News Coverage of Venezuela

There's an article in the Washington Post about news coverage of Venezuela. I've read numerous complaints, most prominently from Caracas Chronicles, about the lack of coverage, which I don't buy. As the article points out, there was more coverage of Ukraine but there are reasonable reasons (so to speak) for that, and it's not simply that we ignore Latin America.

More importantly, though, is digging into what "coverage" or "attention" means. The article spends time examining what stories are "above the fold," referring to the news that you see on the front of a newspaper when it is face up on a news stand. That is what signals importance. Or did. Long ago. Now it's largely irrelevant. Who cares what's on the front when you get your news online or elsewhere? And if you go online, there is a flood of stuff on Venezuela from every source imaginable. I've been contacted by several reporters, as have numerous other people who study Latin American politics. Last week I was at the gym and on CNN there was Wolf Blitzer talking about Venezuela. If Wolf is on the case, then by definition you're mainstream. At this point you would need to be actively avoiding news not to know there is something up in Venezuela.

Now, all of this is anecdotal. To make a convincing case you would need to examine coverage across all media, accounting for where people get their news (print newspapers, for example, don't inform many people these days so should not be weighted very heavily so don't focus too much about what's "above the fold"). Then you have to decide what constitutes "reasonable" coverage, ranging from no stories to total saturation. I think this would show that Venezuela is not being swept under the media rug.

Read more...

Various Faces of Nicolás Maduro

Over the last few weeks, Nicolás Maduro's statements and actions have seemed to have a certain schizophrenic quality to them, going in different and sometimes contradictory directions. It seems, too, that I've read a considerable amount of commentary sympathetic to the government versus the opposition, and none of it defends Maduro himself. He seems to have no plans and no strategies, which are replaced by saying whatever pops into his head. It's like he's playing good cop and bad cop simultaneously.

We saw that immediately as he slapped Leopoldo López into jail on flimsy charges, with Maduro personally saying he must answer for his "unawareness of the constitution" and saying he would put all fascists in jail. Meanwhile, Maduro spoke of "justice." This played directly into the opposition's hands.

Another example is the amazing array of insults he hurls at the opposition, all the while saying he just wants dialogue. In every other sentence he makes certain everyone knows that he will make no concessions and feels nothing but contempt for the opposition. If you weren't already numbed to the word "fascist" then you must be now, as it is overused to the point of absurdity. He plays eagerly (and understandably) to an internal audience, but seems oblivious to the fact that doing so closes off other opportunities.

Even as he unleashes insults at them, he laments the opposition's insults against him and the government.

Maduro also announced Venezuela would name a new ambassador to the United States, shortly after expelling three officials and giving a continuous barrage of accusations against the U.S. If you don't tone down the language, then the gesture is useless. What is it intended to achieve?

Lurching from one stance to the next and back again is counter-productive. Having López in jail is a boon to the opposition and no one is quite clear whether Maduro wants dialogue, or what it would be about.

The opposition is not much better. Henrique Capriles indicated he would engage in dialogue, then backed off. Leopoldo López seems to have few or no redeeming qualities, and apparently seeks to rival Hugo Chávez for megalomania. The government and opposition blunder along together.

Read more...

Insults and Dialogue in Venezuela

I'm quoted in this Bloomberg story about the upcoming dialogue between Henrique Capriles and Nicolás Maduro. It really echoes my thoughts from yesterday's blog post.

Basically, I don't think all the insults necessarily preclude dialogue. These are seasoned politicians in an extremely polarized context. Each knows the other must play to a domestic constituency. It won't be a comfortable conversation, but it can at least happen.

What I don't get is what the dialogue will be about. If it is just a sign of good will, then that's positive (Boz notes some specifics in comments in that last post). But my quote is about how it will not be easy to back off the lines in the sand that each side has drawn: "la salida" on one side, and a deepening of the revolution on the other. At some point you have to either address that directly, or dialogue descends back into monologue. Monologue is what we've got now, and it serves mostly to exacerbate the divisions.

Read more...

