Neg for Venezuela Practice Debate

---Appeasement/Cuba Lobby

GOP and Cuba lobby HATE Venezuela and spin plan as appeasement

Boothroyd, 12

Rachel Boothroyd, journalist in Caracas, Venezuela. She contributes to Venezuelanalysis, Pulsamerica and Correo del Orinoco International, and has had pieces published on other sites such as the Latin American Bureau, Green Left Weekly, Znet and Global Research.9/25/12, http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7283

Republicans Vow to Halt “Policy of Appeasement” in Venezuela Caracas, September 23 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Republican nominee for Vice-President of theU.S., Paul Ryan, has vowed that a Romney administration would get “tough on Castro, tough on Chavez” and to end what he described as a “policy of appeasement” applied by the Obama administration towards both Cuba and Venezuela. Ryan made the comments from the Versailles Restaurant in Miami, Florida last Saturday, where he was accompanied by staunch members of the anti-Castro lobby, including Republican Representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Ros-Lehtinen is a member of the Cuban-American Lobby and the Congressional Cuban Democracy Caucus; organisations which claim to be aimed at speeding up Cuba’s “transition to democracy”. "In a Mitt Romney administration, we will not keep practising this policy of appeasement, we will be tough on this brutal dictator (Castro). All it has done is reward more despotism... We will help those pro-democracy groups. We will be tough on Castro, tough on Chavez. And it's because we know that's the right policy for our country,” said Ryan. The nominee had reportedly travelled to Florida in a bid to win over the majority Latino vote two months ahead of the US elections. Florida is currently thought to be a “swing state” and could prove a determining vote for the overall election results. Results of a recent voter intention poll in the state carried out by NBC news show that Obama currently has a 5% lead over Romney, with a voting intention of 49% to 44%. ‘I learned from these friends, from Mario (Diaz-Balart), from Lincoln (Diaz-Balart), from Ileana (Ros-Lehtinen), just how brutal the Castro regime is, just how this president's policy of appeasement is not working. They've given me a great education, lots of us in Congress, about how we need to clamp down on the Castro regime,” said Ryan. According to Ros-Lehtinen, Ryan is now a “loyal friend” to those who campaign on Cuba-related political issues. Ryan's statements have caused some Democrats to accuse him of hypocrisy after he appears to have dramatically changed his stance on Cuba-US relations. Prior to 2007, the Republican had called for “free trade” between all nations, which included voting to lift the trade embargo on Cuba. "To paraphrase President Clinton, it takes real brass to vote three times against economic sanctions on the Cuban regime and then come to Little Havana and ask Cuban-Americans for their vote," said Giancarlo Sopo, a Cuban-American supporter who told the US' Sun Sentinel that he would vote for Obama. "It's one thing to have a genuine disagreement with someone on a policy. It's something else to change your position from one day to the next just to pander in order to win votes,” added Sopo. Recently leaked footage of a meeting between Romney and party donors also showed the presidential hopeful lambasting Obama for believing that “his magnetism and his charm, and his persuasiveness is so compelling that he can sit down with people like Putin and Chávez and Ahmadinejad, and that they'll find that we're such wonderful people that they'll go on with us, and they'll stop doing bad things”. The leaked recording also shows Romney referring to Iranian President Ahmadinejad as a “crazed fanatic” and Iranian mullahs as “crazy people”. He also commented that, in his view, the Palestinian people have “no interest whatsoever in establishing peace”. With the presidential elections now drawing near, the Republican party is beginning to increasingly outline its prospective domestic and foreign policy, which Romney has said would be principally based on an attempt to implement a neo-liberal “Reagan economic zone” in Latin America and other regions, such as the Middle East. The Republican presidential candidate has been outspoken in his criticism of the “anti-American” views purported by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba and Iran and has described them as one of the biggest threats to the United States today. Earlier in July, Romney branded the Venezuelan government as a “threat to national security” and accused the country's president, Hugo Chavez, of “spreading dictatorships and tyranny throughout Latin America”. The Republican National Committee also circulated a video of Obama shaking hands with Chavez at the OAS “Summit of the Americas” in Trinidad and Tobago 2009 at the same time. Romney has often claimed that the leader of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution has links to “terrorist” organisations such as Hezbollah and has access to weapons that could “harm the US”. He has never presented any evidence in support of these accusations.

