hello and welcome to crossfire for all things considered i'm teetotal bell 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 forced regime change as a deplorable record. across talking force regime change i'm joined by my guest michael o'hanlon 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 crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want i always appreciate it let's go to go home and paris over the last few days john bolton 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 prove to replace with europe 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. they were. 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 a being brought in through colombia and whether some venezuelan. battalions or regiments would switch sidon 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 european 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 wonder is regime change but they don't want to military intervention that's for your first point on a 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 interest rationed 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 cold sort of backyard. approach

to latin america's a region you know michael i mean if we if we go back to bolton's words you know replace the whole corrupt regime i mean i thought it was about democracy now it's about corruption i mean 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 what you what about why don't you do you 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 touche and i think under other well well i have i coined i have it right here right it was article it's article called how we today 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 on less 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 parents. you know i think this i mean there's been a change of political sign and color in latin american region yes and venezuela's kind of 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 though and i don't agree that article two hundred thirty three of the constitution enables wide open anyway it talks it's 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 than 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 bad by the u.s. some of its allies the been kind of inventing this narrative that the whole of venezuela to his mother was 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 approach arises from is dangerous and could lead us to civil war a civil war in this kind of cold war conflict that we've been living through in the last few months and that 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 am out of the momentum spot 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 that means 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 peter you and i don't always agree one hundred percent but i know you very

rarely agree that the united states does not. actually agree about how to type 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 wide process and with russia and china this is an example of the kind of help anyone so all that michael our friends and security council put john bolton 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 his entire time in this white house is to undo everything that was so much hard work was put into ok past agreements may have had flaws but they could certainly could be addressed here so you do you think john bolton is going to wake up in the middle nine say i know how to get out of this

impasse let's negotiate that if 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 it's a fascinating relationship a lot of us are studying i know you're watching a gaffe 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 hour. to years before we get there i gentlemen 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 stay with me.

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person and we rose to twenty thousand. china's building two point one billion dollars. but don't let the numbers over. the only number you need to remember one one visit showed the mid one and only boom but. they put themselves on the line. to get accepted or rejected. so when one of the president. wanted. to go right to be close it's like the before. can't be good. i'm interested always in the lives of our. guests it may.

be all. but. yet still this is how the good. old. welcome back to all things considered i'm discussing forced regime change.

ok let's go back to paris it's not just the venezuela 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 south of the border here and again i mean michael knows this because he's been on the program enough times i'm a pretty hardcore 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 mean 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 in paris. and 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 wage of deregulation was not carried out in the context of strong states it was carried out in the context of an absolute absence of institutions and state so the result of that was the growth of poverty the growth within the quality the growth of an icky the abuse of power of all the already powerful eccentrics that are so from his own words from one thousand nine hundred nine when chavez comes to power one was and then lula in two thousand and three the key issue is in two thousand and three and you have more talent 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 from more bolivarian of course 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 us which was forced to kind of accommodate in a hemisphere way that 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 and the global south that america diversified its relations and asserted its sovereignty i worked for a government rafael correa of government in ecuador who got rid of the biggest us 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 they're dealing with an america so you know elliott abrams you mentioned of course bolton but also michael bell that their approach toward latin america is sort of nostalgia give 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. particularly the you know the abrams interim that we all remember. and if there's a lack of subtlety about american foreign policy and we are again going back to the monroe doctrine i mean i was a stand alone did that bolton would even mention that and he mentioned it in the in the in the 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 doesn't show goodwill and it is that really about an anti socialist pro-democracy crusade when the same gentleman bolton openly talked about how it would be nice to have been his whale is oil capacity in american hands i mean the arrogance of that i

mean why is that a policy that. the people in south of the border should have confidence in first 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 that's going to color how we are seen and the last thing i would say agreeing 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 much 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. of the cold war i i think that it's absolutely correct michael i agree with you one hundred percent here let's go back to paris here i mean i you know 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 psycho 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 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 most affected people

we know all three of us know in our audience now 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 in aid to venezuela because they said it's overly politicized and it is go ahead in paris. agree i mean i think a number of international actors particular in 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 her produced by the sanctions and then on the other. sort of very meager of just a few million problems when the too many zeroes people sort of get lost but yeah it was actually you know like one 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 government has been. there's a lot of corruption let's just say hit point a point blank it's have

a lot of problems with corruption there but if the if if the u.s. under bolton under 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 a it's theft of. the assets of the venezuelan people because these assets are the 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 i don't put it quite that way myself but i share your concern because 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 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 go all the would do is sit in some bank account or as you point out run the risk of being misled reactive i mean michael i want more real quick why don't you do but i but he don't you doesn't have government capacity to distribute ok i want to keep my finish of thirty seconds with michael is this overreach on part of the united states in trying to get forest 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 at r.t.c.

you next time and remember. my son dylan drunks my nephews was still in drugs my sister just with doing drugs it was like an epidemic of drug abuse america's public enemy number one in the united states is going to be sort of going after the users in the prison population who are we started treating sick people people who are addicted to these drugs like criminals while i was on the hill. the war on drugs. there are countless numbers of people who are in prison for. sins for minor minor offenders in the drug trade it's

a lot watching your children grow up and miss you in waves and say by daddy as you're walking out of the business it's just it doesn't get easier. the maternity turns. go in and you may never get out some sort of you know this is . my teenage gang rules here. you know one of you to move then you're letting my people go. but. minus a murderer. in for the yeah. and melanie when.

you do one you know mccain. i see. this is a stick from the water bottle phone 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 litterbugs for throwing this away industry should be blamed for all this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic. special projects funding me. but for now

the mountains of waste only grow heigho. the u.s. state department parades journalists for refusing to refer to venezuela's opposition leader as the country's interim president. some outlets are incorrectly referring to one quite go as the opposition leader. or the self-proclaimed president. neither is correct. a british born man whose aid work in syria made him a media darling and stripped of his u.k. citizenship for alleged links to you.