Dialogue in Venezuela

Henrique Capriles agreed to talk to Nicolás Maduro on Monday. The way to do this, it seems, is to have an implicit agreement that each has the right to continue publicly hammering on the other. Neither can afford to look soft.

But it's still very unclear what the goal will be. Currently, the opposition's stance is all about Maduro's departure, which obviously is nonnegotiable. Maduro is all abou revolution, which is also nonnegotiable. "Dialogue" implies concession because otherwise you have only predictable monologue, which is what we've already got.

Don't get me wrong. Talking is good, certainly far better than the chest thumping we've been seeing. But following up on my post yesterday about the fork in the Venezuelan road, there are only two visions in Venezuela at the moment, and they're very hard to reconcile. I don't really see a "third way" that bridges the gap.

Insisting only on departure or only on revolution will likely create more violence. So what other options are there, and who can articulate them? With any luck, the meeting between Maduro and Capriles can somehow get them out of the rhetrical straitjackets they're in and point in that direction.

Read more...

Taking the Fork in Venezuelan Road

In The Nation, George Ciccariello-Maher offers up an interesting view of the protests in Venezuela with a sympathetic focus on "democracy from below," as opposed to "liberal democracy."

At least in my eyes, here is the key quote:

Venezuela is indeed at a crossroads, having—in the words of the militant-intellectual Roland Denis—“llegado al llegadero, arrived at the inevitable.” It is the point at which the Bolivarian process itself—socialism in a capitalist society, thriving direct democracy in a liberal democratic shell—cannot survive without pressing decisively toward one side or the other: more socialist, more democratic, in short, more radical. This is not a crossroads simply between two possible forms of government from above: the Maduro government or its hypothetical right-wing alternative. It is instead a question of either pressing forward the task of building a revolutionary society, or handing the future back to those who can think of nothing but the past, and who will seek to fold the historical dialectic back onto itself, beaten and bloody if necessary. [Emphases in original]

This struck me because it gets down to the question of where these events are leading Venezuela. The opposition is the minority, but it is a large minority. Pressing more decisively in the direction of revolutionary socialism by definition means rejecting a very significant chunk of the Venezuelan population. Is that viable without protracted civil war? Can it happen without resorting to "beating and bloodying" that minority?

These are practical questions because such a society will require a much more aggressive use of the military internally, or at least I can't imagine how else that minority would be silenced. Is there some way of bringing that minority into the revolutionary fold without force?

Given how difficult and violent that route likely is (unless I am missing something in that regard) I would think the more likely result is more of the same. The opposition (especially since it seems to have no military support) will not take power, and the Maduro government will talk of deepening the revolution without truly doing so. As Yogi Berra allegedly once said, when you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Read more...

Statements on Venezuela

Here is the Washington Office on Latin America's press release on Venezuela. It goes much further than the most recent statement from John Kerry. Kerry's statements, meanwhile, have been much more mild than anything from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

If anything, then, the Obama administration has been pretty circumspect. Nicolás Maduro is lambasting Kerry on Twitter, but it's hard to get a lot of traction when he's well behind multiple NGOs that focus on human rights.

It is also harder to get traction given Maduro's treatment of CNN, which was an amazingly stupid decision. He backed off, but the threat remains, and provides more meat for human rights accusations against him. Unfortunately for Maduro, he has a habit of providing compelling evidence just by opening his mouth.

Read more...

Book chapter on Chile

Just got my copy of a new book chapter:

Gregory Weeks, “The Military and Twenty Years of the Concertación.” In Kirsten Sehnbruch and Peter M. Siavelis (eds.). Democratic Chile: The Politics and Policies of a Historic Coalition, 1990-2010 (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2014): 103-117.

Read more...

Diplomacy and Venezuela

A column in USA Today makes a case that there are no diplomats to hepl resolve the Venezuelan crisis, comparing it unfavorably to Europe. It rests on the assumption that diplomats are generated by trade, and there is not enough trade. I have no idea where this argument came from, and I am not convinced. Trade and diplomacy have no automatic assocation. Plus, Latin America has a long tradition of hesitance about overt intervention (covert has often been fine, but that's another story).

