Miscellaneous News

Jura said:

now noticed through

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about the Air Force General in
Venezuela: Rival protests kick off in Caracas

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Venezuela’s opposition leader called on more members of the military to abandon the country’s socialist government following Saturday’s defection of a high-ranking general, while

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proposed holding early National Assembly elections that could potentially oust his challenger.

Maduro's call for early legislative voting is likely to intensify his standoff with rival Juan Guaido, who heads the opposition-controlled National Assembly and is demanding a new presidential election. Guaido declared himself Venezuela's legitimate ruler on Jan. 23, and has the support of Washington and most South American nations.

Speaking from behind a podium decorated with Venezuela's presidential seal, Guaido told supporters he would keep his opposition movement in the streets until Maduro stopped "usurping" the presidency and agreed to a presidential election overseen by international observers. On Saturday, tens of thousands of Venezuelans joined opposition protests against Maduro in Caracas and other cities.

Guaido called on "blocks" of the military to defect from Maduro's administration and "get on the side of the Venezuelan people."

"We don't just want you to stop shooting at protesters," Guaido said in a hoarse voice. "We want you to be part of the reconstruction of Venezuela."

He said that in the coming days, the opposition would try to move humanitarian aid into the country by land and sea along three border points, including the Colombian city of Cucuta. He described the move as a "test" for Venezuela's armed forces, which will have to choose if they allow the much needed aid to pass, or if they instead obey the orders of Maduro's government.

Maduro also dug in his heels, insisting he was the only president of Venezuela and describing Saturday’s anti-government protests as part of a U.S.-led coup attempt.

"I agree that the legislative power of the country be re-legitimized and that we hold free elections with guarantees, and the people choose a new National Assembly," Maduro said at a pro-government demonstration in Caracas.

The opposition controls the National Assembly while government supporters control the more-powerful Constituent Assembly, so calls for a vote to replace the former and not the latter was seen as a move against Guaido.

The socialist leader also had words

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which recently imposed sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports in an effort to undermine Maduro’s main source of income and weaken his grip on power.

"Do you think you are the emperor of the world?" he asked Trump. "Do you think Venezuela is going to give up and obey your orders? We will not surrender."

The standoff comes amid what appears to be growing dissension among the ranks of Venezuela’s powerful military.

Earlier Saturday, a Venezuelan air force general defected from Maduro's administration and called on his compatriots to participate in protests against the socialist leader's rule.

Gen. Francisco Yanez is the first high ranking officer to leave Maduro's government since Jan. 23, when Guaido declared himself the country's legitimate leader by invoking two articles of the Venezuelan constitution that he argues give him the right to assume presidential powers. He considers Maduro's election win fraudulent.

In a YouTube video, Yanez described Maduro as a dictator and referred to Guaido as his president. He didn't say if he was still in Venezuela or had left the country.

The officer confirmed in a phone call with The Associated Press, from a Colombian number, the veracity of his declaration and said he would not provide further statements until given authorization by "the commander-in-chief of the legal armed force, which is President Juan Guaido."

The military controls some of Venezuela's key assets including the state run oil company, and until now, its top brass has helped Maduro to survive rounds of mass protests in 2014 and 2017 by jailing activists and repressing protesters.

Yanez said in his video that "90 percent of the military" is against Maduro, but it is unclear how many will actively support the opposition.

Shortly after protests broke out against Maduro last week, Venezuela's most important regional military commanders and its defense minister issued a statement in support of Maduro, describing Guaido as a coup monger backed by Washington.

Venezuela's aerospace command of the armed forces shared a picture of Yanez on its Twitter account with the words "traitor" above it.

"We reject the declarations made by General Yanez who betrayed his oath of loyalty to our nation and chose to follow foreign plans," the command wrote.

On Saturday, Maduro said he was willing to sit down for talks with the opposition in an effort to promote national "harmony."

But that offer has been rejected by Guaido, who describes it as a ploy by the Maduro administration to buy time.

Previous talks between the government and opposition have failed to change electoral conditions in the South American country, and many political leaders have been forced into exile.

At a pro-Maduro rally, supporters blamed the opposition for undermining the Bolivarian Revolution with years of protests and seeking financial sanctions against the Venezuelan government.

Zeleyka Muskus, a 53-year-old tax collector from Caracas, said the opposition was responsible for the country's current economic woes, saying they have staged years of protests that have gotten people injured and killed.

"Chavez is the love of my life," she said, referring to late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

Other public workers attending the pro-government demonstration said they had been forced to go there by their bosses.

Meanwhile, streams of marchers from middle-class and poor neighborhoods walked to another part of the capital and said they were demanding Maduro's resignation and a transitional government that would hold new presidential elections in the South American country.

Xiomara Espinoza, 59, said she felt a change of energy in the crowd, whose hopes for a transition in Venezuela have previously been dashed.

"We are around the corner from freedom," she said, banging on a pot and wearing a Venezuelan flag.

