Monday, March 18, 2019
Saturday, March 16, 2019
Venezuela's Crisis and its implications for the Arab World
Venezuela’s Crisis: Implications for the Arab and Islamic World
Before Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, led by former president Hugo Chavez, the South American country maintained healthy diplomatic relationships with all Arab and Muslim-majority countries, along with Israel, while as a founding member of OPEC, Venezuela’s ties with the oil-rich states of the Arab/Islamic world developed within the cartel’s framework and with regards to the Persian Gulf, Caracas has long maintained stable and pragmatic relationships with the Arab monarchies, as well as close relations with other states in the Levant largely due to the Syrian and Lebanese diaspora in Venezuela.
Yet after Chavez became president in 1998, Venezuela’s Middle East foreign policy became increasingly ideological with a strong anti-imperialist rhetoric, which the Cuban Revolution inspired and the Havana regime strongly supported, factored heavily into the oil-rich South American state’s growing ties with the Middle East’s “radical” regimes and where leaders such as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein grew close to Chavez, at least symbolically, during his presidency.
In this sense, besides these autocratic leaders, Chavez’s government also grew supportive of Hamas and Hezbollah and during times of armed conflict between Israel and militant groups in Gaza, Chavez’s strong condemnation of the “Zionist state” led to Israel state becoming an enemy of Venezuela—unsurprisingly contributing to Israel’s decision to side against the current Venezuelan government in favour of the opposition, especially amid this year’s crisis.
Therefore, there have been diverse reports denouncing the presence and activities of Hezbollah, not only in Venezuela (specifically in Margarita and other minor cities of the country), but also in the Southern Cone and the Triple Border between Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, to help and sustain the Bolivarian Revolution.
And this trend seems to be continuing now with Nicolas Maduro as President, especially leveraging on the influence of a group of Syrians, Lebanese, and Palestinians in diverse strategic sectors like oil, finance, and other business areas, that has been determinant for the Bolivarian Revolution.
This situation has been anchored on links with many well-connected members of these syrian, lebanese communities, now blossoming, with staunch pro-revolutionary stances, especially now under the aegis of the almost super mighty Viceminister of Economy and former Vice president Tarek al Aissami, with alleged links to Hezbollah and currently under U.S. sanctions, who has become the key player for the Arab business community supporting the Maduro administration.
On the other hand, Caracas’ ties with the majority of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states under the Bolivarian Revolution have followed a rather pragmatic and subtle approach and direction, all of them having diplomatic representatives in Venezuela.
To this respect, important is the fact that such ties have mainly developed within the framework of OPEC, but at the same time, within the cartel of oil producers, there have been diverse disagreements between Venezuela and the GCC states with Caracas, tending to side with the more “radical” members (Algeria, Libya, and Iran), over issues of production quotas and prices.
But in recent years, there have been claims, according to local sources, of financial backing from countries like Qatar, to mechanisms sponsored by the Venezuelan government like the crypto currency El Petro, followed by different denounces of gold deals and purchases from an UAE based firm to the Venezuelan central bank during the current political turbulence.
And most recently, along with the newly found ally, Turkey, with which Maduro has stricken diverse deals, especially in the gold sector, along with a proliferation of imports of Turkish products to Venezuela, deriving in the strengthening of strategic relations of Erdogan and Maduro, for many an opportunistic strategy of Erdogan rather than ideological.
But, after the recent political turmoil in Venezuela, in which the president of the opposition controlled National Assembly, Juan Guaido, sworn himself as interim president alleging the usurpation of power by Maduro after the claims of fraud in the past presidential elections in May 2018 and with the full support from the United States, the majority of the EU states, Canada, Israel and most of South America states, things might shift in Venezuela.
And, if there were ever to be the case of a potential removal of Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution, the current geopolitical order in the region would definitely change and tilt towards a more pro U.S. government, which will be aligned also with the interests of the most moderate and conservative regimes in the Gulf and the Arab world and also Israel while in detriment of radical regimes and systems like Iran, along with the important strategic geopolitical gains achieved by Russia and China in the last decade.
This is why what happens in the coming days and weeks in Venezuela will have important geopolitical consequences for the region vis-à-vis not only Washington but also for the Middle East, the OPEC and the entire Islamic world and how this could redesign the equilibrium of power in the global oil markets, and also regarding the redefining of its relations with the state of Israel, Turkey and Iran, mainly because of the highly geopolitical and geo-strategic relevance of Venezuela in the Caribbean basin and South America and as the largest non-conventional oil reserve of the world.
Overall, if a regime change is effectively carried out in Venezuela, this could remove the Bolivarian Revolution as a critical hub of Islamic extremism and a close ally of threats for U.S. national security like Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah (recently Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed the activities of this group in Venezuela).
And due to the longstanding position of Venezuela in global oil markets as a predominant voice heard within OPEC, then the outlook for stability for the South and Central American region will improve for the conservative governments in the Middle East and Israel and the geopolitical order will tilt once again on their behalf now with a progressive decay of the leftist regimes in the whole region.
Friday, March 15, 2019
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