In any event, somehow this conclusion is reached:

That largely leaves economic sanctions as a way to influence the actions of the Venezuelan government.

I'm not sure at all why that follows. The chances that Latin American countries would impose economic sanctions are very, very close to zero--something really unusual would have to happen. Not only would that be out of character, but it would also very likely rally many people to Nicolás, thus negating whatever negative impact the sanctions were supposed to generate.

Read more...

Nicolás Maduro Channels John Foster Dulles

Nicolás Maduro argues that the protests in Venezuela are not homegrown and legitimate. Instead, they were cultivated, trained, and financed by an external power seeking military intervention:

Advirtió que en Venezuela se está aplicando un plan para llevar al país al "caos social, político y militar (...) para generar una espiral creciente de odio y confrontación de pueblo contra pueblo y luego justificar lo injustificable: el llamado a una intervención extranjera militar en los asuntos internos de Venezuela".

This sounds remarkably like the argument made by the U.S. as it pushed for the Declaration of Caracas in 1954. Focusing on Guatemala, Communism was an external threat for all:

This declaration of foreign policy made by the American republics in relation to dangers originating outside this hemisphere is designed to protect and not to impair the inalienable right of each American State freely to choose its own form of government and economic system and to live its own social and cultural life.

John Foster Dulles followed this up with a speech a few months later after the U.S. overthrew Jacobo Arbenz:

Above all, we can be grateful that there were loyal citizens of Guatemala who, in the face of terrorism and violence and against what seemed insuperable odds, had the courage and the will to eliminate the traitorous tools of foreign despots.

Of course, the contexts are different. But the language is very similar. The best way to demonize your political opponent is to claim they are puppets of a foreign power that seeks to overthrow the system and establish something antithetical to the interests of the region. The "region" for the Eisenhower was the hemisphere whereas for Venezuela now it is Latin America.

Read more...

Dialogue and Words in Venezuela

In a variety of ways, the Venezuelan government is indicating that it is open to dialogue. The Venezuelan ambassador to the OAS noted that:

“El diálogo está abierto inclusive para hablar sobre aquello en lo que estamos en desacuerdo, no todas las quejas las consideramos válidas, pero estamos dispuestos a escuchar y tenemos ya algún tiempo discutiendo con la oposición”, expresó Chaderton, en entrevista con CNN.

The government has said similar things before, and there is one problem. If you look at President Maduro's own words, through the state news agency, you see that "dialogue" is accompanied by accusations that the other side are fascists, coup makers, racists, arrogant, and abusive ultra-right militia joiners. In that story alone, he says "fascist" or "fascism" ten times.

At this point neither side seems interested in dialogue. Indeed, the mere phrase "la salida" makes that clear on the opposition side. Maduro says he wants dialogue but it's tough to take that very seriously given all his other comments. When Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (who has had a pretty positive relationship with both Hugo Chávez and Maduro) suggested dialogue, Maduro basically told him to shut up and butt out.

So where does that leave Venezuela? The military has already declared itself on the government's side, which makes this a very different situation from Honduras in 2009 or even Venezuela in 2002. Chávez worked for years to transform the military, and in the absence of any obvious splits (of course, plenty is going on that we don't know about) a coup is unlikely. If there is no dialogue, then it seems the country waits for the protests to peter out. Even if there is financing top keep it going and organized, people get tired of having their lives disrupted. Will they tire out?

Read more...

Venezuelan Protests and the U.S.

Mark Weisbrot says the U.S. shouldn't support regime change in Venezuela. I agree completely, though this isn't a particularly good case of the U.S. doing so. Vanilla statements about concern over treatment of protesters isn't exactly ringing endorsement of regime change.

An anonymous State Department spokesman was even clearer last week, when he responded to the protests by expressing concern about the government's "weakening of democratic institutions in Venezuela", and said that there was an obligation for "government institutions [to] respond effectively to the legitimate economic and social needs of its citizens". He was joining the opposition's efforts to de-legitimize the government, a vital part of any "regime change" strategy.