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The China gap

There is one issue that unites the Trump administration and the foreign policy community. But the American people remain unpersuaded.

For the past two years, the disconnect between the worldviews of the populist nationalists inside the Trump administration and everyone else in the wider foreign policy community has been palpable. On issues including NATO, Russia and trade policy, the divide between the Trump administration and foreign policy experts seems wider than ever.

For President Trump and his acolytes, this is a feature and not a bug. After all, populists argued that foreign policy had been dominated by out-of-touch elites for too long. Trump, in the only cogent foreign policy speech he gave as a candidate, pledged a more populist approach, saying, “I will seek a foreign policy that all Americans, whatever their party, can support.” And Trump was hardly the only person to stress the disconnect between foreign policy elites and the mass public.

There is, however, one burgeoning area of foreign policy consensus that unifies Trumpists, Democrats, realists, liberals and almost every foreign policy commentator out there: China. What is interesting is that this rare area of agreement does not include the American people.

Let’s start with the foreign policy consensus. The administration’s approach to China has, by Trump’s super-low standards, some actual thought behind it. Vice President Pence’s big speech on China last fall definitely caught the attention of China watchers. In that speech, Pence stated that “the American people deserve to know that, as we speak, Beijing is employing a whole-of-government approach, using political, economic, and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United States.” I have heard other senior administration officials sound equally hawkish on this point. The president’s decision to appoint U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer to be his point man for negotiating with China also demonstrates his hawkish approach. The administration’s push to block Huawei from building 5G networks in allied nations is part of this larger policy. It seems that a clear goal of this administration is to weaken the interdependence that exists between the two economies.

What is interesting is the degree to which everyone else sounds awfully similar to Trump administration officials regarding the bilateral relationship. Democrats sound similar to Trump on trade with China. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), for example, has been forthright in criticizing Chinese trade practices and its threat to the U.S.-created order.

Looking beyond partisanship, multiple schools of foreign policy thought agree that China merits a more forceful approach from the United States. Realists have been arguing for years that wars in the Middle East have distracted from the greater threat that a rising China poses to U.S. interests. Liberals have grown weary of China’s disregard for the global rules of the economic game and believe that some pushback is in order. Even U.S. businesses have grown exasperated with Xi Jinping’s autocratic turn and dubious economic policies. Commentators such as Josh Rogin and Tom Wright have vehemently opposed Trump at almost every turn but are concerned about China’s rise.

I do not mean to suggest that all of these schools of thought embrace Trump’s approach toward China. They disagree on means and tactics. Many outside the administration question the competency of those inside the administration who are executing such a high-stakes strategy. Nonetheless, disputes over the means should not blind us to consensus about the ends: This is a rare area of agreement between Trump, his partisan opponents and everyone else.

Everyone else, that is, except for the American people.

The polling data on this is clear. After two decades in which more Americans held an unfavorable attitude toward China, Gallup recorded a flip-flop in 2018. In a survey that highlighted partisan differences on foreign policy, Pew found Americans not worked up at all about China: “Reducing China’s power and influence is not a leading goal for either party.” Fears about China were particularly muted among younger respondents. Across the board, however, Pew found that fears about China trailed concerns about Russia, North Korea and Iran.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs’s 2018 polling (full disclosure: I’m on their advisory board) reveals a similar finding of minimal U.S. fear of China. Indeed, the lack of elevated concern was so clear that Karl Friedhoff and Craig Kafura wrote a whole memo about it. Among their findings: About 4 in 10 Americans (39 percent) said the development of China as a world power is a critical threat facing the United States. That placed it an underwhelming eighth out of 12 potential threats included in the survey. Furthermore, that number has essentially been unchanged for the past decade or so.

It is possible that the recent ratcheting up of tensions will focus the mind of Americans in 2019, but a January 2019 Ripon Society-commissioned poll suggests that it ain’t so. Indeed, they found instead that “a plurality of voters [42 percent] thinks the trade dispute with China will have a negative impact on their personal finances.”

I do not have a definitive answer for why the American public is not exercised about China. There are a lot of possible explanations, including fears of economic loss from continued conflict, distrust of all elites, or, maybe, the effect of Chinese efforts to shift American public attitudes that Pence referenced. The reasons are the topic for another day, perhaps many other days. For today, it is interesting to point out that China is a high-salience topic that unites populists, realists, liberals, Republicans and Democrats alike on foreign policy. And, yet, despite years of complaining that the American people need to weigh in on foreign policy, it turns out that they are completely unenthusiastic about this topic. That seems to merit further discussion.

In the meanwhile, so much for a foreign policy that all Americans can get behind.

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Franklin said:

The China gap between the American leaders and the American people. What China really threatens is America's top position in the world in the long run. Very few common people are concerned about that.

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Dolcevita said:

Brilliant move by PM Shinzo Abe. This will win him many cookie points.

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Equation said:

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