well this is all the. excess. occur. hello and welcome to crossfire for all things considered i'm peter lavelle

traditionally in the foreign policy blog with the assistance of the legacy media define an immediate threat for a foreign military intervention or coup there haim has been to manufacture public support today it's different with virtually no public debate venezuela is the target of a forced regime change the problem is force regime change has a deplorable record. talking forced regime change i'm joined by my guest michael holmes live in washington he's a senior fellow at the brookings institution and in paris we have healed along he is a former foreign affairs minister of ecuador currently an associate researcher at the institute of strategic and international relations right gentlemen cross-talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want i always appreciate it let's go to gayle men and paris over the last few days john boy. the national security

adviser was on. c.n.n. with jake tapper and he said the following i'd like to see a broad a coalition as we can put together we can put together to put to replace majority to replace the whole corrupt regime he also invoked the main road doctrine being a former foreign minister of a latin american country how do you receive those words hi and thanks for having me on your show. i think the coalition instead of being strengthened these a coalition the u.s. has in mind instead of being strengthened is being gradually weakened certainly over the last few days there was kind of this. there was there was a momentum a few weeks ago around the way though there was some some some hope i think on behalf of the u.s. administration and some of its allies that the pressure would mount that there would be that the street protests would would put pressure on the military then

around the twenty third of february the whole issue around aids being brought in through colombia and whether some venezuelan. battalions or regiments would switch side and and this would trigger a domino effect so this momentum i think has essentially passed and i think you're seeing a lot of actors we've been hearing european voices over the last few days including the spanish foreign minister saying well we expected that it would be quick we expected that things would be much faster and they haven't unfolded this way borrell the spanish foreign minister even sort of in directly blame the united states for sort of leading this initiative and sort of misleading almost europeans i mean europeans should be misled they should have their own policy but you know these this was the kind of what was being hinted at and certainly i agree that there's a lot of momentum and this coalition that bolton is calling. for instead of being

strengthened it's being weakened you're seeing a number of latin american states getting cold feet saying ok we want to change we want regime change a lot of latin american neighbors brazil colombia chile and others one reason regime change but they don't want to military intervention that's for your first point on the second point i just think it is unbelievably clumsy and just so telling of the kind of unilateralism and sort of imperial arrogance we're getting from this administration i mean from for a number of years and for for a number of issues strange things you've had that kind of arrogance towards latin america but it hasn't been spelt out in so many ways to talk of the mono doctrine for latin americans is a really insult and it's really going back to this quote sort of backyard approach to latin america's a region you know michel i mean if we if we go back to bolton's words you know replaced the whole corrupt regime i mean i thought it was about democracy now it's about corruption i bet if it's about corruption then why don't the united states

have forced regime change in saudi arabia it's corrupt and repressive i mean it's quite selective isn't it michael. hi peter well first i agree with the foreign minister's points generally speaking and second i agree with your concern as you expressed in the introduction that regime change has a very poor record especially in modern times and i don't see how we can do it militarily even if we wanted to and moreover i don't see why we would want to do it without the complete support of russia and china i think we need to operate as a unified security council which means the only kind of realistic approach here is going to comply combine diplomatic and economic measures and the more support we have the better as the foreign minister just pointed out there was a certain amount of consensus with canada the united states and most latin american countries supporting why don't but the question is how do you make it happen in a situation where whatever duros legitimacy and i think it's very weak so on that point i do agree with what about why don't you want to make this what does this this this random guy does he have legitimacy well under the constitution i think

you know he doesn't the concept he doesn't to sharon i think under under well well i have the i can't have it right here right it was article it's article the holiday article two thirty one and i recommend you take a look at it ok because i actually read the constitution not the new york times keep going michel. i think that why doas commonly recognized to be the legitimate ruler by much of latin america but it doesn't really matter what latin america and the united states think unless we have some viable means to create a legitimate succession process without using military force that's where i am having my troubles right ok let's go back to paris here mean why should the united states or any other country in the hemisphere determine the government of venezuela i don't i don't get that ok what about sovereignty what about self-determination i mean considering the record of the opposition in the last two years of not even involving themselves in elections. and and not even being unified themselves i mean

