President Biden, Speak Out on Venezuela. It's Too Important to Leave to Underlings
President Biden, Speak Out on Venezuela. It's Too Important to Leave to Underlings
"It's clear that Maduro is not going to react unless U.S. intentions are made clear from the very top," said AS/COA's Eric Farnsworth to the Miami Herald.
President Biden deserves credit for doing a good job handling the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it’s time for him to raise his voice on Venezuela. And he needs to do that personally, rather than continuing to delegate that task to underlings.
In recent days, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has stepped up his repression of leading Venezuelan civic leaders, in violation of a Norway-brokered agreement with the opposition signed in Barbados in October to hold credible elections this year.
On Feb. 9, less than three weeks after banning leading opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado from running for office, the Maduro regime arrested prominent military expert and human rights leader Rocío San Miguel and five of her relatives. She is the head of the Control Ciudadano, a non-government group that advocates for civic oversight of Venezuela’s armed forces. [...]
The Biden administration announced recently that it was reinstating U.S. mining sanctions on Venezuela and — more importantly — that it would reimpose U.S. oil sanctions on Venezuela in April unless Maduro lifts his ban on Machado and other opposition candidates.
But the Biden administration’s announcement wasn’t made by the president, nor by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but by State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller and White House spokesperson John Kirby.
In fact, neither Biden nor Blinken have made statements about Venezuela since Dec. 20, several weeks before Maduro’s ban on Machado’s candidacy and the arrests of San Miguel and her relatives, according to the State Department’s and White House web pages.
If the Biden administration wants Maduro to take U.S. threats of further sanctions seriously, the message has to come from the U.S. president himself.
“There is nothing more powerful than the presidential voice. When the president speaks, people listen,” Eric Farnsworth, a Latin American expert with the Americas’ Society and former State Department official, told me. “It’s clear that Maduro is not going to react unless U.S. intentions are made clear from the very top.”
