’s future for better or worse. With that country one of the world’s largest exporters of crude oil and the fourth-largest supplier of crude oil and petroleum products to the United States, the Obama administration needs to get active in helping to shape events in a positive direction.

It will not be easy, given the levels of acrimony and polarization that Mr. Chavez leaves in his wake. Still, it presents an extraordinary opportunity to pull Venezuela back into the peaceful community of regional nations, after more than a decade of Mr. Chavez’s troublemaking that has set back regional prospects for stability and economic development.

It may be that the late Venezuelan leader had an emotional connection with the country’s poor and marginalized, but the reality is that he ... Read More

The struggle for Venezuela’s future begins now — and the stakes couldn’t be higher. The Obama administration can either stand by and watch the country become a satellite of the Castro regime promoting instability and maintaining dangerous alliances with Iran and other U.S. enemies, or it can try to influence events in a positive direction, meaning a return to constitutionality and a reformed electoral system that allows the Venezuelan people to freely and fairly determine their future.

It will not be easy, given the amount of bad actors and levels of acrimony, polarization, and socioeconomic chaos that Hugo Chávez has left in his wake. Yet it presents an extraordinary opportunity to pull Venezuela back into the peaceful community of regional nations, after more than a decade of Chavez’s trouble-making that has set back regional prospects for stability and economic development.

What we know right now is that Chávez’s successors evidently have decided ... Read More

Floating policy trial balloons is longstanding Washington custom. Not so common is when that balloon gets blasted out of the sky by the “senior official” leaker’s own administration. That’s what happened last week when the Boston Globe reported that, “High-level U.S. diplomats have concluded that Cuba should no longer be designated a state sponsor of terrorism.”

Yet the ink was barely dry on that report before both the White House and State Department utterly repudiated (here and here) any notion that Cuba would soon be de-listed as a state sponsor of terrorism.

As I have written in this space before, de-listing Cuba has been a long-sought goal of a die-hard cadre of critics of the United States’ Cuba policy. Why? Well, it seems that the Castro regime, which was born in terrorist violence, aided and abetted it across four continents over three decades, and whose training camps produced such international luminaries as Carlos the Jackal, is upset that it continues to ... Read More

The recent return home from Cuba in the dead of night of cancer-stricken Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is likely not a sign that his condition is improving. In fact, it is more likely that his doctors have decided there is nothing more they can do than to allow him to go home to die peacefully, surrounded by family.

That suits just fine senior Venezuelan officials and their Cuban minders, who need Mr. Chavez’s physical presence nearby to better stage-manage a chavista succession. They now can tell the Venezuelan people, with whom Mr. Chavez maintains a deeply emotional connection, that the “comandante” remains intimately involved in the process, “approving” all decisions.

It appears the only decision to be made at this point, however, is whether Mr. Chavez’s inner circle declares the ailing leader “incapacitated” or whether they wait out the inevitable before calling elections within 30 days, as the constitution mandates.

If they have ... Read More

BY JOSE CARDENAS

Towards the end of the recent Senate confirmation hearing of the newly minted Secretary of State John Kerry, presiding Sen. Bob Menendez, D-NJ, made a point to secure his former colleague’s public support for official U.S. programs that support democratic development abroad.

It was a shrewd move by Menendez, since he knew that during Sen. Kerry’s tenure as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, his staff was openly hostile to democracy funding for Cuba and worked to obstruct its implementation.

The Cuba Democracy Program, which is administered by both the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, is what is known within the bureaucracy as a “cross-border program” into a non-presence country — meaning we are trying to help support people living in repressive states in which we have no local development office.

There is nothing about it that is unique or unprecedented. There are, or have been, at ... Read More

“The Castro generation is slowly handing power over to the next generation of party and military leaders who will determine the pace and scope of the reform process.”

—    “Cuba Expert” Ted Piccone of the Brookings Institution, giving one reason why the United States should unilaterally change U.S. policy towards Cuba.

The Cold War had its “Sovietologists;” today we have the “Cuba expert” — and anyone seeking to understand the true nature of the Castro regime and the reality of events in Cuba is worse off for it.

