CUCUTA, Colombia (AP) — Opposition leader Juan Guaido has called on the international community to consider “all options” to resolve Venezuela’s crisis, a dramatic escalation in rhetoric that echoes comments from the Trump administration hinting…

CUCUTA, Colombia (AP) — Opposition leader Juan Guaido has called on the international community to consider “all options” to resolve Venezuela’s crisis, a dramatic escalation in rhetoric that echoes comments from the Trump administration hinting at potential U.S. military involvement.

Guaido’s comments late Saturday came after a tumultuous day that saw President Nicolas Maduro’s forces fire tear gas and buckshot on activists trying to deliver humanitarian aid in violent clashes that left two people dead and some 300 injured.

For weeks, the U.S. and regional allies had been amassing emergency food and medical kits on Venezuela’s borders in anticipation of carrying out a “humanitarian avalanche” by land and sea to undermine Maduro’s rule.

With activists failing to penetrate government blockades and deliver the aid, Guaido announced late Saturday that he would escalate his appeal to the international community — beginning with a meeting Monday in Colombia’s capital with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on the sidelines of an emergency summit of leaders of the so-called Lima Group to discuss Venezuela’s crisis.

He said he would urge the international community to keep “all options open” in the fight to restore Venezuela’s democracy, using identical language to that of President Donald Trump, who in his public statements has repeatedly refused to rule out force and reportedly even secretly pressed aides as early as 2017 about the possibility of a military incursion.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also stepped up the belligerent rhetoric, saying on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that Maduro’s “days are numbered.”

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who visited the border last week and has Trump’s ear on policy toward Venezuela, tweeted out pictures of anti-American strongmen including Panama’s Manuel Noriega, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu at the height of their power and then brutal downfall — the not so subtle suggestion being that Maduro himself could suffer a similar fate.

A close Guaido ally, Julio Borges, the exiled leader of congress who is Guaido’s ambassador to the Lima Group, was even more explicit in urging a military option. “We are going to demand an escalation of diplomatic pressure … and the use of force against Nicolas Maduro’s dictatorship,” he said Sunday.

It’s a prospect that analysts warn risks fracturing a hard-won coalition of Latin American nations who’ve come together to pressure Maduro’s socialist government. Most Latin American governments, even conservative ones like those in neighboring Colombia and Brazil, are on the record opposing a military solution and would face huge dissent should they back any military action led by the U.S., whose interventions in the region during the Cold War remain an open wound.

“These governments know they would face a huge tide of internal opinion greatly offended by a U.S.-led invasion for historical and political reasons,” said Ivan Briscoe, the Latin America director for the Crisis Group, a Belgium-based think tank.

It also could split what has until been bipartisan support for the Trump administration’s policy toward Venezuela.

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, over the weekend warned about a “potential trap being set by Trump.”

“Cheering humanitarian convoys sounds like the right thing to do, but what if it’s not about the aid? What if the real agenda is laying a pretext for war?” Murphy said on Twitter.

At the same time, though polls say Venezuelans overwhelmingly want Maduro to resign, almost an equal number reject the possibility of a foreign invasion to resolve the political impasse.

Resting at the foot of the Simon Bolivar bridge as work crews in Colombia began removing debris left by the unrest, Claudia Aguilar said she would support a military invasion but worries it would lead to more bloodshed.

The 29-year-old pregnant mother of three said she crossed illegally into Colombia on Sunday to buy a bag of rice and pasta for her family after Maduro ordered a partial closure of the border two days earlier.

“We’re with fear, dear God, of what will happen,” she said standing near the dirt trail she took to sneak across the border. “More blood, more deaths. The president of Venezuela does whatever he wants.”

In addition to weakening multilateral pressure against Maduro, analysts say the opposition saber rattling also risks undermining Guaido’s goal of peeling off support from the military, the country’s crucial powerbroker.

The 35-year-old Guaido has won the backing of more than 50 governments around the world since declaring himself interim president at a rally in January, arguing that Maduro’s re-election last year was illegitimate because some popular opposition candidates were barred from running.

