Latin American Presidents on Twitter Part 2

Back in 2013, I wrote a post about Latin American presidents on Twitter, with a table showing their status. I decided to update that.

Here is the table from 2013:

Country	President	Status	#Followers	#Following	Type	Retweets
ARG	Kirchner	Active	2.1 million	54	All	None
BOL	Morales	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
BRAZIL	Rousseff	Inactive	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
CHILE	Piñera	Active	1 million	22,266	Policy	Common
COL	Santos	Active	1.9 million	5,856	Policy	Rare
CR	Chinchilla	Active	200,000	575	Policy	Common
CUBA	Castro	Active	92,000	36	Speeches	None
DR	Medina	Active	199,000	7,979	Policy	None
ECUA	Correa	Active	1 million	5	All	None
EL SAL	Funes	Inactive	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
GUATE	Pérez M	Active	87,000	52	Policy	Common
HOND	Lobo	Active	22,000	19	Policy	Rare
MEX	Peña	Active	1.9 million	159	Policy	Rare
NICA	Ortega	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
PAN	Martinelli	Active	346,000	752	All	Common
PARA	Franco	Active	66,000	198	Policy	None
PERU	Humala	Sporadic	626,000	60	Policy	None
URU	Mujica	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
VEN	Maduro	Active	1.2 million	34	All	Common

Here is the table for 2019:

Country	President	Status	#Followers	#Following	Type	Retweets
ARG	Macri	Active	4.83M	644	Policy	None
BOL	Morales	Active	547K	28	All	None
BRAZIL	Bolsonaro	Active	4.44M	344	All	Occasional
CHILE	Piñera	Active	2.22M	20.5K	Policy	None
COL	Duque	Active	885K	2,285	Policy	Occasional
CR	Alvarado	Active	101K	714	Policy	Occasional
CUBA	Díaz-Canel	Active	134K	126	Policy	None
DR	Medina	Inactive	687K	7,629	Policy	None
ECUA	Moreno	Active	702K	38	Policy	Occasional
EL SAL	Bukele	Active	732K	579	All	Frequent
GUATE	Morales	Infrequent	195K	996	Policy	Frequent
HOND	JOH	Active	367K	677	Policy	Frequent
MEX	AMLO	Active	5.64M	166	Policy	None
NICA	Ortega	Inactive	5,371	309	All	Frequent
PAN	Varela	Active	554K	1,153	Policy	None
PARA	Benítez	Active	299K	649	Policy	Occasional
PERU	Vizcarra	Active	567K	521	Policy	None
URU	Vazquez	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
VEN	Maduro	Active	3.63M	110	All	Occasional

Some thoughts:

--The way presidents use Twitter has not changed. The vast majority use it strictly to promote their policies. Only a small number get personal and creative with it.

--the sheer size of Twitter has grown significantly. The president with the most followers in 2013 was Néstor Kirchner with 2.1 million. In 2019 it is AMLO with 5.64 million.

--Uruguayan presidents just don't use it. Perhaps a reflection of age, I am not sure.

--Evo Morales exploded on Twitter. In 2013 he did not have an account. In 2019 he is all over it and he gets personal and angry. Meanwhile, Daniel Ortega finally got on but does not use it very much.

One conclusion from back then still stands now:

Further, this tells us nothing about effectiveness. Presidents want to reach people and thereby gain support, but as yet I've not seen any evidence--perhaps with polling?--about whether it benefits them politically. An aide to Dilma Rousseff said that she thought Twitter is a "total waste of time." Clearly others disagree, but we don't have a good grip on how to evaluate that.

Research on the topic shows that presidents use Twitter mostly as a megaphone to send out messages without filter, and it does not foster engagement. There is no common strategy for how to use it in times of crisis. One cross-national study finds the following:

We find strong support that (1) increased political pressure from social unrest and (2) higher levels of democratization correlate with leader adoption of social media platforms. 

This doesn't seem to hold well for Latin America, where almost everyone has adopted social media irrespective of what is happening in the country.

Did you know that the Venezuelan government once tried to tout Nicolás Maduro as the second most influential leader on Twitter, second only to the Pope? It was based on retweets.

It's curious that Latin American presidential Twitter use is so ubiquitous and we know so little about it. It's a megaphone for them, but does it affect popularity, re-election, or people's views about certain issues?

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Trump's Threats Against Mexico

Donald Trump insists that Mexico control the movement of migrants to the point that no one tries to enter the United States illegally. Otherwise he will impose tariffs, which are currently scheduled to begin on Monday. Here is the key point:

But officials have provided few other specifics about how Mexico could meet those goals quickly enough to stave off Mr. Trump’s anger. Mexico has already tried to secure its own southern border and has long fought transnational gangs.

I am not certain whether Trump believes it when he says Mexico could do this easily. Maybe he does. Either way, I cannot think of anything the Mexican government could do to stop migration while remaining anything resembling a democracy and not destroying its economy and the economies of its neighbors. Among other things, this would mean militarizing the entire lengths of the southern and northern borders, which would likely entail some sort of martial law in cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez. In the interior, the government would need to militarize other things, like probably the train system. Any president who tried to do all this would be harshly criticized. Article 108 of the Mexican constitution allows for impeachment of the president "for treason to the country and serious common crimes." Hurting Mexicans (and others) to appease a U.S. president might well apply.

The human cost would be immense and violent clashes with organized crime would be inevitable. But even if you wanted to do that, it would take a lot of time and who knows where the money would even come from because it would be extremely expensive.

Tariffs will hurt Mexican producers, and if they shed jobs then guess where people will think about going. The administration assumes that threats of tariffs, and then perhaps the tariffs themselves, will bring Mexico to its knees in capitulation. But what capitulation actually means is unclear. In part it means accepting deportees while they await a decision. Other than that, Trump has never indicated what he thinks Mexico can actually do. The most likely answer is that he has no idea.

The best case scenario is that Trump is bluffing and that he will accept some small steps from the Mexican side and then say they're doing enough to avoid the tariffs. I am reminded of Venezuela, where he constantly talked about using military force but eventually it became clear he was only bluffing, at which point it lost its bite as a threat.

