8 Points on Venezuela
The Trump administration's aggression toward Venezuela is grotesque, self-serving, and imperialistic. The US should stay out of Venezuela.
A man walks past a mural depicting Venezuela’s late president, Hugo Chávez; Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar; and Venezuela’s current president, Nicolás Maduro on January 30, 2019 in Caracas, Venezuela. Marco Bello / Getty
1.
The inconsistency of US foreign policy regarding human rights is a scandal. That it has always been so, or that such behavior is inevitable for a powerful nation, does not detract from its fundamental immorality.
2.
Dwelling on the shortcomings of targets of phony US human rights campaigns provides no benefit to the victims of those regimes. All it does is enlarge the political space for future, disastrous US military intervention. It also glosses over the history of US assaults on the sovereignty of the targeted nation.
3.
The resort to “soft power” should be viewed as a compromise of the US government with political exigencies. Given a determination to destroy an unfriendly regime, there are no other effective constraints. Soft power itself should be regarded as a political campaign to pave the way for more aggressive tactics, up to and including military intervention.
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