But he’s so far been unable to cause a major rift inside the military, despite repeated appeals and the offer of amnesty to those joining the opposition’s fight for power.

“How many of you national guardsmen have a sick mother? How many have kids in school without food,” he implored Saturday night, standing next to a warehouse where 600 tons of food and medicine have been stockpiled on the Colombian border. “You don’t owe any obedience to a sadist … who celebrates the denial of humanitarian aid the country needs.”

Maduro has deftly courted support from the military since becoming president in 2013, offering top commanders key posts in his cabinet, including the presidency of state-run oil giant PDVSA, the source of virtually all of Venezuela’s dollar earnings.

More than 100 members of the security forces, most of them lower-rank soldiers, deserted and took refuge inside Colombia during Saturday’s unrest, according to migration officials. But none of them was higher ranked than a National Guard major, and there’s been little suggestion any battalion or division commanders are willing to defect despite almost daily calls by Guaido and the U.S.

To be sure, there’s no indication the U.S. is planning a military invasion and Trump has made a habit of threatening friends and foes alike — China, North Korea and Canada among them — only to dial back the rhetoric down the road. Washington still has more diplomatic tools available, including extending oil sanctions to punish non-American entities that conduct business with Maduro’s government in much the way such sanctions strangled communist Cuba for decades.

Still, as early as 2017, Trump reportedly raised the possibility of a U.S. military incursion in Venezuela similar to the 1989 invasion that led to the ouster of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, both in an Oval Office meeting with then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other aides, as well as at a session with leaders of four Latin American allies on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, according to a senior administration official who has since left the White House.

In both cases Trump abandoned the war talk at the urging of his advisers and allies in the region. Prior to the current crisis, there was never any war planning by the military, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the private conversations.

Still, momentum toward a confrontation seems to be building as hopes for a quick crumbling of Maduro’s government fade.

“It acts like a magnet,” said Briscoe of the possibility of a U.S.-led intervention. “As Plan A and B fail, it’s where everyone seems to be going. But the further you move in that direction, you weaken the multilateral approach and reduce the possibility that large parts of the military will turn against Maduro.”

Associated Press writer Joshua Goodman reported from Caracas, Venezuela, and AP writer Christine Armario reported in Cucuta, Colombia.

Copyright © 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.</s>(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Joseph J. Gonzalez, Appalachian State University (THE CONVERSATION) Leer en español. Violence erupted at the Venezuela-Colombia border over the…

Violence erupted at the Venezuela-Colombia border over the delivery of humanitarian aid to Venezuela, killing four people and injuring 24 on Feb. 22.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that his “days are numbered,” and Trump officials reiterated that the U.S. is considering all options, including military action, to address Venezuela’s crisis.

Almost 80 percent of Venezuelans disapprove of Maduro, who was reinaugurated for a second six-year term in January after an election widely seen as fraudulent. Since taking power in 2013, he has led Venezuela into a deep economic crisis.

In late January, opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared Maduro a “usurper” and swore himself in as the country’s rightful president. More than 50 countries – including the United States, Europe and most of Latin America – want to replace Maduro’s regime with a Guaidó-led government.

Despite near global condemnation of Maduro, any U.S. intervention in Venezuela would be controversial. The United States’ long history of interfering in Latin American politics suggests that its military operations generally usher in dictatorship and civil war – not democracy.

Cuba, the focus of my history research, is a prime example of this pattern.

U.S.-Cuban relations have never recovered from President William McKinley’s intervention in Cuba’s war for independence over a century ago.

Before waging what in the U.S. is known as the Spanish-American War in 1898, McKinley promised that “the people of the island of Cuba” would be “free and independent” from Spain and that his government had no “intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said Island.”

In the end, however, Cuba’s independence from Spain meant domination by the United States.

For 60 years after the Spanish-American War, the White House made repeated military and diplomatic interventions in Cuba, supporting politicians who protected U.S. economic interests in sugar, utilities, banks or tourism and who backed American foreign policy in the Caribbean.