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Embracing Autonomy: Chapter 2

I have posted a draft chapter 2 of my book manuscript, Embracing Autonomy: U.S.-Latin American Relations in the 21st Century. Given my administrative position, this work has become slower and slower, but it is still fun to work on.

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U.S. Credibility and Venezuela

A Kremlin spokesperson responded:

“There have been no official messages in this regard from the Russian side nor could there be any,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.  

... 

“We don’t know what ‘removed most of their people’ means,” Peskov said. 

The Russians were so confused they didn't even have any idea what the President of the United State was talking about. So they trolled him.

In sum, the President of the United States either fabricated a conversation with a Russian official or misunderstood it so badly that he clearly does not know at all what is happening in Venezuela. A third possibility mentioned in the article is that he saw a newspaper article and then made up a story about how a Russian informed him. This is why the U.S. has no credibility.

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Venezuelan Off-Ramps

Fernando Cutz argues in The New York Times that the U.S. government needs to expand indictments against Nicolás Maduro and more high level officials around him. One particularly interesting point he makes is that there is no trust for the executive branch in the U.S. at the moment, but there is for the judiciary, which would have to produce real evidence.

The main question I have here is, excuse the buzzword, the "off-ramp." Conventional wisdom is that there needs to be a viable exit option for higher level officials, both civilian and military. Indictments close those off. Once started they cannot simply be stopped. So if they wanted to leave the country, they would have few options. If they were to remain in Venezuela, then their freedom would be up to the government. That response would have to be very clearly and officially laid out.

In short, they are much less likely to voluntarily leave power if there is a threat they'll soon be arrested and incarcerated. It is not an insurmountable obstacle, but it does complicate the already difficult negotiations. The two sides do not trust each other, so any added complication is rough.

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AMLO Remains Cautious With Trump

Donald Trump announced tariffs on all Mexican goods, starting at 5% and getting up to 25% unless undocumented immigration goes to zero. That it is a bad idea goes without saying but I am actually more interested in AMLO's response. He wrote a measured letter (text here) that ended by asking respectfully that representatives from the two governments meet.

I wrote back in February in Global Americans about AMLO's cautious foreign policy. He wants to avoid confrontation (he actually says that explicitly in the second sentence of his letter).

Contrary to expectations, AMLO is no leftist firebrand in foreign policy. He has an ambitious and contentious domestic policy agenda and his current inclination is to avoid foreign policy conflict that distracts too much from advancing those. His approval rating is a stratospheric 86 percent, so for now the strategy is working. But a number of his foreign policy audiences have opposing views and over time he will find it harder to reconcile them.

This last point is the one I wonder most about. How long until his domestic audience tires of his caution when Mexico is under attack? It's also entirely possible that Trump reads caution as weakness, so is apt to attack even more. I assume AMLO was immediately on the phone with Jared Kushner, who he's already met with before. He doesn't have a lot of good options.

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Democratic Candidates and Immigration Reform

Beto O'Rourke has an immigration reform plan. It is good to see candidates laying out detailed plans even though they are rather pie-in-the-sky. It serves as a constant reminder that there is important business that Congress has shirked for decades. But there is a big question:

How will he or anyone else get such a thing passed?

On the campaign trail, O’Rourke has acknowledged that previous attempts at immigration reform have failed, but he’s confident that he would be more successful because he could rally public support in a way that former president Barack Obama could not. 

“There seems to be among people, regardless of party or geography, a real interest in doing the right thing now for Dreamers. I say that we capitalize on that . . . create the political pressure at the congressional district level to force the kind of change that we’ve been waiting for now more than 30 years,” O’Rourke told reporters in New Hampshire last month. “It cannot simply be a president proposing legislation or making the case nationally.”

I know, this is a campaign, and you don't start by talking about what compromises will be necessary to get the thing passed. Instead, you want people to get the flavor of your position. Fair enough.

But it's something I think about given the many failed proposals over the years.* I don't think any of the candidates will rally public support better than President Obama. And that matters. This will be really hard to pass and at some point you have to face the fact that many, including your own party, are not on board.

This matter politically because many Latinx voters no longer believe the Democratic Party is truly committed to substantive reform. It's not good enough just to mouth support for reform--that's been done to death. Instead, you need to show how you can get it passed. The last time we were even remotely close was 2013-2014.

As an aside, stuff like "Real change will require their full engagement and, as President, Beto will demand it" when referring to Central America is really a terrible idea.

* Back in May 2006, my first year of blogging, the Senate announced a deal was brewing and the Bush Administration said it wanted to pass it by Memorial Day.

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Where Should LASA Be Held?

Once again, the U.S. government blocked Cubans from attending the Latin American Studies Association conference in Boston. As a result, LASA president Lynn Stephen announced that the organization would not hold any more conferences in the U.S. until that changed. LASA imposed this self-restriction before. As I wrote seven years ago, it's an untenable decision.

Let me say first that I agree completely that blocking Cuban academics is petty and absurd. They pose no threat to anyone, and if anything we should want more Cubans traveling to the U.S.

The biggest problem with the decision is that it really hurts U.S. graduate students as well as many U.S. faculty with small travel budgets. It's just too hard to attend when it's in, say, Brazil. The flip side is that it is good for Latin American academics who might not be able to afford getting to the U.S. But this should be something that rotates.

There are other problems. Should we judge the optimal location for LASA based solely on access for Cubans? What about discrimination in the country against other groups? You certainly should not have it in Brazil these days, for example.

Finally, it is an important symbolic measure but is only symbolic. Ideally, it should get the attention of whoever makes the policy you dislike, which in this case won't happen. Last time LASA did this, the U.S. government ignored it (as you would expect) and eventually it was given up even though Cuban scholars were still denied entrance. It's quite likely the same will happen this time around.

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Exporting Agriculture to Cuba

It's well known, or at least should be, that U.S. farmers sell a lot of food to Cuba. Many of these farmers are in red states, so Republican state lawmakers have taken countless trips to the island. Marc Frank at Reuters has a good summary of how those transactions work, but more importantly how Trump's activation of Title III of Helms-Burton--which allows lawsuits for nationalized properties--imperils that trade.

