Our Collective Punishment of Venezuelans Must Cease

The Biden administration has continued a failed Trump-era policy of inflicting collective punishment on tens of millions of Venezuelans in response to the actions of Maduro and his cronies.

U.S. policy towards Venezuela has completely failed, but the Biden administration is determined to continue that policy without making any significant changes:

President Joe Biden’s administration rejected Nicolas Maduro’s call for relief from U.S. sanctions, saying the Venezuelan leader needs to do more toward restoring democracy before penalties would be lifted.

The Biden administration has continued a failed Trump-era policy of inflicting collective punishment on tens of millions of Venezuelans in response to the actions of Maduro and his cronies. There is no reason to believe that keeping these sanctions in place will achieve any of the political changes that the administration desires, and we know that these sanctions have caused considerable additional hardship for the people of Venezuela. U.S. sanctions have not weakened Maduro in the least. We know very well that they have served to strengthen his position. It may seem counterintuitive, but sanctions are a boon to an authoritarian leader and a curse to the people that suffer under his rule.

Last week, Francisco Rodriguez commented on Twitter:

Economic sanctions against Venezuela have only exacerbated the country’s humanitarian crisis, weakened its civil society, and strengthened Maduro’s hold on power. It’s time to put an end to them.

The “maximum pressure” campaign on Venezuela was a Trump administration initiative. While there had been U.S. sanctions on Venezuela before Trump, it was only with Trump that the U.S. explicitly committed to regime change and escalated its economic warfare to that end. It should have been all too easy for Biden to disavow Trump’s failed policy and lift the sanctions that were achieving nothing, but for whatever reason Biden has kept Trump’s pressure campaign in place. One consequence of this is that Venezuela’s government has reportedly been unable to make payments to COVAX to obtain vaccines. Inflicting collective punishment like this on any country would be wrong, but to do so when that country already suffers from our hemisphere’s worst humanitarian crisis in the midst of a pandemic is monstrous.

Biden likes to tout the return of diplomacy to U.S. foreign policy, but his approach to Venezuela shows nothing of the sort. Far from being willing to negotiate, Biden has remained wedded to a policy that was originally designed by the most fanatical hard-liners. Maduro professes a willingness to talk, but on the U.S. side there is nothing to suggest that a compromise is possible.

The U.S. should never have pursued regime change in Venezuela, and now it ought to give it up. Innocent lives are being sacrificed every week that cruel and indiscriminate sanctions remain in force. The Biden administration is in a position to reduce the suffering of the people of Venezuela by choosing to stop strangling them to death. For the last five months, Biden has chosen continued strangulation instead, and he will have to answer for the consequences of such a despicable policy.