By 1952, when the U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista overthrew President Carlos Prío Socarrás, Cuba’s government had effectively become protectors of American businesses, according to my research. Batista had a warm relationship with both Washington, D.C. and the American organized crime groups that used to control Havana’s tourist industry.

A communist revolution led by Fidel Castro overthrew Batista’s military junta in 1959. Castro decried the “imperialist government of the United States” for turning Cuba into an “American colony.”

The Kennedy administration’s trade embargo against Cuba and the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion – in which the U.S. military trained Cuban dissidents in an attempt to unseat Castro – only pushed Cuba further into the orbit of Soviet Russia.

For the past six decades, the U.S. and Cuba have remained locked in a Cold War, with a brief thaw under President Barack Obama.

Fearing that communism would spread across the hemisphere, the U.S. government repeatedly interfered in the politics of Latin American nations during the Cold War.

In 1954 the CIA worked with elements of the Guatemalan military to overthrow elected President Jacobo Árbenz, whom U.S. policymakers considered dangerously left-wing. Decades of dictatorship and civil war followed, killing an estimated 200,000 people.

A peace agreement in 1996 restored democracy, but Guatemala has yet to recover economically, politically or psychologically from the bloodshed.

Then there is Chile’s U.S.-supported coup d’etat. In 1973, the U.S. government covertly assisted right-wing elements of the Chilean military in overthrowing the socialist president Salvador Allende.

General Augusto Pinochet took power with the quiet financial and political support of the United States. His dictatorship, which lasted until 1990, killed tens of thousands of Chileans.

U.S. intervention in Latin America did not start or end with the Cold War.

During World War I, the United States was concerned that Germany could use the Dominican Republic as a base of military operations. So American troops occupied the Caribbean island from 1916 to 1924.

Though the American-led administration improved the finances and infrastructure of the Dominican Republic, it also created the national guard that helped to propel Gen. Rafael Trujillo into power. His 30-year reign was savage.

President George H. W. Bush’s 1989 invasion of Panama is the rare exception when U.S. intervention in Latin American affairs actually created stability.

Most Panamanians appear to have supported the 1989 U.S. military operation to remove the corrupt and brutal military strongman Manuel Noriega.

In the years since, Panama has enjoyed comparatively peaceful elections and transfers of power.

On balance, though, U.S. military operations in Latin America have rarely brought democracy.

But they have created strong anti-American sentiment in the region, which leftist leaders from Fidel Castro to Hugo Chávez have adeptly harnessed to vilify their political opponents as mere U.S. puppets.

Support for the U.S. government is lower now than it has been in decades. Just 35 percent of Argentines, 39 percent of Chileans and 45 percent of Venezuelans view the U.S. favorably, according to the Pew Research Center.

President Maduro, too, has used anti-imperialist rhetoric. He denounces U.S. sanctions and other efforts to isolate his regime as a “gringo plot.”

This history explains why a U.S. intervention in Venezuela would be viewed with skepticism. Though Maduro is unpopular, 65 percent of Venezuelans oppose any foreign military operation to remove Maduro, according to recent polling.

Rather than plan yet another coup d’etat, I believe U.S. efforts in Venezuela should support the work of the Lima Group, a coalition of 12 Latin American countries, including Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil, plus Canada.

The Lima Group has ruled out military force in Venezuela. Its pressure campaign to force him out peacefully has included diplomatically isolating his regime and asking Venezuela’s soldiers to pledge loyalty to Guaidó.

A negotiated settlement leading to Maduro’s voluntary departure from office is their ultimate goal.

Regional diplomacy is much slower than foreign intervention. But it avoids further bloodshed and reduces the role of anti-Americanism in Venezuela’s crisis.

It may also open a new chapter in the history of U.S.-Latin American relations – one in which the U.S. takes its lead from the region, and not the other way around.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/venezuela-crisis-trump-threats-to-maduro-evoke-bloody-history-of-us-intervention-in-latin-america-111169.

Copyright © 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.</s>The Trump administration is about to impose a new batch of sweeping sanctions against the Cuban authorities over their support for the government of embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Fox News reported, citing a source familiar with POTUS’ national security team.

