Sanctions have never stopped a tyrant – why do we expect them to now?
President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has won. Not Venezuela’s most recent presidential election, as such – various credible analyses have concluded that he could scarcely have stolen it more brazenly had he declared victory wearing a mask, a hooped shirt and shouldering a bulging sack labelled “swag”. But Maduro has won insofar as he remains president while opposition candidate Edmundo González is exiled in Spain and González’s ally María Corina Machado has been forced, as of this writing, into hiding. The response from those countries that refuse to recognise Maduro as legitimate – more or less everyone but Russia, China, Cuba and North Korea – has been predictable, piling further sanctions atop the teetering stack of measures already imposed upon Maduro’s regime during its miserable decade in power.
They won’t work. By and large, sanctions don’t. They’re mostly deployed by countries that either will not act decisively about a particular situation but want to look like they’re doing something or cannot act decisively, so are doing what little they might. There is, indeed, an entirely plausible case that Maduro – and Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, two Iranian Ayatollahs and three generations of North Korean Kims, among others – were or are strengthened by sanctions. None of them ever wanted for anything; all the pain was passed down to the people. (I visited a Baghdad hospital during Saddam Hussein’s rule, and a couple of his palaces after his removal. Take a wild guess which had the gold-plated bath taps.)
Venezuela seems a ripe subject for an experiment in the opposite approach; what might be thought of as subversion by engagement. The same countries that have damned Maduro as a thug, a crook and a fraud should nevertheless do everything they can to encourage trade and cultural exchange with Venezuela, and tourism to it.
Energy companies should be liberated to exploit Venezuela’s immense reserves of oil and natural gas. Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia and Barquisimeto should feature on the tour itineraries of major musicians. Holidaymakers from the US, Europe and all over Latin America should be cooling their toes on the Caribbean beaches of the Los Roques islands. Venezuelans – ordinary Venezuelans, many, many of whom voted against Maduro – would make money. Some of the millions who have fled Maduro’s misrule might return and bring their anger home with them. Poor and isolated people have little choice but to endure dictators; prospering and connected people start to feel like there are options.