Under the current system of imports to Cuba, a U.S. exporter contracts food sales with Alimport, the state-run food importer, which then issues a letter of credit from a third-country bank. When the U.S. company receives the Cuban payment through the bank, it releases the food to Alimport. 

A western banker, who like other businessmen and diplomats interviewed for this story requested anonymity, said that lawyers for financial institutions were increasingly wary of approving transactions in Cuba, even if their clients were not contravening sanctions. 

This is what the administration wants from this policy, and it's the same logic as always. Squeeze Cuba as hard as possible. These days the goal is not just regime change, but also trying to compel Cuba to bring all its personnel home from Venezuela.

One thing to note, however, is that this trade has decreased over time. From the American Farm Bureau:

The continuing restrictions on trade financing, such as no export credit, inhibit sales growth. Cuba has not purchased any U.S. wheat since 2011, buying instead from Canada and the European Union. They have not purchased any U.S. rice since 2008, buying instead from Brazil and Vietnam. The added costs of using third-party banks and requiring that transactions be made in cash only make the U.S. less competitive in export sales.

So this might hurt a bit, but Cuba has other options.

Incidentally, Republicans in farm states even sponsor legislation to allow more exports. There is bipartisan support and it's been there for years. But it has not been a high enough priority to go against the powerful Florida contingent.

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Lindsey Graham's Threats

I was in China with a pretty packed schedule so I did not keep up with a lot of Latin America news recently. Looking at U.S. policy toward Venezuela suggests that the Trump administration has not come up with anything new. I noticed that Lindsey Graham is making a big deal about needing to threaten invasion.

“Trump said rightly, Maduro’s not the legitimate leader of Venezuela. The entire region supports the Trump approach, that Guaidó is the legitimate leader,” Graham said on Fox News Sunday. “I would do exactly what Reagan did. I would give Cuba the ultimatum to get out of Venezuela. If they don’t, I would let the Venezuelan military know, you’ve got to choose between democracy and Maduro. And if you choose Maduro and Cuba, we’re coming after you. This is in our backyard.”

This is classic Trump and I assume Graham is doing it on his behalf. Trump loves ultimatums and threats--he wants to scare the Venezuelan military into overthrowing Nicolás Maduro. The problem is that Trump keeps doing this over and over. He's been doing it for months and it hasn't worked. Unable to think of something else, he just repeats himself.

Meanwhile, negotiations are underway and hopefully have some substance. The string of threats with nothing behind him will only marginalize the Trump administration, which at this point is not showing it has anything to offer.

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Guaido Asks for US Military Help

Juan Guaidó's ambassador to the United States, Carlos Vecchio, tweeted that at Guaidó's request, he had written a letter to U.S. Southern Command asking for assistance. Here is the letter:

He wants "strategic and operational planning." This means publicly crossing over a sovereignty line and asking for the United States government to take military action. Does that necessarily mean U.S. troops? Maybe not, though it's hard to imagine how else it would work. The U.S. trained Cuban exiles and former Nicaraguan National Guardsmen and those didn't work out so well.

I've written plenty about why Trump might invade and why it's a bad idea, so I won't rehash that. But a core part of Trump's Venezuela policy is aimed at a domestic audience. Can he maintain that domestic audience, which is already getting restless, if Guaidó asks for military action and Trump doesn't give it?

Guaidó is actually now pushing the administration in a direction it currently seems unwilling to go. But Trump has painted himself into a corner with Florida politics and the question is whether he can withstand the pressure.

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News Coverage of Latin America

Kathleen Searles and Kevin K. Banda, "But her emails! How journalistic preferences shaped election coverage in 2016." forthcoming in Journalism.

Abstract:

While existing work explains how journalists use news values to select some stories over others, we know little about how stories that meet newsworthiness criteria are prioritized. Once stories are deemed newsworthy, how do journalists calculate their relative utility? Such an ordering of preferences is important as higher ranked stories receive more media attention. To better understand how stories are ordered once they are selected, we propose a model for rational journalistic preferences which describes how journalists rank stories by making cost-benefit analyses. When faced with competing newsworthy stories, such as in an election context, the model can generate expectations regarding news coverage patterns. To illustrate model utility, we draw on a unique case – the US 2016 presidential election – to explain how reporters order newsworthy stories (e.g. scandal and the horse race) by observing changes in the volume. Our content data captures coverage featuring Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump on major broadcast and cable networks over 31  weeks. We find that the rational journalistic preference model explains the imbalance of scandal coverage between the two candidates and the dominance of horse race coverage. In 2016, such preferences may have inadvertently contributed to a balance of news stories that favored Trump.

The authors posit a straightforward argument about what stories journalists choose. Here are some underlying assumptions:

Journalists are motivated to maximize professional and economic benefits like attention for their work and minimize the associated costs like time. Even though journalists may be influenced by nonmaterial benefits, like influencing public discourse, their decision-making is still self-interested (Zaller, 1999). We assume that this ordering of preferences affects the rational journalists’ actions (Riker and Ordeshook, 1968), which allows us to explain aggregate patterns of news coverage as the product of journalists making strategic decisions, motivated by costs and benefits, regarding their story preferences.

They go on to discuss how in the U.S., trailing candidates get attention but not for their scandals, while leading candidates have their scandals scrutinized.

In the context of news stories on Latin America, we could generate plenty of testable hypotheses. Here are a few:

1. Stories that emphasize Latin America's policy problems (esp. related to violence)  predominate over successes.

2. Disaster stories will receive more (even the overwhelming majority of) attention for countries the U.S. government has labeled an adversary.

3. Economic success stories will be reported primarily for market-led policies rather than state-led policies, while negative stories will be the opposite.

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Review of Fletcher Knebel's Night of Camp David

Fletcher Knebel's Night of Camp David was a best seller in 1965, telling the story of a president who became paranoid, with delusions of grandeur. It was re-released in 2018 for obvious reasons. The fictional President Mark Hollenbach imagined cabals against him while devising secret plans to create a union with Canada and Scandinavia while wiretapping people whenever he wanted. Gradually people, starting with an Iowa senator (who himself is a selfish, sexist guy, but I guess he might've been seen at the time as a sympathetic character), start noticing erratic behavior and try to figure out what to do, especially since a summit with the Soviets is coming up.

