Source: Feel the New World
The author is a student of the Summer School of Latin American Studies (Phase III) at Shanghai University and a Ph.D. candidate in the field of comparative politics at the Institute of International and Area Studies at Tsinghua University
I. Introduction
With the continuous development of global political economy, sanctions have become an important international political tool and are increasingly used by Western countries and the international community. Between 1914 and 1945, there were only 12 sanctions worldwide, and by the 90s of the 20th century, the number had surged to more than 50 and counting. In most of the sanctions programs, the United States has used economic means to pressure these countries to carry out political reforms, citing non-democratic regimes, human rights violations, and threats to international security.
However, there is no consensus in the academic community on whether the sanctions can achieve the desired political effect. It has been argued that economic sanctions will lead to deeper hostility towards the sanctioned country, triggering nationalist sentiment and increasing support for the government. Another view is that economic sanctions will reduce political trust among the people of the affected countries and accelerate the collapse of their regimes. This article will use the U.S. sanctions imposed on Venezuela since Maduro took office as a case study to explore the reasons why U.S. sanctions have struggled to play an effective role.
2. U.S. sanctions against Venezuela
Since Nicolás Maduro came to power in 2013, the U.S. government has significantly expanded the scope of sanctions against the Venezuelan government and Venezuelans, which can be divided into targeted official sanctions, financial sanctions, and industry sanctions.
First, the U.S. government has imposed severe targeted sanctions on some senior Venezuelan officials (see Table 1 for details). In March 2015, then-U.S. President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13692, which imposed asset blockades and visa restrictions on current and former Venezuelan leaders. Then, at the 116th Congress, the United States extended sanctions against Maduro and other officials until 2023. As of January 2021, at least 113 Venezuelans had been affected by such targeted sanctions.
In the area of financial sanctions, in March 2018, Trump issued Executive Order 13827, which prohibits transactions involving digital currencies issued by the Venezuelan government, and in May of the same year, Executive Order 13835 prohibits the purchase of any Venezuelan debt, including all collateral associated with it.
In terms of industry sanctions, since January 2019, the United States has extended its sanctions to Venezuela's pillar industry, namely the oil industry. The U.S. Treasury Department prohibits U.S. companies or individuals from conducting direct transactions with Petroleos de Venezuela (PdVSA) and only allows a few U.S. holding companies, such as PDVH and CITGO, to import oil from PdVSA, but the payment amount must be paid into a frozen U.S. account. Since then, the law has been amended several times to curtail the oil business between the United States and Venezuela.
Table 1: Table of Targeted Sanctions Bills Imposed by the United States on Certain Venezuelan Officials (Author's Own)
Third, the sanctions policy is difficult to achieve
The underlying logic of sanctions is that as long as the sanctions cause enough economic pain to the affected country, the population will put pressure on the government to demand political reform. However, the case of Venezuela shows that sanctions have failed to fundamentally shake Maduro's position in power, and in some respects have even strengthened the legitimacy of his government.
On the one hand, Venezuela has experienced severe inflation, food crisis and refugee crisis against the backdrop of US sanctions, but Maduro has maintained his political position and has won the support of a large number of voters thanks to his leadership. On the other hand, in 2019, the United States issued a statement announcing that it recognized Guaidó's status as "interim president" and supported Guaidó's mobilization of people and foreign forces to achieve regime change, but it has repeatedly failed. In December 2022, the Venezuelan opposition had to hold an online meeting to vote to revoke Guaidó as "interim president."
Fourth, Venezuela's counter-sanctions strategy
At present, scholars have tried to analyze the reasons why US sanctions are difficult to work through multiple dimensions. Biersteker et al. believe that factors such as the depth of cooperation between the two sides before sanctions, the implementation of sanctions in the early stage, and the definition of the objectives of sanctions will affect their final effects. Some scholars distinguish between the intentional and unintentional consequences of sanctions, emphasizing that the intensity of sanctions and the perception of sanctions jointly determine whether they are effective or not. However, this paper finds that the United States and Venezuela had extremely close economic and trade cooperation before the sanctions, and the United States has been tough on sanctions, but there has been no so-called regime change in Venezuela. With this in mind, this paper constructs a core analytical framework from the analytical perspective of the Venezuelan government (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: The Venezuelan government's response to sanctions (author's own)
First, populist rhetorical constructions give Maduro and others moral legitimacy and dominance on all national issues. Its populist approach to governance asserts that the people are homogeneous, that all those who support the current government belong to the community of the people, and that all opponents, including the United States, are enemies of the people. This logic has triggered strong anti-American sentiment among the public, so that instead of arousing public dissatisfaction with the leadership, economic sanctions will cause the people of the countries to be cut off at the United States, which has imposed sanctions on them.
Second, in order to resist the sanctions coalition of the United States and other European countries, the Venezuelan government has constantly sought cooperation with other anti-American countries in the world. Maduro has publicly expressed his condemnation of the U.S.-style hegemony over Cuba and other countries on many occasions, and hopes that many countries will unite to jointly deal with the threat of hegemonism. This action avoids the plight of the Venezuelan government being isolated in the context of U.S. sanctions.
In addition, the Venezuelan government is committed to the nationalization of key companies in key industries such as oil and aluminum. At present, the government holds the vital lifeblood of the country's economy, and in doing so, it has resisted targeted and financial sanctions imposed by the United States.
At the same time, the Venezuelan government has repeatedly negotiated with major oil countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Russia, hoping to forge a unified oil alliance to control the world's oil production and pricing. As one of the world's major oil producers and exporters, taking advantage of oil is an important weight in bilateral negotiations and a key means of urging the United States to ease sanctions.
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