End the Senseless Economic War on Venezuela

The bankruptcy and cruelty of our current Venezuela policy are undeniable, as is its failure.

Some House Democrats, including Rep. Gregory Meeks, the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, have called on the Biden administration to provide sanctions relief for Venezuela:

A group of House Democrats called on the Biden administration to ease sanctions on Venezuela, make more aid available and assess the conditions necessary for a possible re-establishment of diplomatic relations in an effort to alleviate the economic crisis there.

This is the second appeal for Venezuela sanctions relief from House Democrats in recent months. The signatories of the May letter urged the administration to lift sanctions on both Venezuela and Cuba and framed it as a way to ease the migration crisis at the border. The new appeal focuses on Venezuela policy and the destructive effects of U.S. sanctions on that country.

The House members are right that “to purposefully continue contributing to economic hardship experienced by an entire population is immoral and unworthy of the United States.” It is encouraging that there are many members of Congress objecting to this policy and urging the administration to change course. Just by shining a light on the destruction caused by broad sanctions, these House members are doing valuable work in challenging a monstrous status quo.

The bankruptcy and cruelty of our current Venezuela policy are undeniable, as is its failure. There was very little dissent against this policy when it began, and until quite recently there was almost no criticism of it coming from Congress. The growing recognition that the policy has made things much worse for the people of Venezuela may be having an effect on the debate surrounding sanctions relief.

It is often politically dangerous for elected officials to propose sanctions relief because these officials are then accused of supporting the authoritarian government in the other country. It is usually much safer for politicians to cheer on sanctions no matter how much misery they cause, because the victims of the policy are overseas and can’t punish the politicians responsible for their hardship. The fact that so many members of the president’s party have been willing to go on the record calling for sanctions relief represents important progress in the fight against policies of collective punishment. The involvement of several prominent members in leadership positions is another sign that the political calculations on this issue may be changing.

Like the earlier letter in May, this one appeals to Biden by endorsing the president’s human rights rhetoric. They write:

Because we share your view that human rights should be at the center of U.S. foreign policy, we have been deeply troubled by the extensive reporting on the indiscriminate and counterproductive impacts on the Venezuelan people of the secondary and sectoral sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration.

Given the overall Biden record to date, this appeal may not be all that effective, but both this letter and the one in May left Biden plenty of room to repudiate the policy as an ugly holdover from the Trump years. The trouble is that Biden has been in office for more than two years and has done almost nothing to change the policy he inherited. Despite its Trump-era origin, Biden has taken ownership of the “maximum pressure” campaign that has produced so much pointless suffering.

I fear that these appeals from House Democrats are falling on deaf ears. Biden administration officials have previously refused to acknowledge U.S. responsibility for exacerbating bad economic conditions in Venezuela. What little easing of sanctions the administration has provided has been wholly inadequate in providing significant relief for the population, and the license for Chevron appears to have been a one-off gesture that isn’t going to be repeated. Even though the drubbing that Democratic candidates took in Florida last year ought to make electoral concerns irrelevant, the administration is probably still stuck in its defensive crouch and unwilling to risk the hawkish backlash that would accompany significant sanctions relief.

The U.S. should end its senseless economic war on Venezuela. It is shameful that the U.S. has been strangling a much weaker country and inflicting collective punishment on tens of millions of innocent people for years. It is imperative that the U.S. end this economic war now before it become so entrenched in practice that it keeps going for generations.