On March 9, U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order that qualifies Venezuela's regime as a threat to U.S. internal security and foreign policy. The order imposes asset freezes and visa bans against seven high-ranking officials, mostly from the military and the police, for their role in violations of human rights.
Caracas' reaction was predictable enough. The Venezuelan government and its regional allies (Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua at the forefront) swiftly dismissed the claim that Venezuela could be a threat to the United States and accused Obama of interference in Venezuela's internal affairs. Never mind that, as emphasized by Chile's former President Ricardo Lagos, "as regards human rights, there aren't frontiers, and wherever such rights are violated, someone has to cry foul". (Lagos was discussing Venezuela when he made the statement.)
Neither have all critics of Chavismo applauded Obama's move. More than a few contend that the executive order helps Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro portray himself as a victim of the "empire" and use the standoff with Washington to divert attention away from the chaos in Venezuela.
The facts, however, are at variance with those criticisms: Obama's executive order has placed the Venezuelan regime in a highly delicate position on both the diplomatic and the domestic fronts.
The executive order doesn't spell out why the Venezuelan regime represents a threat to the United States. U.S. national security adviser Ben Rhodes explained that the phrase "national security threat" corresponds to the standard wording of U.S. executive orders, and that the real purpose of the order was to press upon the respect of the Venezuelan people's right to participate freely in the politics of their country.
At the same time, however, some branches of the U.S. administration and the media have disclosed details of the alleged participation of Venezuela's power structure in criminal acts that, taken together, jeopardize U.S. security interests and place Venezuela in breach of international law.
Thus FinCen, the enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of Treasury, brought out the case of high-ranking Venezuelan officials allegedly involved in money-laundering activities using the American financial system, for an amount of $4.2 billion, through Banco Madrid, the Spanish affiliate of Andorra's BPA.
Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal and Brazil's magazine Veja have separately exposed potentially unlawful connections between Venezuela and Iran - including in the transport of dirty money, drugs, and criminals and terrorists searched by Interpol.
The reaction of Venezuela's authorities to these revelations has thus far been mild and scattered at best - which points to the embarrassment that such information has caused within that country's political and military elites.
No less harmful for the ruling class in Caracas is the fact that the U.S. sanctions send a clear deterrent message to the members of Venezuela's military and police. No one would like to see his or her name included someday on the list of officials sanctioned with asset freezes and travel restrictions on the grounds of alleged human rights violations.
Furthermore, Obama's executive order has not diverted international attention away from Venezuela's predicament - quite the contrary. Condemnations of human rights violations in Venezuela are actually on the rise, and the administration's move likely played a role in this outburst of international indignation. Thus, Spain's former Socialist Prime Minister, Felipe González, decided to take part in the defense of two imprisoned Venezuelan opposition leaders: Leopoldo López and Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma. Seven former presidents of Latin American countries have joined him in this endeavor. Furthermore,19 former Latin American presidents intend to present a petition at the Summit of the Americas, to be held in Panama City on April 10-11, in which they will request the release of political prisoners and the respect "for constitutional principles and international standards" in Venezuela.
It was also after Obama's executive order that the governor of the capital of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, a likely presidential candidate, called for the liberation of political prisoners in Venezuela.
Only current heads of state of major Latin American countries remain impassive to human rights abuses in Venezuela - whether out of their own ideological atavism or as an expression of cronyism among incumbents. Yet pressure is mounting on them - from members of parliament and the press of their own countries - to speak out in defense of democracy and freedom in Venezuela. As Mexico's former Secretary of Foreign Affairs Jorge G. Castañeda asserts: "Their time for indifference is over".
Uruguay has set the ball rolling in this regard. Uruguayan Foreign Affairs Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa recently declared that his country is "very concerned" with alleged cases of torture and the use of firearms against protesters in Venezuela.
Maduro will surely try to use the Summit of the Americas to denounce the executive order. He will display reams of signatures collected to oppose the order - signatures that are worth nothing. Many if not most of them were obtained through coercion or in return for foodstuffs, such as a chicken or a bottle of milk, which have become rare commodities in oil-rich Venezuela.
At the same time, the president of the host country has expressed readiness to search for a rapprochement between the governments of Venezuela and the United States. Some conciliatory moves from both sides should not be ruled out.
Be that as it may, the fact is that Maduro's stubborn persistence in unjustly keeping opposition leaders in prison has become diplomatically untenable: Sooner or later, he will have to yield to international pressure and free them. And when that occurs, it will be hard to deny that Obama's executive order - rather than the long silence of his Latin American peers - contributed to the denouement.