there may not particularly interested in democracy from what i can see they're interested in power and power only and you have outside players like canada now leading this listen it up to the business way when people to figure this out go ahead and paris. you know i think this i mean there's been a change of political sign and color in latin american region yes and venezuela skynet still stands out as being on the left broadly speaking and i would be critical about some of the things that are happening in venezuela i agree i agree i agree certainly since two thousand and fourteen there's been a lot of problems of big economic mismanagement also the commodity collapse and a number of things that are the that have happened that have created a huge political institutional social and economic crisis but sure i mean regime change is not the way forward in fact the countries that are that are supporting why though and i don't agree that article two hundred thirty three of the

constitution enables wide open anyway it talks is very clear that in the absence of the president a little hasn't been absent at all so we're dealing here with legitimacy which is a much more sort of ambiguous concept that we have to be very very careful but in any event fifty countries are recognized way though mostly the u.s. and its allies but there are hundred ninety three states members in the united nations so it's still very divided and i would agree with michael i think broadly speaking i think the issue has to be resolved through negotiations through negotiations inside venezuela so people sort of deescalating inside venezuela and negotiation at the international level also i mean we clearly seeing at the u.n. security council there's no consensus there and the reason why i believe in negotiation is because i know venezuela well i know that chavez more exists and this is the mistake that has been buried by the u.s.

and some of its allies the been kind of inventing this narrative that the whole of venezuela to motherhood as a dictator which is not the case some people are critical some people are critical of him but even more critical of the opposition some some of the base of his movie don't necessarily model but certainly don't like the way though so the situation is complex complex and mobilize a. polar a procession is dangerous and could lead us to civil war civil war in this kind of cold war conflict with me living through in the last few months and then america could mean international war in latin america as well so my my big. message calls concern here is negotiation dialogue i really think that i know the momentum spots and this is the moment and the moment to do it the government has been asking that repeatedly ok and we in the opposition obviously with the backing of the united states it looks like the united states and outside countries are calling this a coup and not the opposition and their random guy that has been picked from the

outside michael i mean can you reflect upon the all of the regime change all of the meddling that latin south americans experience from the united states for a very very long time why do they keep doing it i mean it's road record is pretty deplorable and then you have someone like elliott abrams you know plucked out of. obscurity as it were considering his record during the iran contra scandal during the reagan administration what kind of signal is that sending to the entire region that i henchmen is back on the job go ahead michael. well i mean peter you and i don't always agree one hundred percent but i very rarely agree that the united states does not. yet actually agree about how to time but but but i but i take i take the broad spirit of what you're saying which is the united states is not in a position politically historically to lead some kind of a strong armed effort here by itself we need to work with the lima group we need to

listen to voices like the former foreign minister on the show and i'm delighted to be on the show with him speaking from paris we need to do this as part of a hemisphere why process and with russia and china this is an example of the kind of company i'd call michael our friends i would security council but john. both in isn't really cut from that cloth i think you would agree on that he doesn't like negotiations he actually doesn't like diplomacy and he doesn't like agreements and treaties i mean that is the in his entire time in this white house is the tube and to everything that was so much hard work was put into ok past agreements may have had flaws but they certainly could be addressed here so you do you think john bolton's going to wake up in the middle nine say i know how to get out of this impasse let's negotiate that a that isn't going to happen michael forty seconds before we go to the break well john bolton works for. john bolton works for president tropp it's a fascinating relationship a lot of us are studying i know you're watching and you know relate to bolton does

have his own world view but he works for a guy who doesn't really relish the idea of more foreign military interventions and would like to find some way to repair his relationship with vladimir putin if at all possible so it makes for a very complex chemistry that i haven't figured out exactly myself well i will get on and terms a better relationship with russia i think that that could only happen if there is a second term and right before the program we are starting of talking about the presidential sweepstakes it's going to be an interesting. two years before we get there i gentle i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on forced regime change state with. the eternity to. go in and you may never get out.

of. my teenage gang rules here. but. now the lead. life expectancy in america is plummeting if you look at the chart it's shocking to

look at almost every other country it's kind of inching up on one side of the chart and then as an outlier is the united states it's way over here and it's all crashing down from the drugs from having junk food having junk culture having it's junk politics and fake news it's all fake and fake doesn't sustain life and you see it in the numbers it's clear. this is a sticker from a water bottle found in the stomach of a fish the brand is part of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell consumers they're the bad ones they're the litter bugs are trying this way industry should be blamed for all this waste the company has promised to reuse the plastic.

