Venezuela Sanctions: A Failure On All Fronts
U.S. sanctions have only entrenched the Maduro regime and opened up the country to Russian and Chinese penetration.
In January, it appeared that President Donald Trump was working towards a reconciliation with Venezuela. But in the past month, a hawkish streak has appeared, no doubt driven by the State Department, with the United States imposing “secondary tariffs” on countries that import oil from Venezuela.
Contrary to neoconservative thinking, U.S. sanctions against Venezuela since 2018 have had disastrous consequences for the Venezuelan people and have been counterproductive for policymakers in Washington.
These unilateral sanctions, not least on Venezuela’s prodigious oil reserves, have not achieved the goal of ousting the autocratic president Nicolas Maduro from power. Instead, the “maximum pressure” approach has undermined U.S. energy security and empowered our rivals to operate in the Western Hemisphere.
U.S. economic sanctions target over two dozen countries, with some states experiencing what amounts to near total economic embargoes.
The application of unilateral sanctions against economies around the world has become a central trend in U.S. foreign policy. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, American lawmakers and activists have used their political muscle to press government officials to impede the process of globalization.
The sanctioning trend reflects a lack of direction in U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. With the death of the Soviet Union, the ideological and strategic challenges that once helped to define national interests was replaced by interest group-based foreign policy.
Indeed, interest groups such as the vociferous Cuban-American lobby have pursued economic sanctions to the detriment of U.S. global economic and strategic interests.
The aim of sanctions is to signal displeasure with the target state and its actions. In Venezuela’s case, they were meant to encourage regime change, the longstanding objective of Republicans like Marco Rubio, now the Secretary of State.
In reality, the pursuit of sanctions against Venezuela has had massive humanitarian costs. Venezuela’s economy has been strangled; more than 7 million citizens have fled the country, stoking regional instability and escalating the crisis at the Southern Border.
And yet sanctions remain in place to this day, with even oil giants like Chevron facing an end to their operations in Venezuela.
What explains this approach? The popularity of sanctions owes more to domestic political interests—in this case, conservative Florida Latinos—than their ability to achieve geopolitical goals.
Further, sanctions provide a middle ground between military force and doing nothing and are unlikely to cause a domestic backlash because the damage they inflict is indirect and largely unobserved.
According to the morality play produced by human rights promoters and their supporters, sanctions are supposed to force improvement in the lives of the citizens of the “rogue nation.” In reality, those who suffer the most—the politically weak and the economically poor—are the very ones Americans purport to defend.
The use of economic sanctions also makes it more difficult for consumers and entrepreneurs in targeted countries to have access to U.S. markets and American products and ideas.
Similar to sanctions imposed on other countries, those targeted against Venezuela have not brought about the changes desired. Sanctions have certainly narrowed the opportunity for Venezuelans to expand their economic, social, and cultural contacts with the United States.
The sanctions have also propped up the Maduro government, allowing it to mobilize public support and blame the country’s problems on American interference.
Severe oil sanctions forced the retreat of Western oil companies from the country, and thus benefited adversaries. Much of Venezuela’s oil production has been rerouted to China at a $40-per-barrel discount from Brent crude, according to former National Security Council Senior Director Juan González.
Iran and Venezuela have agreed to nearly 300 economic cooperation deals in the last two decades, while Russia increases its investment in the country. Chevron’s special license to operate in Venezuela had kept these competitors at bay, underscoring the dangers of not extending it.
There is considerable evidence that economic sanctions have exacerbated Venezuela’s crisis, hurting vulnerable Venezuelans. Indeed, studies show that approximately half of Venezuela’s decline since 2012 is the result of economic sanctions.
Therefore, there is a strong case for lifting U.S. sanctions on the country’s oil industry. More sanctions are unlikely to alter Venezuela’s current political balance of power—quite the opposite.
Dr. Leon Hadar is a contributing editor with The National Interest, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia, and a former research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He has taught at American University in Washington, DC, and the University of Maryland, College Park. A columnist and blogger with Haaretz (Israel) and Washington correspondent for the Business Times of Singapore, he is a former United Nations bureau chief for the Jerusalem Post.
Image: JBula_62 / Shutterstock.com.