The president of Argentina, Javier Milei. Photo: File photo.
By Misión Verdad – Apr 2, 2024
Is the emergence of a new Lima Group possible? Yes, unquestionably. The possibility that some countries agree to position themselves in a specific way on certain specific issues is the basis of what we know as multilateralism, and the aspiration to build regional positions on specific issues through dialogue and consensus is true and desirable, whether for the addressing climate change, the defense of the Amazon, bloc trade negotiations and why not? It has already happened, in their taking a stand against Venezuela.
And, although such a possibility would contravene the most basic principles of international law and political relations between States, it is a reality that we in Venezuela should be preparing for. Not only because of the calls of the most extreme political actors of the Venezuelan opposition to involve, stubbornly, the international community on issues that are exclusive to Venezuelans, but also because there are international actors eager to interfere due to an ideological affinity with that Venezuelan extremist opposition, as well as in the face of an eventual change of administration in the White House, and consequently also modification in the policy towards Venezuela.
We are accustomed to the first thing by the opposition that historically calls for sanctions, military interventions and international isolation, especially María Corina Machado, who does not hide her international lobbying against the country. Regarding the second factor, the painful episode was thought to have been overcome in which a group of Latin American and Caribbean countries clearly aligned with the United States tried to isolate Venezuela between the years 2017-2020, but, following the statements of the Argentinian president, Javier Milei, it is evident that there are governments longing for that scenario to be repeated.
The importance of the discussion is not about the right or wrong of such a measure; that distinction has been erased when we witnessed the Israeli settler genocide of the Palestinian people without the international community taking effective measures to prevent it, or when we witnessed the Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, violating the most basic norms of coexistence between states. The problem with the rebuilding of a Lima 2.0 Group lies in its viability/effectiveness, and even more so in the implications that such action would have for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Resurrecting a failure
In its original version, which emerged with the Lima Declaration of August 8, 2017, the objectives set by its members were clear: generate the conditions for a peaceful and negotiated transition of power in Venezuela. Thus, the lack of knowledge of the institutionality of the Venezuelan State was transversal during the operation of the Lima Group, and, despite the fact that the bilateral measures taken by its members were not homogeneous, Caracas resented with greater rigor those of the countries that blocked, confiscated, and pushed for the theft of their assets (Monómeros del Caribe, debt with Paraguay, Bandes Uruguay, just to name a few).
And, although the objectives set by the group were not achieved and the transition for which they worked never came, the Lima Group became an ode to the failure of Latin American multilateralism, because it evidenced the geopolitical disorientation of the region and its introjected dependence on the United States, which always saw it as a transmission belt or sounding board for its policies against Venezuela, laying the foundations of mistrust between the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Hence, a Lima Group 2.0, updated and perhaps with more “credible or viable” objectives, is materially and politically possible, in a current context where extremist factors preside over governments in some countries in the region and have announced, as recently President Javier Milei did, to be willing to apply sanctions and try to convince other countries in the region to join such an initiative, because, in his opinion in Venezuela there is a dictatorship from which we should get out.
However, to think that the regional policies of “maximum pressure” on the Venezuelan government will now have an effect, not only politically and diplomatically isolating President Nicolás Maduro in the region, but will also contribute to the “end of the regime” is, at the very least, delusional. This demonstrates a profound ignorance about the true scope of these measures, which continue to demonstrate their failure on a daily basis.
Venezuela has managed to overcome, with its own efforts, the devastating effect of unilateral coercive measures and sanctions, but not without resenting the consequences imposed on it by the United States sanctions regime applied since the administration of Barack Obama, deepened during the presidency of Donald Trump, and that current President Joe Biden has continued.
It is not that Venezuela is immune to this type of measures (such as those proposed by President Milei and the defunct Lima Group), on the contrary: from a diplomatic and cooperation approach, the principle of good neighborliness and good relations with nearby countries are necessary to enhance the national and regional development of a State, but not essential for the sustainability of a country, much less one like Venezuela that has invested the last 25 years of republican existence in the construction of multipolar and pluricentric international relations.
Trade balances can change at surprising speeds, as can investment flows: whoever is our main trading partner today may not be our main trading partner tomorrow, as has been demonstrated in recent years. Nowadays, political stability is worth more as an economic guarantee than ideological closeness between countries.
That is why we should not overestimate a supposed reissue of the policy of “maximum pressure” and isolation on Venezuela by some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. In a context of transition and change from one international order to another, Caracas has the necessary allies to confront, as it has been doing for some time, these attempts at encirclement. But, this should not lead us to an exercise in thoughtlessness that blinds us to the strategic objectives to which Venezuela must commit as a national project.
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How this would play out
The first impact of a process of re-editing the policy of political and diplomatic isolation through a Lima Group 2.0 would be, without a doubt, on the Venezuelan migrants who need to maintain a link, at least minimal, through of the consular offices, with the institutions of the Venezuelan State, and that would be affected by a break in relations.
However, it is important to point out that no country in the region, including the United States, as has been observed since the end of last year, can seriously address the migration phenomenon, ignoring Venezuela and therein its government.
In this way, the deterioration of the country’s relations with its Latin American and Caribbean neighbors would undoubtedly complicate the already complicated situation of compatriots who are outside the country who, maintaining their status as migrants, cannot exercise their citizenship rights granted to them by the Venezuelan State.
It is also likely that the operations of the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, as well as the private ones that maintain international operations, will be affected in the countries that assume this position, equally impacting the community of Venezuelans who are in said countries in that they would lose direct connectivity with Caracas.
However, where damage will be seen that would border on irreparable, from the implementation of a Lima Group 2.0, is in the integration project that the region has been postponing for some time and which would see in this new episode one more excuse for its postponement. First, for an obvious reason: the distrust would be generated first in Venezuela, but also in other States, by the politicization and ideologization of the foreign policy of Latin American and Caribbean countries, with which it would not be possible to build lasting relations since, with each change of government, the instrumentalization of its foreign policy would come.
In this scenario, it would be impossible to carry out any integration project, even of an economic type, where, according to neoliberal orthodoxy, no political, much less ideological, assessment should be involved.
In that scenario, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) would suffer the same fate as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), entering into a kind of paralysis and immobility that would sentence its viability, either due to the same boycott by countries that they would not want to participate in political-diplomatic spaces where Venezuela participates, due to a strategic interest in definitively putting an end to the possibility of sovereign integration that was consolidated around CELAC.
Milei’s recent statements confirm that he is becoming the United States’ transmission belt in the region, as Macri once was, aligning himself with the historical US interference in Latin America and the Caribbean. The recent attacks on Venezuela and other countries that, with their particularities, act autonomously from Washington’s impositions are no coincidence. This attack occurs in a context of decline of the dollar as the reference currency in large international transactions.
Venezuela, in this still hypothetical, but quite possible scenario, must begin to design its mitigation bet for these two effects that we mentioned previously. The first: design mechanisms that allow maintaining a direct link with Venezuelan citizens who remain abroad and who could be affected by these policies, leveraging the benefits of digital government.
In reference to the regional integration project, mandated by the national Constitution, Venezuela must strengthen integration mechanisms such as ALBA-TCP, making it more effective and leveraging its economic impact, transcending the simple forum for political consultation to which it has been limited in the last five years.
Venezuela has the experience and capacity to overcome a new scenario that emulates the one that occurred with the Lima Group starting in 2017. However, it must initiate a coordinated and planned strategy that allows mitigating the effects that the new interventionist adventure seeks to impose, guaranteeing the rights of Venezuelans abroad and consolidating the spaces in which it still has a presence.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/AU
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
