U.S. President Donald Trump on Venezuela and Cuba at the U.N.

The words U.S. President Trump used against the Venezuelan dictatorship have no precedent in the history of Venezuela-U.S. relations. They were direct, unambiguous and lifted the spirits of millions of Venezuelans who are suffering under one of the most cruel, ignorant and pernicious regimes in Latin American history. President Trump also spoke briefly about Cuba, although he did not mention the criminal tutelage Cuba exerts on Venezuelan leaders, a macabre relationship that is at the very root of the Venezuelan tragedy. The Cuban and Venezuelan dictatorial regimes are political Siamese brothers linked by a common hatred of the United States.

President Trump said:

“That is why in the Western Hemisphere, the United States has stood against the corrupt and destabilizing regime in Cuba and embraced the enduring dream of the Cuban people to live in freedom.  My administration recently announced that we will not lift sanctions on the Cuban government until it makes fundamental reforms.

We have also imposed tough, calibrated sanctions on the socialist Maduro regime in Venezuela, which has brought a once thriving nation to the brink of total collapse.

The socialist dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro has inflicted terrible pain and suffering on the good people of that country.  This corrupt regime destroyed a prosperous nation by imposing a failed ideology that has produced poverty and misery everywhere it has been tried.  To make matters worse, Maduro has defied his own people, stealing power from their elected representatives to preserve his disastrous rule.
 
The Venezuelan people are starving and their country is collapsing.  Their democratic institutions are being destroyed.  This situation is completely unacceptable and we cannot stand by and watch.

As a responsible neighbor and friend, we and all others have a goal.  That goal is to help them regain their freedom, recover their country, and restore their democracy.  I would like to thank leaders in this room for condemning the regime and providing vital support to the Venezuelan people.

The United States has taken important steps to hold the regime accountable.  We are prepared to take further action if the government of Venezuela persists on its path to impose authoritarian rule on the Venezuelan people.
 
We are fortunate to have incredibly strong and healthy trade relationships with many of the Latin American countries gathered here today.  Our economic bond forms a critical foundation for advancing peace and prosperity for all of our people and all of our neighbors.

I ask every country represented here today to be prepared to do more to address this very real crisis.  We call for the full restoration of democracy and political freedoms in Venezuela. (Applause) 

The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.  (Applause)  From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure.  Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems. 

These words should leave no doubt in the minds of the United Nations about the political posture of the United States on Venezuela. However, there exists a significant gap between these presidential words and concrete U.S. executive actions. Although recent U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan drug traffickers and violators of human rights have been numerous and effective, for which all decent Venezuelans are thankful, they have been catalyzed mostly by the U.S. Congress, with the cooperation of the U.S. Treasury Department. The U.S. Department of State has kept a much milder stance, limiting themselves to asking for a dialogue between the criminal regime and the victims of the regime. This request for a dialogue amounts in practice to cooperation with the Maduro regime, as it will allow them to stay in power for long months more. In asking for a dialogue that is immoral and strategically ruinous for the Venezuelans fighting for democracy, the Department of State, namely those bureaucrats in charge of the Venezuelan desk, have joined forces to ask for this dialogue with a group of Venezuelan leaders who have abandoned their desire to fight for freedom and democracy and with some traditional diplomats of the western world, who feel that a dialogue is the “civilized solution”. This alliance is being forged today, even if entails impunity for the crimes of the Venezuelan regime in power and the surrendering of principles and values that the United States has historically sworn to defend.

There is an enormous difference between what President Trump has said in the U.N. and what the general trend of the State Department strategies regarding Venezuela seem to be. We believe this major discrepancy has to be settled because every day that goes by Venezuela falls deeper into a political and economic abysm, a humanitarian crisis that has become a major threat to U.S. National Security.

President Trump’s speech recognized this danger, by assigning to the Venezuelan crisis almost as much attention as he did to the North Korean crisis. Of course, the two situations cannot be compared in magnitude. The North Korean crisis could develop into a global nuclear war that could wipe out humanity. The Venezuelan crisis does not have carry this mega-risk, but it does carry the risk of seeing Latin America, again, under the threat of an alliance of demagogues and thieves. Look at what is going on: Lula da Silva in Brazil, in spite of being a thief, is again running for president; FARC, the Colombian terrorists have been given undue privileges by the Colombian government to enter into politics; Cristina Fernandez in Argentina is still getting votes; Maduro has just created a National Assembly with total powers that amount to a complete dictatorship;  The OAS is being effectively blocked from sanctioning the Venezuelan regime by a group of Caribbean countries which receive subsidized oil from the Venezuelan regime; the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Guterres, in synchrony with French, Dominican Republic and Chilean diplomats, and, even, the Pope, keep asking for a friendly agreement between the Venezuelan criminals and its victims; Cuba remains practically untouched by western criticism and, in fact, the King of Spain is preparing to visit Mr. Castro in January 2018 in order to promote joint economic and political ventures.

For some time I believed there were two well defined camps regarding the Venezuelan tragedy: the criminals in power and those who try to combat them,  but I now realize that there are three groups, the third one being a big, intermediary, gelatinous mass of moral invertebrates asking for a transaction, for a deal, for an agreement in Venezuela, that will let the criminals go untouched to enjoy their ill-gained money in the western world and that will keep the world “orderly and without major disturbances”. The members of this group have much to gain: major roles in future governments in Venezuela, huge economic benefits now  and, in the case of the diplomatic world, maybe even a Nobel Peace prize.

As always, the big losers will be the poor people, the people in the streets, the eternal victims. When will we have a true moral revolution?