Pedro Burelli’s call for the Trump administration to actively throw its support behind Venezuela’s democratic transition is a noble attempt to bring the South American country out of its quarter-century-long autocratic stupor (“In Venezuela, legitimacy matters more than continuity,” Opinion, August 5).
Despite Nicolás Maduro’s arrest by U.S. special forces seven months ago, Venezuela is still very much operating under the same regime, with the same old Chavistas governing key ministries and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado on the outside looking in. But this isn’t 1989. George HW Bush is not the president of the US. And America’s support for democracy, commonly viewed as universal, is far more selective than many like to admit.
This is particularly the case in the age of Donald Trump. Unlike his predecessors, who engaged in the usual virtue signalling about the importance of democracy and respecting human rights, Trump is unapologetically brash about his priorities. Democracy isn’t one of them.
He’s very comfortable working with unsavoury foreign leaders, even outright autocrats, if doing so provides the U.S. with tangible economic, political or security benefits. Whether those partners govern their people harshly, throw dissidents in prison or engage in corrupt practices is frankly irrelevant to him.
What matters most is unfettered co-operation, if not outright subordination to U.S. power.
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