Powerful cuba lobby hates Venezuela economic engagement – even under maduro

Kozloff, 13 (Nikolas, doctorate in Latin American history from Oxford University, author of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), No Rain in the Amazon: How South America's Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet (Palgrave Macmilan, 2010), Huffington Post, 4/14, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikolas-kozloff/maduro-elections-venezuela_b_3078387.html)
Déjà Vu? Washington's War on Cuba and Venezuela: From the Kissinger Files to 'Cable Gate' If the polls are to be believed, Hugo Chávez's successor Nicolás Maduro will probably defeat the political opposition in Sunday's presidential election, thus securing and solidifying Cuban-Venezuelan ties yet further. Such an outcome will come as a severe disappointment to Washington, which has spent the better part of 40 years trying to prevent such a diplomatic alliance from developing in the first place. For evidence of U.S. paranoia over Cuba, one need only consult the so-called "Kissinger files," sensitive State Department cables recently made accessible by whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks. The correspondence, which dates between 1973 and 1976, underscores Henry Kissinger's single-minded obsession with quarantining Cuba lest Castro's influence be felt far afield. In late 1973, U.S. diplomats expressed concern about Venezuelan moves to end Cuba's diplomatic isolation, and were particularly worried that Caracas might "put together Organization of American States [OAS] majority in support resolution permitting reestablishment relations with Cuba." Washington was also perturbed by reports that Venezuelan Navy vessels had departed for Cuba in order to load up on large shipments of sugar, and diplomats contemplated a possible cutoff of aid to Caracas in retaliation. Not only had the State Department grown alarmed about such developments, but rightist anti-Castro exiles were becoming restive as well. According to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, the exiles were "appalled" at the prospect that COPEI, the current party in power, might renew relations with Cuba. In an ominous move, the exiles planned to publish full page newspaper ads against the COPEI administration. Hoping to punish COPEI at the polls, exiles threw their support to opposing party Acción Democrática (or AD) in the 1973 presidential election. Ultimately, the Americans noted, such support proved critical and "highly influential Cuban-Venezuelan entrepreneurs, backed by Cuban money from Miami" helped AD candidate Carlos Andrés Pérez secure an electoral victory. The Rise of CAP If Kissinger or the Cuban exile community however hoped that Pérez, sometimes known simply as "CAP," would prove amenable to their designs they would be sorely disappointed. History has not been kind to CAP, largely due to the latter's second and disastrous presidency which lasted from 1989 to 1993, during which time the veteran politician followed the diktats of the International Monetary Fund and nearly drove Venezuela to the point of social collapse. Nevertheless, during his first incarnation in the 1970s CAP was regarded as a nationalist and something of a galvanizing figure on the Third World circuit. From 1974 to 1979, during his first presidency, CAP nationalized U.S. oil companies and oversaw a program of massive social spending. Writing to Kissinger in Washington, the U.S. ambassador in Caracas fretted that Venezuela now had "the economic strength and political leadership in president Pérez to make her will felt beyond her borders." Indeed, the diplomat added, "the energy crisis and president Carlos Andrés Pérez's electoral victory in December 1973 coincided and together have changed Venezuela's perception of herself and her world role." Just like Chávez some 20 years later, CAP was "rapidly emerging as a hemisphere figure." Taking advantage of windfall oil prices, CAP had turned Venezuela into a large international donor of development assistance. Personally, the ambassador feared that CAP had grown too large for his britches as the youthful firebrand politician was fast becoming "a Latin American spokesman for the developing third world countries vis-a-vis the developed nations, especially the Unites States." Reading through the Kissinger files, one is possessed with an incredible sense of déjà vu. Combing through paranoid U.S. telegrams, it's easy to imagine that diplomats might have been referring not to CAP but to charismatic Hugo Chávez. Indeed, if anything the correspondence underscores just how hostile Washington has been to any nationalist politician emerging in Venezuela, particularly if such a figure threatened U.S. priorities in the Caribbean. Specifically, U.S. diplomats and anti-Castro exiles worried that CAP might use his newfound diplomatic clout to edge closer to Fidel.

Congress and GOP backlash and media spin ensure perceived as appeasement, weak on security and soft on Castro– also a flip flop -

Robertson, 12

Ewan Robertson, 4/11/12, Latin America Bureau analyst @ Venezuala Analysis, http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6916