Meh. There is no doubt that democratic institutions in Venezuela are weakening. Saying so doesn't become a vital part of some strategy. Oddly enough, he even credits John Kerry for forcing the opposition to accept last year's loss.

There is no doubt that the U.S. would like to see someone other than Nicolás Maduro in power, so fair enough. But the evidence and examples don't match particularly well with a coherent strategy of externally imposed regime change.

Read more...

Maduro Brings in the United States

Nicolás Maduro shifted gears a bit yesterday, aiming his rhetoric at the United States. He expelled three consular officials, saying they were conspiring:

Denunció que estos funcionarios han estado visitando, durante los últimos dos meses, diversas universidades privadas de Caracas para ofrecer unas supuestas visas, "pero sabemos que lo que andan es conspirando. Los tenemos precisados".

He also said that through John Kerry the Obama administration was lying:

El gobierno de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela rechaza contundentemente las declaraciones del Secretario de Estado de los Estados Unidos, John Kerry, en tanto constituyen una maniobra más del gobierno de Washington por promover y legitimar los intentos de desestabilización de la democracia venezolana que han desatado grupos violentos en los últimos días. 

El gobierno de Obama miente cuando pone en cuestionamiento la vigencia de los derechos humanos y las garantías democrática en nuestro país. Las instituciones de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, constituidas en un Estado de Derecho y de Justicia, garantizan el ejercicio de los derechos políticos a todos sus ciudadanos, en un marco de amplias libertades cívicas consagradas constitucionalmente.

You can look at these statements through two lenses. The first is that Maduro truly believes the United States is conspiring to overthrow him. The second is that he is using this as a time honored means of rallying the troops against a foreign enemy in a time of crisis.

It may well be both are true to some extent. I have no idea what the consular officials were doing, and Maduro himself wasn't very clear on it, but the Obama administration comments were pretty vanilla. Nonetheless, 12 years ago the United States openly supported a coup in Venezuela, so it is not unreasonable to believe the U.S. government would do it again. At the same time, it is always convenient to have a foreign threat you can point to. In particular, Maduro is increasingly tying Leopoldo López personally to the U.S. government as evidence that he is a fascist traitor.

At this point I am also left to wonder what U.S. officials are even still around to expel. I still haven't seen in either Spanish or English-language press what positions the three people held. We may well be getting into interns or something.

Update: now the Venezuelan government gets more specific and names some names.

Read more...

Kristof on Academia

This Nicholas Kristof article really made the rounds yesterday on Twitter, where political science professors took exception with an argument that perhaps once was true but now is out of date. Here's the crux:

A basic challenge is that Ph.D. programs have fostered a culture that glorifies arcane unintelligibility while disdaining impact and audience. This culture of exclusivity is then transmitted to the next generation through the publish-or-perish tenure process. Rebels are too often crushed or driven away.

“Many academics frown on public pontificating as a frivolous distraction from real research,” said Will McCants, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution. “This attitude affects tenure decisions. If the sine qua non for academic success is peer-reviewed publications, then academics who ‘waste their time’ writing for the masses will be penalized.”

This just isn't true. Outlets like The Monkey Cage are well respected, and contributors include top scholars of all different generations. Back when I started blogging in 2006, people talked about whether to blog while untenured. Nobody does that anymore.

And

My onetime love, political science, is a particular offender and seems to be trying, in terms of practical impact, to commit suicide.

“Political science Ph.D.’s often aren’t prepared to do real-world analysis,” says Ian Bremmer, a Stanford political science Ph.D. who runs the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, one-fifth of articles in The American Political Science Review focused on policy prescriptions; at last count, the share was down to 0.3 percent.

Oh man, where to start? Political scientists are doing "real-world analysis" all the time. I do it pretty much constantly. I have colleagues in my department who are interested in various kinds of increasingly sophisticated methods yet are involved in a large Defense Department grant to understand the relationship between natural resources and conflict. I could go on and on for my department alone.

Now, maybe they don't phrase their research in terms of "policy prescription," but why should they? The important thing is to give policy makers the analysis they need to make decisions rather than tell them what decisions to make.

