To Checkmate Venezuela's Maduro, America Should Sanction His Spanish Enablers

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To Checkmate Venezuela's Maduro, America Should Sanction His Spanish Enablers
For better or worse, the path to Venezuela's freedom runs through Spain.
by Juan Ángel Soto Jorge González-Gallarza Hernández

America is playing whack-a-mole with Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. After losing access to most of its oil revenue, the tyrant’s regime is overcoming U.S. sanctions by turning to narco-trafficking. To break this cycle and accelerate Maduro’s demise, U.S. sanctions ought to target the country’s that’s helping him cling onto power: Spain.

To be sure, sanctions thus far have had considerable effect, primarily by drying up the coffers of state-run oil giant PDVSA. Even Russia’s part-public Rosneft has ended up selling off its money-losing assets in Venezuela to the Russian state—one of Maduro’s last overt backers along with China.

However, Maduro has proved stubborn and his grip on power resilient through his ability to weather sanctions by finding alternative revenue sources. He has done this primarily narco-trafficking and Washington is yet to devise a policy that reckons with this elusiveness. Given America’s Jacksonian reluctance to topple him through intervention, spurring defections among Venezuela’s military top brass is the only hope to see him go. To achieve that, U.S. sanctions have sought to turn off the bribe spigot—a steady stream of kickbacks that ensures military officials’ loyalty to Maduro.

Read more at: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/checkmate-venezuelas-maduro-america-should-sanction-his-spanish-enablers-144092