on. the mountains of ways only grow higher. welcome back to cross like we're all things are considered i'm peter bell to remind you we're discussing forced regime change. ok let's go back to paris where it's not just a bin is whaler that is being targeted right now we've also heard from the national security adviser that expect the same for venezuela and cuba how does that go down in the regime in the region considering the legacy of american meddling sol. of the border here and again i mean michael knows this because he's been on the program enough times i'm a pretty hard core conservative and i've lived in

a communist eastern europe i am no fan of any form of socialism ok but i think i'm much more interested in protecting the sovereignty of these countries and for people to determine what their own domestic affairs will be so i mean i'm in actually a kind of an odd situation to be in because those regimes certainly wouldn't be of my preference but they are solid for him go ahead and paris. i think there is a big issue to do with with sovereignty in particular what happened in the first i would say decade and a half in latin america after the terrible way tease in ninety s. . i mean in latin america neo liberalism which was this kind of huge wedge of deregulation was not carried out in a context of strong states was carried out in the context of an absolute absence of institutions and and states the result of that was the growth of poverty the growth of inequality the growth of an icky the abuse of power of all the already powerful

eccentrics that are so from job his own words from one thousand nine hundred nine when chavez comes to power one with and then lula in two thousand and three the key issue is in two thousand and three when you have ever more rallies in two thousand and five corera in two thousand and seven so on and so on you have what has often been called in english the pink tide and it was very it lasted a long time certainly an unprecedented phase of of a political stability i would say in latin america of sort of you know enduring governments broadly speaking of the political left or the very heterogeneous center left some much for more boulevard in a very heterogeneous pink tide i actually think that going back to your question both the latin american elites who had who were forced to redistribute some wealth that american elites a very wealthy ansun power and the u.s. which was forced to kind of accommodate in a hemisphere way to hasn't been used to accommodate and this has to do with your

point on sovereignty you know china came along but even the european union sort of asserted itself in that america russia and other countries from the brics in the global south that america diversified its relations and asserted its sovereignty i worked for a government. or a of government in ecuador who got rid of the biggest u.s. military base in latin america it was in ecuador month a military base and we said in. two thousand and nine we said thanks but no thanks we don't want foreign troops on our territory in fact with the constitution and made it constitutional so so we said goodbye to you too you know those kinds of assertions of sovereignty i think have not been forgiven by the united states so i think a lot of what you're seeing today basically by a very sort of binary aggressive. trump ian administration and certainly the ones that are dealing with latin america so you know elliott abrams you mentioned of course bolton but also michael approach toward

latin america is sort of the static of the reagan era nicaragua style salvador style and they just want to impose us hegemony over the region and that affects cuba which we were just seeing in the last few days. helms burton which had always been repealed sort of coming back to the fore and yet general aggressiveness towards towards leftist actors in the region and the strong backing for a very right wing regimes you know michael reflect upon that because you know it is kind of hearkening back to a very terrible past you know particularly the you know the elliott abrams interim that we all all remember. and there's a lack of subtlety about american foreign policy i mean again going back to the monroe doctrine i mean i was astounded that bolton would even mention that and he mentioned it in the in the in

a way that he probably didn't care if anybody self of the border heard it it's that kind of arrogance and lack of subtlety that really shows you know it doesn't show goodwill and it isn't really about an anti socialist pro-democracy crusade when the same gentleman bolton openly talked about how would be nice to have been his way was all capacity and in american hands i mean the eric in. i mean why is that a policy that. the people in south of the border should have competence in first i i would agree peter with your criticism of this use of the monroe doctrine term it has a very very loaded past and i don't know why we would want to bring it up you know it doesn't mean good things in the have a sphere secondly my friend in paris the former foreign minister knows that when ecuador told us to leave we did leave so it's not like we are just trying to wield

our way at all cost in an imperialistic way but the history is still there and we have to remember that and that's going to color how we are seen and the last thing i would say agree with the foreign minister the big problems in latin america throughout the hemisphere whether the governments lean left or lean right the big problems are poverty and crime yet watch more so than war between states much more so than these high level political debates that we're having on the show today it's poverty and crime and we should be supportive of any government that can make headway against those without trying to bring back the ideological baggage of the cold war i mean i think that it's absolutely correct michel i agree with you one hundred percent here let's go back to paris here i mean i'm trying to understand the the ryman reason about all is that we had this spectacle on the bridge bringing in of course it was all done for the cameras it was a psych operation that was obvious and it went south quite literally i suppose it didn't. come to fruition but this is the united states is

