The Biden Administration recently reported that they will seek to change U.S relations with Venezuela and push for negotiations with President Nicolas Maduro for fair and free elections. Biden team officials claim this will end the economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.
More than 5 million people have fled the South American country due to gang violence, power failures, food shortages, and a left-leaning government’s hostility. The coronavirus pandemic has forced families to walk hundreds of miles on foot and take dangerous sea trips to escape Venezuela.
President Trump and Biden both agreed that President Maduro is a tyrant and should be pushed out of office, but they differ on the approach to foreign alliances. While President Trump and his administration spent their time focused on bilateral relationships and negotiating a Maduro surrender, Biden has talked about wanting to cozy up to authoritarian leaders and ease sanctions over the nation’s oil revenue, as well as a recommitment to the North Atlantic Alliance.
Critics question whether or not President-elect Biden has the authority to expand his restrictions towards international allies. If President Madura moves towards a democratic republic, their backers, including Russia, China, and Iran, are expected to play a role as well.
President-elect Biden wants to ease tensions with President Maduro, even though he has yet to address Juan Guaido, the recognized claim to the Venezuelan presidency since early 2019. President Maduro, however, rigged the election and remains defiantly in charge. He claims that he will stay in office until there’s a free and fair election.
Guaido’s team has tried to reach out and arrange a call with Biden on how to remove Maduro but he has yet to respond. Guaido and his allies have remained in hiding as there have been threats to their personal safety.
Because of Maduro’s actions, people questioned why Biden would want to work with him in the first place, while President Trump has been calling for a surrender. The day after Christmas, President Maduro tweeted out and praised China’s Mao Zedong, the founding father of the Communist Party, even though his principles and ideas caused a violent class struggle and led to the deadliest famine in history. Between 1958 and 1962, 15-55 million people died under his Great Leap Forward communist society, which is more lives than Hitler and Stalin took together.
Washington Post titled an article “Remembering the biggest mass murder in the history of the world” in an attempt to remind the American people, including Biden, of Zedong’s principles and that he was a truly horrific figure. “So that’s what we have to look forward to, America. Attempts to find ways to work with a guy who celebrates the man who starved millions to death,” one tweeted in response.
Liberals tend to underestimate socialism and the horrendous history of it, even going so far as to try and claim that the real problem is not socialism but Venezuela’s “particular brand” of socialism. The mainstream media has also failed to connect the horrendous things happening in Venezuela to socialism. Big governments and a lack of free-market lead to mismanagement and bullying.
There is a way of talking and negotiating with tyrants and then there’s just selling out to them. Joe’s policy is the latter.