I found it entertaining, both for the topic and as a period piece (lots of 1960s slang, for example). And it does offer food for thought about how to deal with a president whose own cabinet doubts their capacity to govern. The 25th amendment was ratified the same year the novel was published, but has not been put to the test.

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Venezuelan Refugees and Sanctuary Cities

You can't compartmentalize policy. Laws aimed at one issue touch other issues as well. In Florida, lawmakers' desire to attack undocumented migrants by prohibiting sanctuary cities ran straight into the need for undocumented Venezuelan refugees to be safe from deportation. Despite all the talk about humanitarian assistance, the Trump administration has refused to provide Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelan migrants. So if they get caught up in any kind of law enforcement, they will be deported.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, the number of Venezuelans in the U.S. went from 216,000 in 2014 to 351,000 in 2017, and we know it continues to grow. The state with the largest Venezuelan population by far is Florida.  Many Venezuelans have visas, but then will eventually overstay them. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the number of Venezuelans deported nationally is small in comparative terms, up from 248 in FY 2017 to 336 in FY 2018 (if you're wondering Mexico was at 141,045 for FY 2018). But that will also grow.

From a purely strategic domestic standpoint, this undermines the administration's effort to gain votes by being tough with Nicolás Maduro. It's a state law, of course, not a federal one, but the administration has been clear that it also intensely dislikes the idea of sanctuary cities. Problem is, sometimes they protect your political allies.

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More on U.S. Invasion Rationale in Venezuela

Andrés Oppenheimer posits four reasons he thinks U.S. invasion of Venezuela is possible, though still unlikely. The first two are actually points I made back in January and February, and which I have come to doubt. The last two seem more far-fetched.

I feel like we're once again seeing increased invasion talk, including from Congress, and I feel less sure now it might happen even though on the surface it seems like a strong possibility. And yet I could wake up tomorrow and find it happening.

First, the Trump administration is escalating its rhetoric following the Venezuelan opposition’s courageous but unsuccessful April 30 attempt to spark a military rebellion. 

Yes, though the rhetoric really hasn't changed much from past instances. I wrote this back in January when rhetoric was heating up and have come to believe that we need to focus more on what Trump says, not his officials. His language is more careful. Pompeo and Bolton talk endlessly.

Second, the Trump administration may increasingly be worried about not being taken seriously about its vows to help topple Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. 

As I wrote in February, " My worry, as I've said before, is the Trump Factor. He has been reticent to use force, but is also highly sensitive to being viewed as weak." I just don't know if I believe that anymore or to the same degree. Trump's modus operandi is to talk tough even when failing and ignore the failure. The argument makes perfect intuitive sense, but Trump doesn't operate this predictably.

Third, Latin American diplomats tell me there are ongoing private discussions within the Organization of American States to invoke the 17-country Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance of 1947 — TIAR — also known as the Rio Treaty.

This is an interesting scenario, and although he doesn't say so, I assume the common enemy is Russia. Who else could it be? The problem is that Trump denies that Russia is meddling in Venezuela. He is so cozy with Putin that he might not want to antagonize him this way.

Fourth, a military rebellion to restore democracy in Venezuela may be more difficult now after the Trump administration’s blunder in revealing the names of three top Venezuelan officials — including defense minister Vladimir Padrino — who it says were secretly vowing to turn against Maduro on April 30.

I tend to think now that Trump doesn't care about this too much. Talk tough while the crisis goes on and on.

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U.S. Corporate Media on Venezuela

From Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting:

A FAIR survey of US opinion journalism on Venezuela found no voices in elite corporate media that opposed regime change in that country. Over a three-month period (1/15/19–4/15/19), zero opinion pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post took an anti–regime change or pro-Maduro/Chavista position. 

From my own anti-regime change Washington Post opinion piece on March 25, 2019:

Because of its relative power and its historical interest in the region, inevitably the United States becomes deeply involved in Latin American political crises. This is not likely to change anytime soon. Research tells us that the policy options most conducive to democracy are nonviolent, multilateral and consensual. If democracy is the true goal, then attacking Venezuela is unlikely to lead in that direction.

And there were more than just mine. So that survey must've been pretty sloppy.

 

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Boomer Retirement and Immigration

Via Immigration Impact about retirement and declining birth rates in the United States:

It is in our economic best interest to ensure that our population continues to grow. Immigration alone will not address all the fiscal issues facing our social welfare programs and economy more broadly, but they play an important role in reducing the economic effects of our aging population. Baby boomers are increasingly dependent on them to help pay for their retirement and buy their homes as they retire.

From Irresistible Forces: Latin American Migration to the United States and its Effects on the South, the 2010 book I wrote with my dad:

Young immigrants, however, can help fill the demographic gap.  As Myers points out, immigration can alleviate other related economic strains like an insufficient labor force and too few young home buyers to satisfy the number of older sellers.  The demographic fit therefore offers part of the solution, since there is a ready pool of workers able and willing to contribute to the U.S. economy and pay into the Social Security system, providing the income stream for older retirees.

This is not new. It has been entirely foreseeable for many years. Simply put, we need immigrants.

Put a different way, roughly half the countries of the world have birth rates below replacement rate (below 2.1 births per woman) and at 1.8 the United States is one of them. Therefore it is inaccurate to say of the United States, or many other countries, that it is "full."  If you managed to stop immigration right now, the population would shrink. And if that happens, who is going to support retirees?

Actually, forget the Boomers and let's think about Generation X, my generation. Heck, we want to retire too. So we need immigration!

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UNC Charlotte Shooting

Given that writing is a fundamental way I express myself, it's been curious that I have not felt much urge to write about the shooting that took place on my campus two days ago. It's been an intense emotional time. I wasn't even on campus when it happened, and so for many people it is even more intense. I had to drop my daughter off somewhere and then I planned to go to the gym on campus. I saw the emergency text message and hoped (or maybe tried to convince myself) it was a false alarm or just the police being careful. Then the news got worse and worse.

I went to the vigil yesterday evening, and seeing our Chancellor break down while talking might have been the most emotional moment I've experienced in my 19 years as a professor here. My eyes are welling up now as I think about it.