As both countries head toward important presidential elections this year, the United States has been intensifying its interventionist policy in Venezuela. However, US attempts to influence Venezuela’s domestic politics while casting it a “rogue state” on an international level, is leaving the Obama administration increasingly out-of-sync with Latin America’s new political reality. US Intervention in Venezuela Since the election of President Hugo Chávez in 1998, US policy has aimed at removing the Venezuelan president from power and ending the Bolivarian Revolution which he leads. This policy has included support by the Bush presidency for the short-lived April 2002 coup in Venezuela, which failed after mass protests returned Chávez to power. Since then the US has focused on nurturing Venezuela’s conservative opposition, channelling over US$100 million to groups opposed to Chávez since 2002. Meanwhile Washington and US corporate mass media have attempted to de-legitimise his government internationally in a propaganda campaign, portraying Venezuela as a threat to the US and its president as a “dangerous dictator” who has trampled upon democracy and human rights. Any hopes that the Obama administration would usher a new era of respect for Venezuelan sovereignty have long been dashed, with intervention intensifying as Venezuela’s October 7th presidential election draws closer and Chavez seeks his third term in office. In the last twelve months the US government has imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA for trading with Iran, expelled the Venezuelan consul in Miami based on a suspect documentary implicating the Venezuelan diplomat in plotting a cyber-attack against the US, and publicly criticised the appointment of Venezuela’s new Defence Minister Henry Rangel Silva. While direct US actions have maintained a constant rhythm of pressure against Venezuela, Washington’s hopes of removing Chávez from power undoubtedly lie in the possibility of the conservative Democratic Unity Table (MUD) opposition coalition defeating Chávez in this year’s presidential election. According to investigative journalist Eva Golinger, the US is providing the opposition in Venezuela with political advice and financial support to the tune of US$20 million $20 million this year. This funding for anti-Chávez groups comes from the US national budget, State Department-linked agencies, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID, along with the US Embassy in Caracas. A curious detail suggests that the US Embassy has become a key conduit for the distribution of this money. While the Embassy currently only maintains a Charge D’Affairs responsible for diplomatic operations, and overall staff levels remain unchanged, the Embassy budget jumped from almost $16 million in 2011 to over $24 million for 2012, an unexplained increase of over $8 million. Washington has long worked to see the development of a united Venezuelan opposition capable of defeating Chávez. With the current MUD coalition displaying relative unity behind opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski, and the still popular Chávez currently undergoing treatment for cancer, the US is likely hoping 2012 is the year to see an end to Chávez’s administration. Indeed, the make-up of Venezuela’s opposition reads like a “who’s who” of figures who have received advice and financial support from US sources over the previous decade. Several of those who ran in the opposition’s February primary elections to elect the MUD presidential candidate have ties with US financial aid, including the winner Radonski. His political party Primero Justicia has been a key recipient of funding and political training since its founding in 1999, which has helped it to grow into a national force. US funding has also followed fellow primaries candidate Leopoldo López throughout his political career, first in Primero Justicia, then in Un Nuevo Tiempo from 2002, before receiving NED and USAID funding to support his own organisation Voluntad Popular. MUD National Assembly deputy and primaries candidate Maria Machado Corina has also received heavy US financial support, as well as holding a private meeting with George W Bush in 2004. Machado has recently been appointed as a coordinator for Radonski’s “Tricolour Command” presidential election campaign, while Leopoldo López is now a member of the Radonski campaign’s select Political Strategic Command. The Political Strategic Command is headed by experienced opposition figure Professor Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, who with his close political colleagues “assists US sponsors in pouring money into the MUD,” according to analyst Nil Nikandrov. The importance of US funding in helping to shape the current Venezuelan opposition should not be underestimated. Indeed, according to US Embassy cables released by Wikileaks, in 2009 US Embassy chargé d’affaires John Caulfield argued for increased US funding of opposition groups, as “without our continued assistance, it is possible that the organizations we helped create ... could be forced to close...Our funding will provide those organizations a much-needed lifeline”. Another aspect of Washington’s approach to Venezuela moving into 2012 has been the increase of aggressive rhetoric designed to de-legitimise the government and open the possibility of more direct intervention. At a special Organisation of American States (OAS) session held in Washington in March, Democrat Congressman Eliot Engel said Venezuelan democracy was being “trampled” by the Chávez administration and advocated a “robust” OAS mission be sent to the country to monitor the October presidential elections. Not to be outdone by their Democratic counterparts, Republicans have continued to wind up the rhetorical dial on Venezuela. In a presidential nomination debate in Florida this January, Mitt Romney made a commitment to “punish those who are following” Hugo Chávez and his ally Fidel Castro, ex-president of Cuba. He claims that Obama has “failed to respond with resolve” to Chávez’s growing international influence, arguing in his October 2011 foreign policy white paper foreign policy white paper that he would “chart a different course” in US policy toward Venezuela and other leftist governments in Latin America. Of course, US foreign policy has nothing to do with concern for democracy nor fabrications that Venezuela is involved in plotting an attack against the US.

