{"id":30711,"date":"2023-05-17T19:36:56","date_gmt":"2023-05-17T17:36:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=30711"},"modified":"2023-05-18T08:19:59","modified_gmt":"2023-05-18T06:19:59","slug":"the-washington-consensus-supporting-sanctions-on-cuba-and-venezuela-is-breaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=30711","title":{"rendered":"The Washington Consensus Supporting Sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela Is Breaking"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

. . HUMAN RIGHTS . . <\/p>\n

An article by Branko Marcetic in Jacobin<\/a><\/p>\n

Twenty-one members of Congress last week called for lifting US sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, including most of the Squad. The pushback is needed: sanctions are a cruel economic weapon that hurts average people \u2014 and has spurred a surge of economic refugees.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nActivists carry Venezuelan and Cuban flags during a protest rejecting President Joe Biden’s policy of sanctions on June 10, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Ringo Chiu \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/center><\/p>\n

One of the defining features of our era has been the loss of a domestic political appetite for more US wars. But a similar pushback to Washington\u2019s use of sanctions has been slow to follow, despite the fact that US sanctions are demonstrably\u00a0cruel<\/a>, indiscriminate<\/a>, ineffective<\/a>, and often illegal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The near-term prospects for a groundswell of US opposition to sanctions are basically nonexistent at this point. But we may be seeing the beginnings of one taking shape: last week saw twenty-one House Democrats send Joe Biden a letter calling on the president to end US sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela and review Donald Trump\u2013era sanctions policy more generally, in light of the \u201cborder crisis,\u201d which has seen a surge in migrants at the southern border (though one that is\u00a0lower than expected <\/a>) since the expiration of the Donald Trump\u2013era Title 42\u00a0order.<\/p>\n

Calling the sanctions \u201ca critical contributing factor in the current increase in migration,\u201d the\u00a0letter <\/a> points to \u201ctheir grave humanitarian toll on the peoples of those countries\u201d and the \u201csignificant logistical challenges\u201d it is creating for US authorities. But the letter also stresses that \u201cthere are also strong moral grounds\u201d to lift the sanctions and that US policy should seek to not \u201cexacerbate the suffering of the innocent people whose freedom we seek to advance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Organized by two representatives of border states, Reps. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) and Ra\u00fal Grijalva (D-AZ) \u2014 a\u00a0cochair <\/a> of Biden\u2019s 2024 campaign and Sen. Bernie Sanders\u2019s (I-VT) very first congressional endorser, respectively \u2014 the letter was cosigned by a number of progressive elected officials, including Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Chuy Garc\u00eda (D-IL), and six of the newly expanded \u201cSquad\u201d of progressive and socialist members of Congress.<\/p>\n

The signatures of Squad members Ilhan Omar, Summer Lee, and Ayanna Pressley were missing from the letter. Massachusetts representative Jim McGovern, who has repeatedly<\/a> called on<\/a> Biden to lift sanctions against Venezuela in the past, also didn\u2019t sign the letter, and his Northampton office was met by protests<\/a> from the Anti-Imperialism Action Committee, an anti-capitalist activist collective based in Western Massachusetts, and other activists as a result.<\/p>\n

Some of the progressive signatories have taken this message to other platforms. At a May 11 House Agriculture Committee meeting<\/a>, Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) \u2014 one of the newly minted Squad members who won his seat in these past midterms<\/a> \u2014 spoke about the failure of the decades-long US blockade on Cuba in fostering democracy and called for<\/a> \u201crevisiting our policies that push people out of their home countries,” emphasizing<\/a> the economic costs to the US economy that result.<\/p>\n

(continued in right column)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Question related to this article:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

\n

Are economic sanctions a violation of human rights?<\/a><\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n

(continued from left column)<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that it serves us to be starving people abroad,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it helps Americans for us to be feeding people all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khanna similarly took this message to a venue where viewers are unlikely to have heard criticism of Biden\u2019s continuation of Trump\u2013era sanctions policy: MSNBC, on the\u00a0Morning Joe<\/em>\u00a0<\/a> show.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at what\u2019s causing people to flee Venezuela and Cuba,\u201d he urged. \u201cThe Republicans are saying, \u2018let\u2019s sanction them more.\u2019 That\u2019s causing more people to actually leave. Let\u2019s look at rational sanction policy so we\u2019re not causing the influx.\u201d<\/p>\n

Progressive criticism of sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela \u2014 both of which are\u00a0explicitly\u00a0aimed\u00a0at fomenting regime change in the countries \u2014 have been backed up by Ben Rhodes, a foreign policy advisor for former president Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an obvious thing that is sitting right in front of the Biden administration, to just go back to the kind of openness that we had at the end of the Obama years [and] make life better for the Cuban people,\u201d he\u00a0said\u00a0in a recent MSNBC appearance, warning that the political cost for Biden stemming from events at the border would be worse than for lifting Trump\u2019s \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d sanctions.<\/p>\n

This course has also been endorsed<\/a> by leftist Mexican president Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, who said he had personally urged Biden to attack the root causes of migration to the US southern border, namely the \u201cpoverty and abandonment\u201d endemic to those countries \u2014 and which US sanctions have unquestionably<\/a> played a major role<\/a> in causing. This comes a month after the US envoy of the Venezuelan opposition itself, which only a year ago was demanding<\/a> that Biden not waver on Trump\u2019s policy, implored<\/a> the administration to end the sanctions, lest it turn Venezuela into \u201canother Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite this diverse chorus of voices pushing for sanctions to be lifted, it\u2019s also running into a wall. That\u2019s because, according to<\/a> the Washington Post<\/i>, the Biden administration is worried about alienating Cuban-American Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who wrote a counterletter<\/a> claiming, as all sanctions enthusiasts do, that the policy has nothing to do with the exodus of people from both countries.<\/p>\n

Menendez is a hard-line supporter of Trump\u2019s sanctions policy, and is currently under federal investigation<\/a> eight years after already once being indicted<\/a> on separate bribery charges. When he finds time away from potential criminal prosecution, Menendez is a full-time hawk<\/a> who teams up<\/a> with neocon Lindsey Graham to push legislation undermining peaceful coexistence with China<\/a> and Iran<\/a>. Since it relies on him to push through appointments blocked by the GOP and to pursue its wider geostrategic goals, the administration has tended to give Menendez enormous leeway in driving its own foreign policy decision-making, something that likely won\u2019t change anytime soon.<\/p>\n

Still, the fact that there\u2019s any disquiet being heard at all in Washington toward the ruinous and largely pointless US overuse of sanctions \u2014 a weapon that the Biden administration has used with record frequency<\/a> \u2014 is an important development. Political shifts in the halls of Congress don\u2019t happen overnight and are usually the fruit of months and years of small, symbolic measures like this letter, adding up bit by bit to slowly shift what\u2019s politically acceptable. This progressive challenge to a president \u2014 one who\u2019s otherwise enjoying near-dictatorial levels of obeisance from fellow elected Democrats \u2014 is a first step, and one that couldn\u2019t have happened without the election of progressive insurgents to Congress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . HUMAN RIGHTS . . An article by Branko Marcetic in Jacobin Twenty-one members of Congress last week called for lifting US sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, including most of the Squad. The pushback is needed: sanctions are a cruel economic weapon that hurts average people \u2014 and has spurred a surge of economic … Continue reading The Washington Consensus Supporting Sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela Is Breaking<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,91],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-30711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","category-north-america","tag-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}