With campus closed, I stayed home yesterday but was unproductive, and I expect that was the same for most people. When I thought of the victims, I kept thinking about how even though I don't know them, they're my students too. But I also think about my own children and the news the victims' parents had to get, and I can only barely imagine what that must be like.

As the Chancellor wrote and also said, "This is the saddest day in UNC Charlotte's history." Right now we're just doing our best to move forward, but it's hard to focus on anything else.

Update: Adam Johnson, the instructor of the class, just wrote about the experience here. Not easy reading.

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Venezuela and the OAS

According to Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela is pulling out of the Organization of American States. However, the OAS does not recognize his government and insists the envoy is Gustavo Tarre, who says the OAS should play an important role in rebuilding the country.

Most, though not all, countries in the OAS recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's president. Therefore his chosen envoy can actively participate. So is Venezuela currently a member of the OAS? Well, the OAS itself seems to believe so, but does that make it true? What is "true" anyway? This is an especially tough question for the OAS, which is commonly seen as weak. In other words, you can have an envoy but that does not necessarily lead to anything.

At this point, the most important question is whether this changes anything in the calculations of the military leadership, which represents the foundation of the government. I can't think of any reason they would care about the OAS, which Fidel Castro (who called it rotten and shameless) and then also Hugo Chávez (who called it a corpse) criticized for years. The OAS cannot do too much to threaten their position.

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Military Desertions in Venezuela

Military desertions from Venezuela have been steady over the course of the year, so news of more isn't exactly new. But it's useful to emphasize the reasons.

The deserters, who asked to withhold their names due to fear of reprisals against their families, complained that top commanders in Venezuela lived well on large salaries and commissions from smuggling and other black market schemes while the lower ranks confronted conflicts in Venezuela’s streets for little pay. 

“They already have their families living abroad. They live well, eat well, have good salaries and profits from corruption,” said the lieutenant.

They are not happy about being used to repress their own citizens, which of course was also Hugo Chávez's original resentment. The article is written awkwardly, as the implication is that these deserters would've been fine with repression as long as they were paid well, which I tend to doubt is the case.

For all this to matter politically, however, the desertions need to be transformed into organization. The upper ranks appear to be unified, while disaffected lower ranks leave. The result is strengthening the status quo. Maybe I am missing something, but right now it seems that if anything, desertions are a net negative for the opposition.

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Qiu Xiaolong's Death of a Red Heroine

Qiu Xiaolong's Death of a Red Heroine is a political police procedural that takes place in 1990s Shanghai. The setting is important because the case revolves around the changing politics of the era, where capitalist reforms are underway and there is an uneasy relationship between high cadres, their children (HCCs), the average person, and those who had been imprisoned but were now rehabilitated politically. There is considerable distrust.

The victim is a model worker, by the 1990s an almost outdated phenomenon, which means a person deemed to publicly embody the best elements of the Communist Party. Inspector Chen is charged with investigating the murder, and before long he is taking on an HCC. The middle of the novel dragged for a me a little, with all the intricate political dances, but the latter half was really entertaining even though by that point there was no mystery anymore.

Chen himself is a published poet, and the book is loaded with snippets of classic Chinese poets, along with close attention to food and culture. They represent something solid in an otherwise shifting and uncertain political and social landscape. Chen himself is committed to doing the right thing--finding the murderer--regardless of the politics that surround it, and there is a twist at the end that leaves him pondering how hard that can be in China.

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China Invests More in Latin America

China set up a China Development Bank in Latin America. While the Trump administration says aid is a ripoff, globally the bank has financed $190 billion of projects globally as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Who signed on? Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Panama and Colombia. Notice these are all U.S. allies. China offers financing while the U.S. offers criticism and assertions that the "Monroe Doctrine is alive and well," which means the Trump administration believes it gets to choose who Latin America engages with. I wish I could be a fly on the wall as these speech and policy decisions are made. They seem almost intent on ceding influence to China.

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Expelling Diplomats in Latin America

Anthony Jordan and John P. Tuman, "Explaining Expulsions of U.S. Diplomatic Personnel from Latin America: 1991-2016." Latin American Policy 9, 2 (December 2018): 238-257. Gated.

Abstract:

This article examines expulsions of U.S. diplomats from Latin America and the Caribbean between 1991 and 2016. Employing an original data set of expulsions of U.S. diplomatic personnel, the analysis focuses on the number of first‐mover expulsions—cases where the Latin American government was the first to expel a U.S. diplomat in a year. The models are estimated with pooled negative binomial regression with robust standard errors. The results suggest there were more first‐mover expulsions in countries governed by radical, populist‐left presidents. For the radical, populist Left, expulsions offered a low‐cost mechanism to pursue opposition to U.S. influence in Latin America while also giving executives an opportunity to strengthen ties to their electoral base. Results also show that presidential election years had a positive and significant effect. Prior retaliatory expulsions, alleged U.S. interference, other types of executive‐party control, and economic ties with the United States and China had no effect on expulsions. Oil exports to the United States were associated positively with higher expulsion counts, which we attribute to the unwillingness of radical populists—and of the United States—to escalate diplomatic tensions into wider economic conflicts.

I never thought of doing an empirical study of expulsions--this is a fun article. I'd say it confirms what we would've guessed, which is that government more hostile to the U.S., which are leftist-populist, are more likely to expel diplomats, and especially during presidential election years. It is a low-cost signal of autonomy.

The article goes further with the insight about oil exporters, which tend to expel more.

[A]lthough radical populists were willing to use expulsions to signal the United States and drum up domestic support, they refrained from using oil as a form of leverage with the United States—due in part to their dependence on oil for government revenue. At the same time, because the United States adopted a carefully calibrated response to expulsions, there was no penalty (or embargo) imposed on oil exports to the United States or other trade with countries engaging in expulsions.

Until the U.S. imposed sanctions on PDVSA earlier this year, no one wanted to touch oil. So oil-exporters used expulsions as a sort of proxy and the unspoken agreement was that oil would be left alone.

A sequel should be to determine the impact of losing that diplomatic connection, which could be tough to measure. Once you've kicked them out, do you solve or create problems?

