Friday, February 8, 2019

Get China and Russia Out of Venezuela - and the Western Hemisphere

by Gordon G. Chang • February 8, 2019 at 5:00 am

The partnership of Beijing and Moscow is certainly up to no good. As an initial matter, the duo, powers from the other side of the world, are in Venezuela to take on the United States, not help it.
It is doubtful, as Matt Ferchen of the Leiden Asia Center in the Netherlands suggests, that Beijing can help another society transition to democracy. The same, of course, can be said about Vladimir Putin's Russia. After China and Russia worked to turn Venezuela into "the Syria of the Western Hemisphere," they are not about to democratize it.
An outreach from Washington "would legitimize the concept that Russia and China have a constructive role to play in Western Hemisphere security... the U.S. has everything to lose from inviting China and Russia to the table, and no realistic prospect of gains." — Robert Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College, to Gatestone.
China and Russia make no global problem better. The only sensible approach, therefore, is to remove them from our hemisphere, and the place to begin to do that is Venezuela.

Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez appears to be the legitimate president of Venezuela, and his claim to the presidency has been recognized by the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and a slew of European countries. Pictured: Guaidó (center, waving) on February 2, 2019 in Caracas, Venezuela. (Photo by Marco Bello/Getty Images)

"What are our national security interests in Venezuela?" Adam Smith, the Washington Democrat who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, asked Erin Burnett on January 29 during her CNN primetime show. "The idea that we're going to go in and do battle in Venezuela over who should be running that country, I don't see a single U.S. national security argument for doing that."

Not a single interest, Chairman Smith? In December, two Russian Tu-160 Blackjacks landed near Caracas. The Mach 2, nuclear-capable bombers can launch cruise missiles with a range of 3,410 miles, putting the U.S. homeland at risk from the airspace over Venezuela. The Blackjack bombers also buzzed America's West Coast as they left the region last month.

Representative Smith charged President Trump with making Venezuela policy "on whims and fantasies and no reality behind it."