The “ignorization” of Venezuela

By: Roger Noriega

From: IASW

The Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) voted Friday to exclude a Venezuelan opposition congresswoman from a discussion of the violence that has been wracking her country for seven weeks. 

Maria Corina Machado has been targeted by the Cuban-backed dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro for prosecution on trumped-up charges, including treason and murder. She returns to her country from Washington this weekend, where many expect that she will join democratic leader Leopoldo López as a political prisoner. 

When Manuel Noriega stole an election in Panama in 1989 and unleashed his so-called “dignity battalions” on peaceful demonstrators, the OAS was silent. Twenty-five years later, an organization that is supposed to “promote and defend democracy” has proven yet again that it is pretty useless when it is needed most. 

Today, the OAS is less than the sum of its parts, because there is no leadership from major countries, particularly the United States, Brazil, or Mexico, or from its Secretary General, the pusillanimous Chilean José Miguel Insulza. 

Perhaps one of the most egregious statements at today’s Council meeting was one made by Brazilian ambassador Breno Dias da Costa, who said that his country voted to exclude the Venezuelan opposition leader from the agenda lest the session become “a circus of outsiders.” One can only hope that this contemptuous description of such a deadly serious subject does not reflect the attitude of the Brazilian government, whose president Dilma Rousseff battled a military dictatorship in her youth. 

Latin American and Caribbean pundits are quick to criticize “unilateralism” or “interventionism” of any kind – primarily to prevent the United States from acting in its own interest. For example, no government has uttered a single public rebuke of the dangerous intervention of thousands of Cuban operatives in Venezuela today. To the extent that the region’s multilateral institution sits silent while innocent people are being, arrested, and killed in Venezuela, concerned countries must either do nothing as Venezuela disintegrates or act on their own. 

In recent weeks, a bipartisan cadre in the US Congress have approved resolutions and drafted legislation urging the Administration to act on the unrest in Venezuela, perhaps imposing sanctions on regime officials involved in violent repression. Although Secretary of State John Kerry welcomed such a discussion, his regional assistant secretary Roberta Jacobson parsed his words, saying, “The Secretary has said that nothing can be ruled out, but that does not mean we are moving toward the idea of sanctions.” 

One columnist told me that a State Department official explained that they did not want to take measures that would “bilateralize” the Venezuela issue – in other words, make the matter a confrontation between Washington and the regime in Caracas. 

So let’s review the bidding. The Brazilians and other Venezuelan spear-carriers at the OAS refuse to “multilateralize” the issue. And US diplomats do not want to “bilateralize” the affair. That narrows the US response rather dramatically. 

Is “ignorize” a word?