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Bolton's Speech: Winning is the New Losing

I have a piece at Global Americans on John Bolton's speech to the Bay of Pigs veterans about Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua policy. I give three reasons why it is problematic. My conclusion:

It is logical to expect a regular series of similar speeches and punitive policies from now until the next presidential election. They are almost certain not to achieve much, but that has never been an obstacle for this administration. The strategy is to talk tough, use sanctions, and court hardline voters, regardless of the effects on the citizens of the targeted countries. Losing is the new winning.

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Former Presidents of Peru

There are six five living former presidents of Peru.

1. Francisco Morales Bermúdez was sentenced by a court in Rome for deaths related to Operation Condor. He is almost 100 and therefore not imprisoned.

2. Alan García just shot himself in the head today as police were coming to arrest him for corruption charges in the Odebrecht case. Update: he died of his self-inflicted wound.

3. After being pardoned under fishy circumstances, Alberto Fujimori was put back in jail late last year for human rights abuses during his dictatorship.

4. Alejandro Toledo is in exile in the United States, fleeing Odebrecht-related charges. He was arrested last month in California for public drunkenness.

5. Ollanta Humala is facing Odebrecht charges and was imprisoned in 2017 and 2018 while awaiting trial. The case is ongoing.

6. Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is in jail for Odebrecht charges and just today was hospitalized for high blood pressure.

Two escaping accountability, three detained, and one on trial.

No surprise, then, if you look at the 2018 Latinobarómetro survey and see that only 43% of Peruvians favor democracy (versus authoritarianism or indifference). Satisfaction with democracy is only 11%, second lowest to Latin America (Brazil at 9%) has that honor.

There is something successful about former presidents being arrested and put on trial--it can mean judicial institutions are functioning even at the highest levels. The problem, however, is when it doesn't stop. Sure, maybe the courts will work, but you want presidents who don't face corruption charges in the first place. All eyes on you, Martín Vizcarra.

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Deterring Influence in Venezuela

The U.S. wants to deter other countries' influence in Venezuela. From CNN:

The Pentagon is developing new military options for Venezuela aimed at deterring Russian, Cuban and Chinese influence inside the regime of President Nicolas Maduro, but stopping short of any kinetic military actions, according to a defense official familiar with the effort.
...
[D]eterrence options could include US naval exercises in the immediate region to emphasize humanitarian assistance and more military interaction with neighboring countries. The idea would be to challenge any Russian, Cuban or Chinese notion that they could have unchallenged access to the region.

"Deterring influence" is a weird concept. Deterrence normally refers to preventing aggression or force of some kind. And if deterrence itself is not backed by a credible threat of force--and the U.S. official is announcing publicly that it will "stop short" of force--then it isn't deterring anything. The U.S. can do naval exercises but that doesn't stop Russians from exerting influence.

The Cubans definitely already have "unchallenged access to the region" so that part is nonsensical. If "unchallenged access to the region" refers to economic relations, that ship has sailed. The Chinese have deep economic roots in the region, built up over 20-25 years. Meanwhile, the Russians don't want the whole region as far as I can tell--they have a longstanding relationship with Cuba and established relations with Hugo Chávez as well. Their influence is already there.

This doesn't even get into the question of how the U.S. has squandered its own influence in Venezuela, which is part of a short Twitter discussion here.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that "all options are on the table" mostly means "there is no plan at all." Exercises like these reinforce that point because they seem to lack any strategic logic.

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Janelle Wong's Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change

Janelle Wong's Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change (2018) provides a new view of evangelicals but also immigrants in the United States. It gets at the question of where Latinx voters fit uneasily within the two party system.

"Nonwhite immigrants seem to be the only source of growth for the American evangelical population" (13). This is an interesting dynamic because demographics shows that in the future, evangelicals will be increasingly nonwhite though for the time being white evangelicals remain much more influential politically. In a Venn diagram, the two are both evangelical but the overlap is not enormous.

"Nonwhite evangelicals in the United States hold a more expansive notion of the "national community" than do white evangelical Americans" (40). White evangelicals feel a strong sense of embattlement, I think in no small part because, as Wong points out, their idea of national community is quite small. Not feeling threatened, nonwhites do not agree with white evangelicals on a host of issues--immigration is a major one--though they are indeed more conservative than non-evangelicals on issues like abortion.

An important lesson is not to think in blocs. Evangelicals are not a bloc--they're racially divided and show different political views. Further, Latinx voters are not a bloc simply destined for the Democratic Party. Latinx evangelicals are conservative and neither party fits them perfectly.

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Lesser of Two Evils

Benjamin Waddell, a sociologist at Fort Lewis College, has a post on failed U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. He points to something that has been raised quite a lot with regard to Venezuela, which is that the history of U.S. intervention taints anyone the U.S. supports.

While Jaime and Jorge’s comments hardly speak for all Nicaraguans, they summarize the general sentiments of Ortega’s supporters quite well. At the root of Ortega’s base is a firm conviction that he has done more for the poor than U.S.-supported candidates from the right have. For them, he is the lesser of two evils.

The "lesser of two evils" point is a good one and cuts through the question of why someone would support an authoritarian leader who clearly seems to be failing. U.S. economic policy has a track record of screwing people, generally the poor, in Latin America so an authoritarian leader who at least has shown some true interest in their welfare, even if more in the past, is preferable.

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Donald Trump's 20 Year Old Take on Cuba

Donald Trump's interest in Bay of Pigs veterans has been a thing for a while--he spoke to them during the campaign and now John Bolton is going before them to talk about Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Economic isolation is a key part of it.

Twenty years ago, Trump made a Cuba policy speech as he mulled running for president. He spoke to the Cuban American National Foundation, praising Jorge Mas Canosa. I snipped this bit from C-Span. His logic is based on two contradictory points:

First, the embargo will end the regime. Note that he was saying that 40 years after the embargo was put in place, and that 20 years after saying it, it's still not true.

Second, no matter what, you have sunk costs and so you have to go on as long as the regime is in power. In other words, #1 could easily just be wrong but you keep going anyway. Because you've already gone to so much trouble.

His views have not changed noticeably in the last two decades.  The embargo will work, but it doesn't matter even if it doesn't.

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Ecuador's Nine Reasons For Evicting Assange

Foreign Minister José Valencia went to the National Assembly and gave nine reasons for evicting Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

1. Interference in the affairs of other countries, thus hurting Ecuador's relations with those countries. The U.S. is the biggie here, of course.