Nationalized industries and trade ties ensure economic engagement can’t avoid backlash as soft on Venezuela regime, national security, Cuba and terrorism

Robertson, 12

Ewan Robertson, 4/11/12, Latin America Bureau analyst @ Venezuala Analysis, http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6916

Venezuela is one of the region’s most vibrant democracies, witnessing a huge increase in political participation in the previous decade, both in internationally-certified free and fair elections and in new grassroots forms, such as the thousands of communal councils which have sprung up around the country. Figures in Washington routinely ignore the facts and the evidence regarding Venezuela, for example never mentioning the Chilean-based Latinobarometro regional poll in which Venezuelan citizens regularly demonstrate they have one of the highest levels of support for democracy, and satisfaction with how their democracy works in practice, in Latin America. Rather, the issue for policy makers in Washington is that since the arrival of Chávez Venezuela has refused to play its designated role within US imperial strategy. That is, to offer a reliable supply of cheap oil controlled by US companies, to act as a market for US-based private foreign investment, and to conduct itself as a submissive ally in US diplomacy. It is the Chávez administration’s policies of national control over oil and using the resource to fund social programmes, nationalising strategically important industries, and vocally opposing US foreign policy while pursuing regional integration on principles contrary to “free trade” that have made Venezuela a “problem” for US foreign policy. The Regional Dynamic One of the Chávez’s administration’s key regional integration initiatives is the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), established by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004 as an alternative to US free trade agreements by emphasising mutual solidarity and joint development between member states. The group now contains eight members in Latin America and the Caribbean. Venezuela has also reached out to the Caribbean with the Petrocaribe initiative, in which Venezuela sells oil at preferential rates to participating nations to support their development, with 18 Caribbean states now participating. The US has responded by trying to isolate Venezuela and discredit the ALBA. Romney has described it as a “virulently anti-American ‘Bolivarian’ movement across Latin America that seeks to undermine institutions of democratic governance and economic opportunity”. Meanwhile, Council of Foreign Relations analyst Joe Hirst rather fancifully tried to paint the organisation’s inclusion of social movements as a mechanism for promoting international terrorism, using information from the long-discredited Farc laptops . The US has also applied diplomatic pressure to discourage other states from strengthening ties with Venezuela. These have included using intimidation and diplomatic manoeuvres to try to prevent an alliance between Nicaragua and Venezuela after the 2006 election of leftist Daniel Ortega to the Nicaraguan presidency, and using threats and pressure against Haiti in 2006-7 to scupper the Préval government’s plan to join Petrocaribe. This strategy failed, with Nicaragua joining the ALBA at Ortega’s inauguration in early 2007 and the first Petrocaribe oil shipment reaching Haiti in March 2008.