a country that is sanctioning has been sanctioning venezuela threatens even more sanctions and then has ready for made for t.v. trying to force. aid into the country i mean why don't they just drop the sanctions that would be a good start and that would actually help out the the poorest the most affected people i mean we know all three of us know in our audience no. those sanctions is a is a very. it is not a very precise way to have forced regime changes might affect how most never works ok because the elites are always protected from sanctions everywhere and the united states knows this and that's why the the the red cross the u.n. agencies when we're we're not going to get involved in bringing aid to venezuela because they said it's overly politicized and it is go ahead in paris. i agree i mean i think

a number of international actors particularly the multilateral sphere condemn that politicize ation of aid which actually goes against international law i mean humanitarian aid is sacrosanct it should not be politicized it should be to save people it shouldn't be as a form of manipulation to try and in this case turn the military around and try and make them defect and agree it was a big media show and i think i agree with the point that you made that it's a very sad cynical in the context of crippling sanctions unilateral sanctions these are not. sanctions that have been. cautioned by the u.n. security council the u.s. sanctions a few of the allies sort of band wagon with the u.s. on this britain sort of confiscated venezuela's gold giant debt because it started to confiscate one point three one point two billion dollars of venezuelan gold parenthesis we had long when we were in government in ecuador we did we we took out a gold of out of britain because we feared just that and it's

a shame that the venezuelans didn't do it before they have a bad record the brits on on pinching other people's other people's gold but you know the u.s. sanctions alone i mean it's very difficult to quantify the venezuelans claim it's thirty billion few independent economists are saying that so far it could be between sixteen and twenty billion dollars damage to the venezuelan economy you know this is a huge percentage of venezuela's g.d.p. it's completely crippling we know sanctions hit the poorest hardest always they always have done and certainly these will because there are sanctions that directly affecting the capacity of the venezuelan state to live up to what it's supposed to live up to which is you know cater for the social needs of the population education health care social security so on and so forth and so to have this sort of billions and billions and billions of hurt produced by the sanctions and then on the other. very meager of just

a few million the problem is when the too many zeroes people sort of get lost but yeah it was actually you know like a hundred or even a thousand times less than what the sanctions represent so it was clearly political and it was clearly a manipulation you know michael you know i'm sure all three of us would agree that the generals government has been. there's a lot of corruption let's just say it point to point blank it's they have a lot of problems with corruption there but if they if if the u.s. under bolton under trump supervision if that's the case they start trying to legally transfer foreign assets venezuelan assets to this random guy why don't i mean that's just another form of corruption isn't it i mean it's it's theft of. the assets of the venezuelan people because these assets are the of the property of the government i mean it seems quite outrageous to me that someone's dubious legitimacy is going to be given billions and billions of dollars that's corruption

as well isn't it michael. well peter i don't put it quite that way myself but i share your concern because and i'm more supporter of the sanctions than you and the foreign minister but i agree with your point that it doesn't lead to an obvious outcome and neither would giving the money to go i don't he doesn't have a parallel government that he can run if he had a way to give food and medicine to the people of venezuela on a large scale that i would contemplate supporting him even if you complained and you pointed out that his legitimacy is also debatable but the problem is he doesn't even have the capacity to do it so it doesn't really make sense as an option to talk about giving money to why go all the would do is sit in some bank account or as you point out run the risk of being this reactive i mean michael i don't know real quick and why don't you do but but but he doesn't have government capacity to distribute ok i want to finish up thirty seconds with michael is this overreach on part of the united states and trying to get force regime change in venezuela overreach. no but it's a very questionable strategy if we don't know where it's headed so the onus is now

on us to improve our own game to work to develop a strategy with the lima group hopefully with moscow and beijing as well that will actually improve the well being of the venezuelan people because that's the bottom line ok well the lima group is directly against venezuela so i think we should take them off the table gentlemen that's all the time we have many thanks to my guests in washington and in paris and thanks where viewers for watching us here next time and remember. what politicians do. they put themselves on the line they get accepted or rejected . so when you want to be president. wanted. to be close this is what the. korean people are. interested

in the. manufacture consent to public wealth. when the ruling class is some protect them so. when the final. say.

yes to all this is all the. thanks i.

i. whether one. approach. will deliver a smoking gun us democrats. own investigation intent it seems on still achieving one thing. the us prolonged sanctions on venezuelan officials considers new countries the support.