2. Bad behavior and lack of respect toward Ecuador. This included, and I am not making this up, riding a skateboard around.

3. Threats toward the Ecuadorian state and the London embassy. He made lots of wild accusations against Ecuadorian officials.

4. The UK's position on had not changed since 2012: no safe conduct for Assange. This had become inconvenient because it offered no way out.

5. He has health problems. Ecuador claimed that if he got worse the embassy had no way of helping him. Not to mention the health of his poor cat, who seems to have been given away.

6. Diplomatic asylum should not be a way of avoiding justice.

7. There is no request for extradition. This, in fact, was wrong because the U.S. did have such a request but Ecuador did not know about it.

8. Ecuador had sufficient guarantees from the UK about not extraditing him. I wonder whether Lenín Moreno really cares.

9. Inconsistencies in his naturalization as an Ecuadorian citizen (which is now revoked). Who knows about this, and as a reason it's worth just about as much as his Ecuadorian citizenship was, which is zero.

Let me gather these together and condense them into two, easy to understand reasons:

1. He is a royal pain in Ecuador's ass.

2. Lenín Moreno wants a good relationship with the United States and Assange made that impossible.

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Dilemma of Repression for Security Forces

At The Monkey Cage, a Sociology Ph.D. student at Yale wrote about the timing of the coup in Sudan, which has lessons for Venezuela.

My research, which draws from a detailed analysis of the police mutiny which overthrew Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011 and from a comparison with the Russian Revolution of 1917, found that most soldiers and police officers facing mass protests defect primarily as a response to the dilemma of repression. They can afford to remain loyal only so long as their job does not require them to kill large numbers of people. When obedience to the regime demands unconscionable acts, rebellion is often the easiest way forward, particularly for reserve units who are rarely deployed for repression.

This is familiar because  it characterized Venezuela after 1989. Hugo Chávez and other officers resented being told to repress. They did not overthrow the government right then, but started plotting.

Thinking of today, it's useful to think in these terms but unfortunately it is not an analysis that facilitates prediction too well. We will only know when the army hits the breaking point after it's broken. But it does point to reasons why Nicolás Maduro is not arresting Juan Guaidó. Such a move would spark resistance and protests that could take security forces beyond their threshold of acceptable repression.

Unlike Sudan, we don't seem to see signs of security forces splintering in Venezuela. The media has focused a lot on defections but that's an entirely different animal. In the choices of exit, voice, and loyalty, "exit" has the least effect in this context. So far in Venezuela it's been mostly loyalty.

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Why Maduro Can Now Accept Humanitarian Aid

Several months ago, Nicolás Maduro wouldn't allow humanitarian aid into Venezuela for political reasons. The economy was crumbling and accepting aid meant acknowledging the scope of the self-inflicted crisis. Here is Maduro in September 2018:

“Venezuela is the victim of world media attacks designed to construct a supposed humanitarian crisis so as to justify a military intervention,” President Nicolás Maduro told the U.N. General Assembly last month. He insisted that there is no crisis.

Then in late January 2019 the Trump administration imposed sanctions on PDVSA. Roughly a week later, we had the whole spectacle of the barricaded border to block aid truck.

Then the oil sanctions really sunk in.

Now, two months after the border incident, Maduro says he will accept aid and he's talking to the Red Cross. Last night he even pinned a short news clip about it on his Twitter feed. The sanctions have been in place long enough that he has far more cover to blame the economic situation squarely on the United States. This was highly foreseeable, almost to the point of being obvious. So obvious, in fact, that at least some officials in the administration admitted it.

One US official familiar with the sanctions decision, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity in order to speak frankly, said the move will do little more than “royally piss off Maduro.” 

Another official it essentially gives Maduro even more ammunition to say that the US aims to orchestrate a coup against it. 

If the economy tanks even further than it already has, the Venezuelan leader can blame the US sanctions and perhaps regain some favor among elites — particularly the military leadership — whose support he needs in order to remain in power.

In short, the U.S. employed the nuclear option of oil sanctions and thus far it hasn't yielded regime change. At this point, the administration seems mostly stuck. John Bolton is now reduced to trying to convince the Venezuelan military that Maduro is trying to weaken it through the colectivos. Every day that goes by gives Maduro more ammunition to blame the United States for conditions in the country, while he accepts humanitarian aid and Russian loans.

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Trump Takes Eisenhower's Bad Advice on Cuba (and Venezuela)

From an interview with two Trump administration officials on Cuba. The gist can be summed up in one word: facepalm.

For President Trump, the stars have aligned, and Venezuela is the tool that we believe can provide change within two countries which have a long and complicated history with the United States.  We have the team in place that every president should want- committed to the goal and capable of implementing a strategy rather than just talking about implementing a strategy.  First, using sanctions to remove an illegitimate leader who has made a mess of his country.  Anyone defending what Maduro has done to his citizens has to have their head examined.  Second, while we do not expect immediate political change in Cuba because of our direct sanctions on Venezuela and direct and indirect sanctions upon Cuba, we believe that at least one result will be changes to the Cuban economy because of what the [Juan] Guaido Administration is doing regarding oil exports to Cuba- and we are helping Interim President Guaido achieve his goal of no longer subsidizing the Cuban regime.  Cuba will have to adjust to losing 30% or more of its heavily-subsidized oil imports, and that means permitting more of a market-based economy.  They won’t like it, but their ability to derail it is pretty fast moving beyond their control. 

This strategy should sound familiar because it is the strategy that President Eisenhower started and which became the bedrock of U.S.-Cuban relations. Take, for example, this memo between two of the key Latin Americanists in the State Department in 1960:

[E]very possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.

The lack of interest in the well-being of ordinary Cubans or Venezuelans is worth noting. But more important is the facile assumption that hurting them brings about regime change. For example, what example do Trump officials have when they assert that economic deprivation of a country's people serves to remove leaders? What is it about Cuba policy that makes it worth copying elsewhere?