Kristof assumes that political science work is disseminated only through academic journals. But believe me, when people get things published, they want to reach as many people as possible, so they are writing op-eds, blogging, tweeting, writing about it on Facebook, giving guest lectures (including to the government in various ways, as I've done), talking to reporters, etc., etc.

Coincidentally, I organized a panel for the Latin American Studies Association on this very topic--the connection between academia and the policy world in the study of U.S.-Latin American relations (where, in fact, policy analysis abounds!). I disagree with Kristof's assessment, but the topic is a worthy one.

Read more...

CIDH and the Venezuelan Protests

The Inter-American Commission of Human Rights issued a call for the Venezuelan government to investigate reports of abuses and to adopt measures that avoid the use of violence. It provides some examples that will be familiar to people who have been following the protests.

If history is a guide, to the extent there is a Venezuelan government response it will include words like mafia and fascist, perhaps even "pinochetista." Venezuela pulled out of the CIDH in September 2013, using words like "terrorist." The CIDH, it said, did not rule in favor of the Venezuelan people.

The bottom line is that by their very nature, governments don't like human rights organizations. In particular, they don't follow preferred ideological narratives. Even using the words "pinochetista" shows a weird linguistic mirror of the past, when the Chilean dictatorship hated human rights organizations for being leftist.

Read more...

Lopez Acts Like A Thug

Yesterday I wrote about the logic of how the Venezuelan opposition, which is the minority, needs to show the majority of Venezuelans why they deserve their vote. This is clearly not how to do it. Leopoldo López allegedly has an arrest warrant out against him, and here is his response:

Late Thursday Lopez dared the government to arrest him.

“You don’t have the b---- to put me in jail?” He wrote Maduro on Twitter. “Or are you waiting for your orders from Havana? The truth is on our side.”

Put simply, this is the behavior of a thug. Henrique Capriles has been taking the conciliatory route, a strategy that splits the opposition. See David Smilde's very good take on both the protest violence and the split. López is the one pushing the "la salida" slogan and accompanying hashtag.

It may well be that López would like to become a martyr, but acting like a teenaged bully is not a good way to achieve that. Certainly it is not a good way to demontrate your leadership skills to the majority of Venezuelans that you need to convince. The fact that I keep coming back to is that you will never, ever win an election without that majority. And if by some combination of events you overthrow the government, then you will find a majority of the country against you, as you did in 2002.

Read more...

The Venezuelan Opposition is the Minority

On Twitter, Hugo Pérez Hernáiz linked to this incisive blog post with a Sociology professor in Venezuela. She had participated in the protests and come to a conclusion that is so simple yet gets much less attention than it should.

The bottom line is that the opposition is a minority and without a different strategy likely will remain so. Because of years of mismanagement, a majority of Venezuelans have to be convinced that anyone but the left deserves to rule them. The opposition has done precious little to bother doing so. Probably many don't feel they need to do so.

#LaSalida propone estos caminos porque parte del supuesto erróneo de que la oposición es mayoría. Convertirnos en mayoría tiene que ser, por el contrario, la principal meta política de quienes adversan el autoritarismo creciente de nuestro sistema político. La única forma de llegar a la gente es acompañando su organización, sus luchas y protestas por los problemas inmensos que enfrentan hoy. Es un trabajo arduo porque supone romper la barrera que hemos construido con años de extrema polarización. Y como todas aquellas metas que son difíciles de lograr, se necesita constancia y los resultados no se alcanzan de la noche a la mañana. Y este sería mi llamado a los jóvenes de hoy: no necesitamos que expongan sus vidas, necesitamos su creatividad, su ímpetu para hacer llegar su mensaje por un futuro mejor a ese sector del país que todavía se siente representado por el gobierno.

This isn't about marching, or making noise, or complaining, or even ideology for that matter. It's about constructing clear platforms and plans to demonstrate why current supporters of Maduro should ever vote for someone else. You can't just be the not-Maduro candidate. You can't just talk about oppression, because many of the people you want to convince don't feel oppressed, or at least feel no more oppressed than they ever did.

