The U.S. will not renew a license set to expire on Thursday that had broadly eased Venezuela oil sanctions, moving to reimpose punitive measures in response to President Nicolas Maduro’s failure to meet certain election commitments, senior U.S. officials said. Just hours before the deadline, the U.S. Treasury Department announced on its website that it had issued a replacement license giving companies 45 days to “wind down” their business and transactions in the OPEC country's oil and gas sector. Washington had repeatedly threatened in recent months to reinstate energy sanctions unless Maduro made good on his promises that led to partial U.S. sanctions relief fromOctober, following an election deal reached between the government and the Venezuelan opposition.
Sure bro.
Venezuela: Stops doing what America wants, sanctions. Keeps not doing what America wants, coups.
Hope that clears things up.
Thanks for demonstrating utter illiteracy in international affairs. Thinking is too hard, I guess; easier to treat it as a religion.
Uh huh. Hey, why don’t you hop over to a South or Central American community and ask them what they think about it?
You know, you’ve usually got pretty reasonable takes. I think some more, and non-American, perspectives on the matter might do you a lot of good.
Good idea.
I majored in international history. I follow international politics closely. The assumption that American diabolism is the default position amongst non-Americans is nothing but fantasy. In some places, the US retains a good reputation - in others, a predominantly negative one - but the fantasies of American diabolists, where the US is always a negative influence and never does anything, even accidentally, correct, is not a majority opinion outside of a small circlejerk of online leftists.
Mmhhmm.
I don’t see them asking for American intervention anywhere in that. Weird.
What the fuck does not asking for American invention have to do with US sanctions for blatantly undemocratic activity that’s been roundly condemned by democratic nations both in the region and abroad?
Do you think sanctions on an already struggling nation, for whatever reason, aren’t intervention?
Why is that Venezuela deserves sanctions when China and Israel, two proven enemies of democracy themselves, do not?
I’m sure at has nothing to do with brown people having oil reserves in America’s backyard. Not at all 😜
Wait, so sanctions are intervention in your view? Are you willing to stand by that? Because if so, I have a long laundry list of questions to ask you about international affairs.
Israel definitely deserves it. China probably deserves it but is too economically intertwined for sanctions not to simply backfire - as the ‘trade war’ of the Trump administration showed.
Sanctions are, by definition, interventionism, a political act in an attempt to force compliance against free market principles (not that I care all that much about those, mind you, but public American policy says it does)
And even disregarding that, do you honestly believe that is all America is doing in Venezuela?
To be clear, I have little doubt Maduro is a dictator. I just question why he’s the only one America seems able to take an actual stance against, and what, exactly, we hope to gain.
And maybe we should ask ourselves worsening an open humanitarian crisis in a way that always, always affects the poor more than the rich is the right course of action anywhere.
(Not counting countries actively invading their neighbors, anyways)
And don’t ask yourself where all those refugees are going to go if Venezuela collapses completely…
And what political ideology has something to gain from yet another “border crisis”