Biden Returns Home From Asia To Find a Latin American Policy in Disarray — Even Crisis

President Biden, returning today from an Asian trip during which he toiled to unite allies there as well as in Europe, is facing growing doubts about his messy policies in this hemisphere. A planned summit at Los Angeles, where leaders from across the Americas are to palaver in June, is in shambles. As Mr. Biden makes friendly gestures toward dictators in Cuba and Venezuela, an alliance of Latin leftists is playing him for their own political gains.Resistance isn’t driven this time by America’s detractors in Havana and Caracas. It’s arriving from a friendly capital, Mexico City, where the leftist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is making Mr. Biden an offer he can’t accept: Invite my totalitarian amigos from Cuba and Venezuela, or I won’t go to Los Angeles. The Mexican standoff presents a major setback for Mr. Biden, who has recently invested political capital in an attempt to pacify the region’s — and America’s — leftists in order to shore up the summit. Following an administration delegation’s visit to Caracas in March, Washington announced last week it would ease sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector. The move was described as an attempt to ease pressure on world oil markets.The Chavez and Maduro regimes, however, have run the country’s oil industry into the ground. It will likely be years, if ever, before Venezuelan oil could play a significant role in the globe’s energy supplies.The gestures continued when Mr. Biden partially lifted Trump-era sanctions against Venezuela’s top ally, Cuba. Direct flights to the isle will be renewed and money transfers to Cuba from America will once again be permitted. President Maduro is widely despised at home after running the once-thriving Venezuelan economy to the ground. For him Mr. Biden’s gestures were manna. He promptly announced a plan to go to a Puerto Rican salsa festival in downtown New York. Washington, he said, should grant visas for him and his wife, Celia.“Me and Celia are going straight to New York,” Mr. Maduro said on a Caracas radio show. “They’re waiting for me in New York. I really like New York, I’ve been driving a lot in New York.” One site awaiting Mr. Maduro would be a New York federal courthouse, where, in 2020, Justice Department officials including an assistant Attorney General, Brian Benczkowski, announced an indictment against the Venezuelan strongman on narco-terrorism charges. The Trump administration offered a $15 million award for Mr. Maduro’s arrest. Rather than rejecting Mr. Maduro’s visa request out of hand, Washington officials are scrambling to find a compromise. Their decision is expected in the next few days.“If Maduro comes to dance salsa here, it would turn the U.S. into a clown state,” says a New York-based Venezuelan journalist, Maiburt Petit, whose coverage of the miserable state of affairs in her home country is widely read. Ms. Petit tells the Sun that there are strong pressures on Mr. Biden, from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “all these guys,” to approve Mr. Maduro’s visa request. The salsa festival is to take place a day after the conclusion of the Los Angeles Summit of the Americas, scheduled for the week of June 6-10. According to the State Department, the summit will focus on “building a sustainable, resilient, and equitable future” for the hemisphere. All are nice-sounding goals, aimed at sensibilities held by the region’s left-leaning Marxist politicians. Yet, Mr. Biden’s headache comes from the guest list. Mexico’s president, Mr. Lopez Obrador, announced he would boycott the summit unless heads of state from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, which Washington has declined to invite, also travel to Los Angeles. With an arrest warrant against Mr. Maduro, whose government is unrecognized by Washington to boot, and with several remaining sanctions on Cuba, Mr. Biden is in a pickle. It would be nearly impossible for the administration to issue such invitations. AMLO, as the Mexican president is widely known, is quite aware of those problems. So why is Mexico risking a crisis in its relationship with Washington?Firstly, “AMLO is very pro-Cuba,” a former Mexican foreign minister, Jorge Castaneda, tells the Sun. “It’s also a pretext for him not to go, since he doesn’t like events like this,” he adds. “And thirdly, it’s a way for AMLO to poke Biden, because he’s always liked Trump better.”Either way, a summit meant to spearhead Mr. Biden’s leadership in the Americas is now a scandal. Mr. Biden’s point man on the summit, Senator Dodd, who has long championed Marxist causes in Latin America, planned to go to Mexico City this week to find a compromise.Instead Mr. Dodd conducted a Zoom session with Mr. Lopez Obrador, after which no results were announced. One floated compromise idea is to allow lower-level Cuban and Venzuelan officials to attend the summit. As yet, however, AMLO is adamant that he would only go if heads of state do. Meanwhile several right wing leaders, including Brazil’s president, have announced their intention to skip the summit as well, leaving the whole enterprise in doubt. Landing in Washington today, Mr. Biden will need to make a decision whether to seek a pretext for canceling the crowning event of his policy on the Americas.

Biden Returns Home From Asia To Find a Latin American Policy in Disarray — Even Crisis

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