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The move would reportedly be an application of the Helms-Burton Act – a 1996 law, which includes a provision that, if activated, would allow Cuban-Americans who hold US citizenship to sue foreign corporations and individuals over property seized by the Cuban government.

The so-called Title III provisions of the law have been waived by every president since its creation in 1996, but in January President Trump’s administration decided to suspend its terms for 45 days, rather than the customary six months that his predecessors have routinely invoked.

“This extension will permit us to conduct a careful review of the right to bring action under Title III in light of the national interests of the United States and efforts to expedite a transition to democracy in Cuba. We encourage any person doing business in Cuba to reconsider whether they are trafficking in confiscated property and abetting this dictatorship”, the State Department said in a statement at the time.

In response, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez slammed the Trump administration’s move as “political blackmail” and a “brutal attack against international law”.

Cuba, along with Russia, Iran, Turkey and many other countries, refused to follow Washington’s suit and recognise Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president.

Since the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the United States has been attempting to sabotage the communist government in Havana, having severed diplomatic ties with the island and introduced a trade embargo on it.

READ MORE: 'End Game': US Venezuela Envoy Wants Maduro to Flee to Russia or Cuba

In 2014, Barack Obama’s administration announced a decision to normalise relations with Cuba, subsequently lifting some restrictions on bilateral exchanges. However, in June 2017, President Trump reversed the Obama-era policy and imposed new limitations on economy, trade and travel.

The United States has been increasingly involved in the political crisis in Venezuela, voicing outright support for Juan Guaido, the self-proclaimed interim president, challenging the legitimately elected Nicolas Maduro.

On 3 March, Duque said that Maduro’s “days in power are about to end” because of mounting pressure on his “Mafioso” government and the allegedly increasing number of military defectors:

“Maduro is facing his last days, whether that’s one month or two, or one week, or one day”, he said, adding that “nobody has seen Maduro weaker”.

President Maduro previously accused the US of staging a coup d’etat in the country and said that a group of Venezuelan military defectors were conspiring in Colombia to sabotage the armed forces at his command.

READ MORE: US Claims on 'Maduro's Days Numbered' Mean Cuba, Nicaragua Will Be Next — Lavrov

In addition, he dismissed the Trump-Duque meeting as a “feast of hatred” toward Venezuela, and refused to allow the US humanitarian aid, stockpiled in Colombia, into the county, saying that it might be used as a pretext for foreign invasion.</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration said on Monday it would allow lawsuits by U.S. citizens against dozens of Cuban companies and other entities on Washington’s blacklist but will maintain, for now, a ban against suing foreign firms doing business on the communist-ruled island.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. and Cuban flags are seen before a ceremony for the arrival of Carnival cruise ship ms Veendam during its first trip to Cuba in Havana, Cuba, December 28, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

The move marked an intensification of U.S. pressure on Cuba and also appeared aimed at punishing Havana over its support for Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro. But it stopped short of the more severe step of targeting foreign investments in Cuba - though it left the door open to doing so in the future.

Lawsuits in U.S. courts against Cuban enterprises, many linked to military and intelligence services, will be permitted beginning on March 19. But Washington will keep in place until at least April 17 a ban on legal action against foreign firms using property confiscated by the Cuban government since the 1959 revolution, the State Department said.

Every U.S. president has suspended on a rotating six-month basis a section of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act that would allow such lawsuits by Cuban-Americans and other U.S. citizens due to opposition from the international community and fears it could create chaos in the U.S. court system with a flood of legal claims.

But President Donald Trump’s administration first announced in January a 45-day review of the matter and has now added another 30 days for further study while allowing the act’s controversial Title III on private legal actions to be partially activated for the first time.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said he “strongly rejected” the U.S. action against Cuban companies “arbitrarily sanctioned” by the Trump administration. The 30-day waiver for other cases, he said in a message on Twitter, amounted to an “unacceptable threat against the world.”

A complete lifting of the ban could let potentially billions of dollars in legal claims move forward in U.S. courts and likely antagonize Canada and U.S. European partners, whose companies have significant business holdings in Cuba.

