Biden Admin Aligns With Marxist Leaders in Latin America

Juan Gonzalez, who led the Biden administration’s curious coverage of embracing anti-U.S. Marxist leaders in Latin America whereas making enemies of their pro-Western counterparts, has resigned his submit because the National Security Council’s high hemispheric adviser.

Gonzalez (no relation) will depart President Joe Biden’s National Security Council in March to spend extra time together with his kids, an nameless official told Bloomberg on Tuesday.

The resignation got here a day after Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, despatched to the U.S. a seized Venezuelan cargo aircraft that has ties to Iran. The motion underscored the folly of stiff-arming genuinely pro-American leaders whereas supporting those that could also be leftist ideological allies of this White House however are archenemies of America’s nationwide pursuits.

As the National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, Gonzalez personified that method.

“Gonzalez is the architect of the administration’s failed Venezuela policy as well as most of the politicized aspects of our current regional engagement,” Andres Martinez-Fernandez, The Heritage Foundation’s high Latin American professional, emailed me Tuesday evening. “Friends of the U.S. in the region will be glad to see him go.” [The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.]

Gonzalez has wooed Venezuela’s Marxist strongman, Nicolas Maduro; Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M19 armed terrorist-guerrilla motion; and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, one other Marxist chief with an anti-American animus.

On a visit simply this month to South America, Gonzalez once more tried to promote the baffling concept that Colombia’s Petro wouldn’t solely be the perfect middleman between Maduro and the opposition he recurrently crushes but additionally between Maduro and Washington.

“Colombia can serve as an important bridge, not just at building dialogue between the opposition and Chavismo, but also frankly between us and Venezuela,” Gonzalez was quoted by Bloomberg as saying Feb. 5 from Bogota.

The concept isn’t simply baffling however harmful. Petro wouldn’t be a good-faith arbitrator, given that he’s a lot nearer ideologically to Maduro, a fellow Marxist. That would put Venezuela’s susceptible opposition in an much more hazardous place than Gonzalez had already put them in.

It was Gonzalez, in spite of everything, who led the disastrous coverage of ending the Trump administration’s sanctions on Maduro in alternate for empty guarantees by the Venezuelan dictator of “free and fair elections” this 12 months.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, excoriated Gonzalez in a Nov. 3 letter for alleviating the sanctions on Venezuela. Grassley famous what occurred a mere week after the Biden administration lifted the sanctions: “Venezuela’s high court suspended the opposition’s entire primary elections process, ratified Maduro’s ban on three candidates running for office, and ordered the organizers to turn over documents identifying registered voters. Now, Nicolas Maduro—a man known for arbitrarily detaining and torturing his dissenters—has a list identifying his opponents by name.”

Gonzalez additionally labored on the U.S. launch of Alex Saab, an emissary between Iran and Venezuela who was behind bars in Miami for 2 years however now lives free in Caracas.

On the opposite hand, the White House allowed associates of Gonzalez to work to forestall the election of Argentina’s Milei, a Trumpy libertarian who took workplace in December. Milei stands for conservative ideas that the folks round Biden despise. (He’s talking at CPAC subsequent weekend, for instance.)

Milei despatched the Venezuelan-Iranian cargo aircraft to the U.S. after a two-year keep in Argentina. The plane had been bought to Venezuela’s state airline Emtrasur by Iran’s Mahan Air, which the U.S. Justice Department calls a sanctioned “Iranian airline affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp-Quds Force (IRGC-QF), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).”

“The United States’ forfeiture of the Boeing 747 cargo plane culminates over 18 months of planning, coordination, and execution by the United States government and our Argentine counterparts,” the Justice Department’s written assertion quotes Assistant Secretary of Export Enforcement Matthew Axelrod as saying.

Milei solved this downside as a result of, as he has stated from the start, he desires an “international geopolitical agenda aligned with the West and [its] defense of the values of freedom.” That is why Iran, China, and Russia opposed Milei.

But being pro-West is problematic for the Biden workforce, so it additionally opposed Argentina’s new president. 

Biden needed to have signed off on lending to Milei’s opponent in final 12 months’s Argentine election, Peronist Sergio Massa, the providers of two former Obama marketing campaign aides, Robert Gibbs and Dan Restrepo, in addition to Democratic pollster Jessica Reis.

Restrepo is a personal good friend of Gonzalez. Gonzalez, in the meantime, had constructed what the La Politica Online newspaper called “a relationship of trust” with Massa.

“Why would the Biden administration have wanted someone, Massa, who is dedicated to opposing U.S. unilateral action, rather than someone who supports U.S. global predominance, like Milei?” asked an analyst writing for AMAC Online.

The reply, wrote the analyst, “is that the members of Biden’s foreign policy teams themselves oppose U.S. unilateral action.”

Gonzalez led this abject coverage. Whether he’s leaving Biden’s National Security Council to spend extra time together with his kids or as a result of the chapter of this coverage is all too apparent is immaterial. Good riddance.

This commentary initially was revealed by the Washington Examiner

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