Why Is Venezuela Included in Trump’s Travel Ban?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/opinion/venezuela-trump-travel-ban.html

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WASHINGTON — President Trump’s sanctions strategy against Venezuela remains committed but ineffectual, and banning a smallish band of regime loyalists from traveling to the United States will do little to change that. To help restore Venezuela’s democracy, an effective approach must combine unique United States unilateral leverage with renewed multilateral engagement and clearly articulated objectives — including defending democracy through diplomatic pressure, not the use of force — that can achieve the support of the regional and international community.

The official explanation for Venezuela’s inclusion in the Trump administration’s latest travel ban is a lack of cooperation in verifying whether its citizens pose national security or public safety threats to the United States. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Venezuela was included in the travel ban to provide legal cover for Mr. Trump’s goal of a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. The ban may advance a sanctions strategy that is struggling to gain traction against the government of President Nicolás Maduro, but it will do little to protect the United States.

Information sharing and law enforcement cooperation between the United States and Venezuela is hardly ideal, and Venezuelan diplomats have been accused of running a scheme to sell passports to people in the Middle East with ties to terrorism. Nonetheless, the White House exempted all but a tiny fraction of Venezuelans — those working for one of five government entities and their families — from the ban. Such a broad loophole suggests national security considerations were less than compelling. United States officials have alternative means of verifying the identity of Venezuelans who visit the country. So why include Venezuela at all?

The first reason has nothing to do with Venezuela and everything to do with the travel ban. As the White House continues its quest for a long-term travel ban that can survive constitutional scrutiny, it hopes that the inclusion of Venezuela (alongside North Korea, which sent a whopping 52 visitors to the United States last year) lends weight to the argument that the travel ban is motivated by legitimate security concerns rather than Islamophobia. Time will tell whether the courts are convinced.

The second reason has everything to do with Venezuela but very little to do with the stated purpose of the travel ban. The Trump administration has escalated restrictions in response to the repressive rule of Mr. Maduro, attempting to apply pressure without harming the Venezuelan people through an all-out oil embargo. The White House began by continuing President Barack Obama’s policy of individual penalties against Venezuelan officials accused of drug trafficking, human rights abuses and corruption. When these measures failed to arrest Venezuela’s authoritarian slide, Mr. Trump began reviewing options for more coercive measures.

Last month, he imposed financial restrictions aimed at denying Venezuela the ability to shore up its shaky finances by raising new debt. Now, barring Venezuelan officials and their families from the United States aims to further turn up the heat on the Venezuelan president while shielding innocent Venezuelans as much as possible — though not entirely.

Will it work? That’s the million-bolívares question. For all their anti-imperialist rhetoric, many Venezuelan officials — and notably, their families — remain fond of visits to Miami, New York and Disney World.

But it seems unlikely the travel restrictions will prove sufficient to provoke elite fracture and force a change of direction in Caracas.

The United States’ financial system and tourist attractions are important sources of leverage, but isolating Venezuela will require coordinated action with Latin America and Europe, not to mention China and Russia. The impact of United States sanctions will be limited as long as Mr. Maduro and his cronies have access to loans in Beijing, arms in Moscow and holidays in Madrid.

Since failing to secure the votes for a resolution against Venezuela at an Organization of American States summit meeting in June, the White House has mostly decided to go it alone. Vice President Mike Pence accused the organization of being “unwilling to protect the inter-American Democratic Charter” rather than querying his administration’s own diplomatic shortcomings. The State Department declined to participate in a pressure group of like-minded countries led by Peru and Canada. And President Trump himself spoke loosely of a “military option.”

Including Venezuela in the otherwise unrelated travel ban fits with this unilateral trend and adds to the sense that a frustrated White House is throwing things at the wall and hoping something will stick. Successful sanctions strategies, from South Africa to Iran, tend to unite the international community, establish consequences for both good and bad behavior, and set a clear road map to negotiations for the long term. Thus far, administration efforts to convince other countries to impose penalties have met with little success.

Strategic ambiguity and military threats may be useful in some contexts. On Venezuela, however, they simply feed Mr. Maduro’s conspiracy theories, undermine attempts to isolate the regime, and hamper efforts to support the Venezuelan people.