Otherwise you can go ahead and try to win a recall, and even if somehow you accomplish that, then you will lose the following presidential election. And you will keep losing elections, over and over and over.

Read more...

Venezuelan Protests

I'm quoted in this Bloomberg story about the protests and violence in Venezuela. My quote comes out sounding very categorical, but it is what I think at the moment, namely that it's premature to talk of a coup or regime change. To talk about anything like that we need some sort of sign that the Venezuelan military--or parts of it--are shifting against Nicolás Maduro.

Chávez worked for years after 2002 to make sure the military was with him, and coups are rare in any event. My argument was that even to start talking in these terms, the protests would have to be sustained and spread. Maduro, unlike Chávez, is not a military man so no one knows exactly how deep the reservoir of good will ultimately will be.

The opposition wants "la salida," but we're not there yet. The best thing to do is watch the military, to the extent that it's possible. That's where coups happen or not.

Update: I forgot to include something I had put on Twitter yesterday, which was that the Venezuelan government's references to the protests were that the streets of Caracas were filled with "happiness." It's not clear who they figure to convince of this.

Read more...

Why Support For Better Cuba Relations Means Little

Much is being made of the new Atlantic Council poll indicating that a majority of Americans support normalizing relations with Cuba. This isn't particularly new, and raises similar questions that have been raised in the past. The big one is if popular sentiment goes along these lines, then why does the policy as a whole not budge?

I think the core of the answer is pretty simple. The vast majority of Americans don't care at all about Cuba. Those who support normalization don't care very much about it. On a list of priorities they would place it really, really, low. Therefore if it never happens, they remain unconcerned, and will never alter their voting behavior as a result.

The tiny minority of Americans of oppose normalization care about it very deeply. On a list of priorities it would be high; for some, number one. Therefore they will fight very hard, expend considerable political capital, and spend a lot of money to make sure the embargo and other similar policies remain firmly in place.

Therefore the second group wins. It simply does not matter what a majority of Americans support if they do not really care about it.

Read more...

Venezuela Celebrates Iran

Venezuela thinks the Iranian dictatorship is awesome and celebrates its 35th anniversary. Of course, this has much less to do with the ridiculous rumors of Iranian presence in Latin America and much more with the fact that the shah was a product of stupid and counterproductive U.S. policy, and therefore Iran is attractive to Venezuela. It's unfortunate, though, to take this to the extreme of saying things like Iranians are now free of oppression.

Once again, Venezuela criticizes the United States but simply takes a foreign policy that is the exact mirror opposite of it, which unfortunately is also reprehensible. The U.S. lauds Middle Eastern dictatorship allies and Venezuela lauds Middle Eastern dictatorships that aren't U.S. allies. That few of these governments deserve anything but criticism doesn't seem to enter the debate.

The U.S. and Venezuela (and their supporters domestically) then take the left-right ideological dichotomy for U.S.-Latin American relations and just translate it to the Middle East, where it does not make any sense at all. Just depressing, really.

Read more...

Trusting Immigration Enforcement

Today's Charlotte Observer editorial hits the nail on the head about the John Boehner's backing off immigration reform:

“There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws,” Boehner said Thursday at the Capitol. “And it’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.” 

This, of course, is like your 10-year-old telling you that he really wanted to clean his room, but he couldn’t trust that you would ever be satisfied. The “yes-we-can-well-no-we-can’t” also has the classic markings of a political bait-and-switch. Tell the voters that you really want to get things done, and even release a list of “standards” dealing how. Then, when the other side disagrees on the prescription, say “Well, we tried.”

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/02/09/4672196/on-immigration-a-gop-bait-and.html#.Uvjb6fldWXU#storylink=cpy

As I say until I end up turning blue, President Obama has enforced immigration law and deported more people than any president in the history of the United States. If there is one thing you can trust him on, it is to keep up enforcement.

This goes back to Kevin Siers' great cartoon almost three years ago on the exact same topic. From a political perspective, this will remain a losing battle for Republicans.

Read more...