With regard to Cuba specifically, it's troubling. The administration realizes it cannot force regime change in Cuba but will go ahead with hurting its citizens for no clear reason other than that "they won't like it."

h/t Ric Herrero on Twitter

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Rogelberg's The Surprising Science of Meetings

I read The Surprising Science of Meetings (2019) by Steven Rogelberg, a highly decorated Professor of Organizational Science, Management, and Psychology here at UNC Charlotte. There are a lot of meetings in academia and plenty of them are not run well. But we are never trained how to do so well, which is a shame given how much time we spend in them.

The book uses the scholarly literature to provide better understanding of meeting dynamics and, more importantly, to give specific tips on how to improve them. Whoever leads the meeting is of course critical--that person needs to start with the idea that everyone's time is valuable and find the right meeting structure for the task at hand. They need to be positive and provide an agenda that makes sense for that meeting. They also need to make sure that the right people are attending and that it is not too full. Other people can be invited but notified of what happened later if they don't feel the need to come. There are all kinds of other insights (e.g. don't do phone meetings).

I actually immediately took one of his nuggets of advice by shortening meetings. In Google Calendar there is an option called "speedy meetings" that reduces the default one hour to 55 minutes, and 30 minutes to 25. That can reduce lateness (because you have a buffer between consecutive meetings) and push you to finish a bit quicker. He notes "Parkinson's law," whereby a meeting will expand to fill the time you allot to it.

Especially if you're an administrator in academia, it's worth checking out.

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Latin America Tries to Ignore Trump

Over the past several days, I have been writing about how the Trump administration paints itself into a corner with constant threats, most of which do not translate into action. That is true in Venezuela and for now it is also true for Central America. Trump made a huge deal about cutting aid to El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala for "doing nothing" about immigration. Nonetheless, the governments of both Honduras and El Salvador say they haven't been notified about anything:

Both Honduras and El Salvador pointedly said they had not been formally notified of any specific cuts in U.S. aid. Honduran Defense Minister Fredy Díaz said cooperation with the United States on security is "unchanged," while the Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the relationship has been "solid, close and positive."

They are taking the same stance as AMLO after Trump trolled Mexico on Twitter, which is to ignore him. Step lightly and wait for Trump to be distracted by something else. They figure the chances of him actually doing anything--shutting the border, attacking Venezuela, cutting off all aid--are too low to bother with the risks of confrontation. (I should note, however, that the Mexican stock exchange did not ignore it).

Trump's "negotiation" style is to take an unreasonable position and wait for the other side to concede. Since time after time he backs off the unreasonable position, often without getting anything in return, it becomes easier to ignore. That is a situation ripe for misunderstanding and catastrophic results.

Update a few hours later: Trump says he will not close the border and will give Mexico a year to "stop the drugs," whatever that means. If you issue fake threats, why should any leader of another country listen to you?

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The Russian Conundrum in Venezuela

A Russian political analyst writes about why Russia sent troops to Venezuela. What echoes throughout is the notion of equality.

By taking a stand in the United States’ backyard, Moscow also hopes to make itself a more valuable partner for Washington on other issues, particularly those in Russia’s backyard. While structuring a “big deal” with Trump that would require haggling on Venezuela, the Middle East and Ukraine is probably not feasible, simply re-engaging with Washington on equal footing is in itself important.

Venezuela per se is unimportant. Vladimir Putin has no interest in either Chavismo or the Venezuelan people. What this particular article also reminds me, however, is that Russia's interest is not simply antagonistic. It is the use of power to force the United States to recognize Russia's diplomatic equality. Or, as the short Dr. Seuss movie I've seen a million times because I have three children tell us, "We are here, we are here, we are here."

While Russia is under no obligation to defend Venezuela (although state-owned Rosneft has about $9 billion invested there), the country is important to the Kremlin’s narrative of Russia’s return to the global stage as a great power that shapes a new multi-polar world order and has the capability to check destabilizing American unilateralism.

Trump himself said, "Russia has to get out," and then followed up with his oft-repeated "all options are on the table" line that seems mostly to mean inaction. Putin clearly seems to think Trump is bluffing, particularly because Trump has been threatening Venezuela nonstop.

A short while ago I wrote this about China and Russia:

The two countries constitute Maduro's lifeline and we just don't know at what point they are willing to cute him loose. Neither wants to appear to concede to the United States or to lose their investments. I assume the latter can be worked out but the former is tough.

Tough indeed. It seems that Russia is digging in, which means the reputational costs of leaving are increasing exponentially. The two sides are barking at each other, and we can only hope they stay leashed.

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Russia Expands its Reach in South America

Just a few days ago, President Trump hammered Colombia President Iván Duque:

"I'll tell you something: Colombia, you have your new president of Colombia, really good guy. I've met him, we had him at the White House. He said how he was going to stop drugs. More drugs are coming out of Colombia right now than before he was president — so he has done nothing for us," Trump told reporters in Florida.

This is the same language he used to verbally abuse Mexico and Central America:

“Mexico is doing NOTHING to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants to our Country,” he tweeted. “They are all talk and no action. Likewise, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have taken our money for years, and do Nothing.”

It shouldn't surprise us too much, then, that shortly thereafter Russia saw its opportunity to flex its rhetorical muscle.

The Federation Council, the Russian equivalent of a senate, wrote a letter to Colombian Congress in which it accused the country’s government and other allies of the United States of trying to “provoke a civil war” and a possible “military intervention in this state” whose disputed President, Nicolas Maduro, is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A lot is happening at once here, and all of it emphasizes U.S. weakness.

First, Russia is expanding its influence in South America without being countered. Mike Pompeo tweets just don't count.

Second, U.S. domestic interests aren't just influencing foreign policy, they are obliterating it. Intermestic policy is the norm, especially with drugs, but in the past it has not actively undercut allies. Trump's tweets are talking to his core U.S. base. Vladimir Putin saw the insults as an opening to assert Russia's interests.

Third, it is a reminder to Latin America that the Trump administration demands quick and easy solutions to long-standing and complex problems and does not recognize slow and steady progress. This further reduces U.S. influence.

Fourth, it comes on the heels of constant Trump administration threats toward Venezuela that are not followed through. I am in fact glad that the administration is not using force, but it should never have issued threats to begin with. It is now hamstrung--either invade (which would have disastrous consequences) or look weak to Russia (which would have negative consequences).

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