The Obama administration announced the intention to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba the same week that Congress approved sanctions against Venezuela for human rights violations.
The timing was coincidental and unrelated.
The Obama administration had been negotiating eighteen months with Cuba to arrange a prisoner exchange that allowed for progress on other fronts. The Senate and House approved the Venezuelan sanctions over the initial objections of the State Department.
Despite the sanctions, US Vice President Joe Biden and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro exchanged greetings during the inauguration of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on January 1.
After this impromptu meeting and apparently inspired by the US-Cuban prisoner exchange, President Maduro suggested he would release Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez (imprisoned since February 2014 but not yet convicted of charges related to street protests against the president) in exchange for the US releasing Puerto Rican independence fighter Oscar Lopez Ramirez, who has been in jail in the US since 1981 for sedition. The cases are quite different and it is doubtful the proposal will go anywhere.
But could the US-Cuban rapprochement be replicated with Venezuela?
US-Cuba-Venezuela: a complicated triangular relationship
The United States broke relations and enacted a broad economic embargo against Cuba fifty years ago as a result of the revolutionary policies of the Castro government. In contrast, the US had good relations with Venezuela until the Chávez administration was elected in 1998 with a foreign policy goal of countering US dominance in the region.
After the Bush administration applauded a 2002 coup attempt against Chávez, the relationship deteriorated further with mutual recriminations and the recall of ambassadors.
Nevertheless, the commercial relationship – dominated by Venezuelan oil exports to the US – has never been interrupted. Citgo, for example, remains 100% owned and operated by a subsidiary of Petroleos de Venezuela, the national oil company of Venezuela.
With the collapse of its Soviet Union patron in 1991, Cuba suffered a severe economic recession. Chávez, an ardent admirer of Fidel Castro, subsidized the Cuban economy in the 2000s by providing deeply discounted oil which the Cubans could then resell on the international market to bolster their foreign exchange.
Now, however, Cuba’s dependence on Venezuela is threatened since Venezuela is going through its own economic crisis amidst steeply declining oil prices, growing debt, and stagflation.
Cuba and Venezuela will remain strong allies
The Cubans are keenly aware of the pressures on Venezuela but in seeking to improve relations with the US, Cuba was looking not to replace Venezuelan aid but rather to ease the tight financial restrictions preventing foreign banks and firms from doing business with Cuba.
The threat of large fines by the US Treasury Department, for instance, made it impossible for the Cuban interest section in Washington, DC to find a bank to process visa payments this past year. If the Obama administration now removes Cuba from the state-sponsored terror list, it will help ease restrictions. But they won’t be removed altogether: the economic embargo as well as other financial regulations in place since 9/11 will remain.