Sovietologists, those presumed subject matter experts who were relied upon by the media for insight to the opaque politics and motivations of the former Soviet Union, are now pretty much a discredited lot.  Not because they couldn’t predict the collapse of the USSR, but because for years they grossly underestimated the moral bankruptcy of tyranny and the power of individuals who simply wanted ... Read More

Even as Venezuela plunges into a constitutional crisis over Hugo Chávez’s missed inauguration yesterday, State Department officials evidently think its still an ideal time to continue pressing for a normalization of diplomatic relations with the Venezuelan government, whoever that may be.

Ever since my colleague, former Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, disclosed last month (and at Foreign Policy here) that high-ranking department officials had begun discrete talks about exchanging ambassadors with Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro and Venezuelan Organization of American States Ambassador Roy Chaderton in November, department officials have begun to speak openly (here and here) about the effort and have shown no indication that recent events in Venezuela have dampened their enthusiasm.

Indeed, they have even doubled down on it and are now presenting their overtures as a way to get ahead of the post-Chávez curve, given the increasing likelihood that the firebrand populist will never return to power. That way, in the words of the Washington ... Read More

More than a decade’s worth of Hugo Chavez gutting his country’s democratic institutions and centralizing power in his person has led to the present turmoil in Venezuela, where just who is the country’s constitutional leader is no longer clear. According to the Venezuelan constitution, Jan. 10 was the day Mr. Chavez was to be sworn in for his fourth presidential following his re-election last October. However, he remains sequestered somewhere in a Cuban hospital recovering from reportedly his fourth cancer surgery and hasn’t been seen or heard from since Dec. 8.

Again, according to the Venezuelan constitution, if the president-elect is unable to take the oath of office by Jan. 10, then power is to be transferred to the next-in-line in succession, the president of the National Assembly, currently former military man Diosdado Cabello. Yet, this week, the Chavez-packed Supreme Court decided that his swearing-in could be postponed “indefinitely,” meaning that ... Read More

Do we really need another lesson on the folly of attempting to appease dictators?

Apparently, Foreign Affairs thinks so — albeit inadvertently. They recently posted a piece, “Our Man in Havana,” about the heroic efforts of some Obama administration officials to give the Castro regime everything it wanted for the release of jailed development worker Alan Gross. Specifically, this meant gutting the official U.S. democracy program for Cuba that Gross was operating under. In the end, however, they just could not overcome the intransigence of — not the Castro regime — but the “Cuban-American Lobby” in Congress.

Indeed, not only did they not wind up with the long-suffering Gross’s freedom, but, to boot, former Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela was forced to sit through a humiliating meeting with Cuban officials ranting about all the dictatorship’s grievances against the United States. As the article puts it, “The Cubans were far less flexible than the ... Read More

This week marks the third anniversary of the Cuba’s arrest of USAID subcontractor Alan Gross for the “crime” of delivering internet equipment to a Jewish group in Havana.  Working under a U.S. program to support the Cuban people — as opposed to the Cuban regime — Mr. Gross was subsequently sentenced in a Cuban kangaroo court to 15 years in prison for acts “against the state.”

The ordeal has taken a terrible toll on Mr. Gross.  He has reportedly lost more than 100 pounds, may have cancer, and has been unable to see his elderly mother, similarly stricken with cancer.  Not that that is of any concern to the Castro regime.

In fact, the regime has made it clear that Mr. Gross is merely a bargaining chip, dangling his possible release in exchange for five convicted Cuban intelligence operatives serving prison sentences for illegal activities in the United States, including spying on ... Read More

Wikileaks renegade Julian Assange seems to be genetically incapable of staying out of trouble. Holed up now for some five months in the Ecuadorean embassy in London to evade police questioning on sexual assault charges, the self-styled paladin of transparency and free expression appeared on CNN for an interview with host Erin Burnett and wound up insulting his Ecuadorean hosts.

Fumbling about to answer an obvious question on how he reconciled his seeking the political protection of a country whose president, Rafael Correa, has one of the worst track records against a free press in the hemisphere, Assange asserted he did not want to talk about “little things in small countries,” and, when Burnett persisted, dismissed the situation of press freedom in Ecuador, because it is “not a significant world player.”

Yet even as Assange strained mightily to change the subject from his hypocritical embrace of the Correa government, the latter is showing no ... Read More