Cuba fears drive US politics on Venezuela policy and opposition to the plan

Kozloff, 13 (Nikolas, doctorate in Latin American history from Oxford University, author of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), No Rain in the Amazon: How South America's Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet (Palgrave Macmilan, 2010), Huffington Post, 4/14, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikolas-kozloff/maduro-elections-venezuela_b_3078387.html)
Ratcheting up Pressure on Cuba In May, 1974 the U.S. ambassador in Caracas confronted the Venezuelan Foreign Minister with reports claiming that Venezuela sought to import sugar from Cuba. The ambassador explained that he would be "glad to explore ways and means of trying to find additional sugar for Venezuela from countries other than Cuba." Defiantly, CAP shot back that "he intended to go ahead with trade exchanges, including the sale of Venezuelan rice for Cuban sugar." Sure enough, in early 1975 the U.S. Embassy noted that a Cuban vessel had loaded up on Venezuelan rice at a local port. Even more seriously, the Americans fretted that CAP might be tempted to ship oil to Cuba in the event that OAS sanctions were removed. Already, the Soviets were interested in decreasing Cuban dependence on oil transported from the USSR, and indeed Pérez reportedly related in private that Moscow had "been pressing him" to ship oil to the Communist island nation. In late 1976, CAP followed up by traveling to the U.S.S.R. where he inked a deal to export oil to Cuba. On the diplomatic front meanwhile, CAP angered the Americans by resuming relations with Cuba. In Caracas, the Cubans opened a new embassy and staff reportedly included five known intelligence officers. Cuban news agency Prensa Latina meanwhile expanded its activities greatly in Venezuela. In Washington, Kissinger grew alarmed that Venezuela and other sympathetic nations might move to end the sanctions regime on Cuba, and the Secretary therefore instructed his staff to delay any such vote at the OAS. Hardly deterred, CAP went ahead and organized an OAS conference in Quito in November, 1974. However, when CAP failed to obtain the necessary votes, the Venezuelan took out his frustrations on the Americans, remarking indignantly that Washington had bullied certain nations from either abstaining or voting against the OAS initiative. CAP Reacts to Posada Attack Naively perhaps, CAP told U.S. diplomats that he was interested in becoming a kind of "bridge" between Washington and unfriendly Latin governments. Privately, American officials wrote that Venezuela, a major oil supplier to the U.S., was "far too important to allow us to drift into an adversary relationship." "If we choose openly to combat greater Latin American unity," the U.S. ambassador wrote, "the U.S. risks harming its highly important interests in Venezuela and exacerbating its relations with the hemisphere." Whatever the feelings over at the State Department, however, the CIA might have had other ideas in mind. Still smarting from CAP's betrayal, anti-Castro Cubans plotted against the island nation. One such figure was Cuban-born Luis Posada Carriles, a longtime CIA asset. During the 1970s Posada moved to Venezuela where he oversaw U.S. intelligence operations. He is thought to be responsible for the worst terrorist attack in the hemisphere at the time, a hit on Cubana flight 455 which departed Caracas en route to Cuba in October, 1976. After a brief stopover in Barbados, the plane exploded in midair, killing all 73 passengers aboard. Officially, Posada was no longer in the employ of the CIA at the time of the bombing, having left the agency in July. There's no evidence that the CIA directly orchestrated the plot, though records show that Posada may have notified the agency in advance that was a bomb was set to go off. In Caracas meanwhile, the government began to suspect that the U.S. was engaged in foul play. Dismissing Cuban claims of U.S. destabilization as propaganda, American diplomats assured the Venezuelans, rather unconvincingly, that there was "no conspiracy underway to destabilize anything." Ironic Coda Though his administration was dogged by allegations of corruption, CAP still had enough credibility to run for a second term in office in 1988. Campaigning again with the AD on a nationalist platform, CAP was elected to the presidency once more but promptly reversed course and adopted more pro-U.S. policies favorable to the International Monetary Fund. In 1992, CAP faced down a military coup orchestrated by none other than Hugo Chávez and others. Though Chávez was imprisoned, the paratrooper later ran successfully for president. In 1998, Chávez was democratically elected and split apart the corrupt two party AD-COPEI system. Ironically, even though Chávez spent the better part of his career deploring CAP's excesses, the former military officer carried out a very similar foreign policy predicated on opening up relations with Cuba and rhetorically challenging the U.S. If anything, Washington made things worse at this point by seeking to unseat Chávez, and drove Venezuela to pursue even closer links with Cuba. That, at least, is the impression one gets from reading yet another batch of sensitive U.S. correspondence released by WikiLeaks and known as "Cable-Gate." From CAP to Chávez Carrying on from CAP's earlier opening in the 1970s, Chávez opened up regular commercial and military flights between Cuba and Venezuela. In a further blow, Cuba extended its influence at Venezuelan ports. Perhaps even more seriously, Chávez was apparently so taken with the Castro brothers that he consulted directly with Cuban intelligence officers without even bothering to vet the reporting through his own intelligence services. Even as diplomatic relations improved with Cuba, daily dealings with the U.S. Embassy in Caracas took a complete nosedive, as I explain in a recent al-Jazeera column. WikiLeaks cables also illuminate a scheme which led to the exchange of discounted Venezuelan oil for Cuban assistance in the health sector. In an echo meanwhile of earlier press openings under CAP, Venezuela and Cuba now provide joint support for a hemispheric-wide news channel, Telesur. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly in light of Sunday's presidential election, the Americans suspected that Cuba provided key expertise to Chávez on how to expand Venezuela's national electoral registry. It is a fitting irony that to this day, the Posada case continues to fester and, if anything, has only served to bring Cuba and Venezuela closer together. Indeed, both countries have sought to extradite Posada, who currently resides openly in Miami. During the recent presidential campaign, Chávez heir Maduro even claimed that Posada was linked to a group of mercenaries who are intent on assassinating him. Assessing Kissinger Files and Cable-Gate Looking back upon Washington's 40-year campaign to roll back an incipient Cuban-Venezuelan alliance, one is struck by a sense of profound political and diplomatic waste, not to mention the State Department's skewed moral compass. From the Kissinger files to Cable-Gate, America's counter-productive campaign only served to inflame public opinion and, if anything, made Venezuela even more nationalistic by the time of Chávez's arrival on the scene in the 1990s. If Maduro wins on Sunday, as expected, Chávez's heir apparent will probably deepen Cuba ties even further, thus demonstrating once again the complete and utter bankruptcy of U.S. foreign policy.