It could also affect some U.S. companies that have begun investing in the island since former President Barack Obama’s opening to the old Cold War foe.

Allowing the provision to go into effect even on a limited basis could undermine efforts by Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel to foster foreign investment and promote tourism to bolster the Caribbean island’s fragile economy.

“The decision today adds obstacles to our development and economic goals, but the United States will continue to fail in its central aim of subjecting the sovereign will of Cubans by force,” Cuba’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

CONSULTATIONS WITH CANADA, EUROPEANS

A senior State Department official said the Trump administration had consulted with Canada and European partners in deliberations on how to proceed.

Under Monday’s announcement, lawsuits will not be authorized against foreign partners in joint ventures with the Cuban government, the official told reporters.

The administration had initially prepared to open the door wider to litigation, exempting only U.S. companies and those from allied countries, but it decided in the end on a more limited approach for now, a person familiar with the discussions said.

Among the foreign companies heavily invested in Cuba are Canadian mining firm Canadian Sherritt International and Spain’s Melia Hotels. U.S. companies, including airlines and cruise companies, have forged business deals in Cuba since the easing of restrictions under Obama.

U.S.-Cuban relations have nosedived since Trump became president, partially rolling back the detente initiated by Obama and reverting to Cold War-style rhetoric. A six-decade-old U.S. economic embargo on Cuba has also remained officially intact.

With Monday’s announcement, the administration made clear that it was not only acting because of what the State Department official called “the Cuban state’s repression of its own people” but also to send a message about Havana’s role in Venezuela.

“Cuba continues to maintain close relations to Russia and China and has destabilized Venezuela, leading to mass flows of refugees and of course public health threats,” the official said.

Trump aides have regularly denounced Cuba for what they say is political and security assistance helping Maduro to keep his grip on power since opposition leader Juan Guaido invoked the Venezuelan constitution in January and swore himself in as interim president.

Washington and dozens of other countries have recognized Guaido, but Maduro, who says he is being targeted by a U.S.-directed coup attempt, is backed by Cuba as well as Russia and China and retains control of state institutions, including the military.

Trump’s toughened stance on Cuba as well as Venezuela has gone down well in the large Cuban-American community in south Florida, an important voting bloc in a key political swing state as he looks toward his re-election campaign in 2020.

John Bolton, who became Trump’s national security adviser last April, called Cuba and its top allies Venezuela and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny” in Miami speech in November.</s>Cuba's deep involvement in Venezuela is causing new tensions in the historically close relationship between Canada and Cuba, with Nicolas Maduro increasingly leaning on the Cubans to keep him in power as Venezuelans turn against him.

Thousands of Cubans live and work in Venezuela, many in the most sensitive structures of the Bolivarian state apparatus: the armed forces and the military counter-intelligence service DGCIM; Venezuela's secret police SEBIN; and among Nicolas Maduro's inner circle and bodyguard.

Their presence — and the perception that Cubans are calling the shots in the country — have led to widespread public anger against them in Venezuela, including calls on social media to ostracize them.

So far, Canada has been reluctant to call out a government that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called an "ally" during a 2016 visit to Havana. But Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland says Cuba's role is "concerning".

"The issue of the Cuban role in Venezuela was discussed at the Lima Group meeting in Bogota on Monday," she told CBC News. "We have heard directly from the Venezuelan opposition that they're concerned by the role that some Cubans are playing in their country."

'Two dictatorships in one'

She added that Canada calls on Cuba "to allow the Venezuelan people what they have a right to, and what they deserve, which is for their constitution to be respected and for them to be able to have a peaceful transition to democracy."

Michael Lima Cuadra is a Cuban-Canadian historian and democracy activist who says the Maduro government partly has Cuba to thank for its continued survival despite deep unpopularity.

"As long as the Castro regime is not held accountable internationally for its intervention in Venezuela, it's going to continue sending a private army of almost 15,000 intelligence operators, which are the ones responsible for Maduro holding on to power.

"As a historian I've never seen a Latin American dictatorship resist so much pressure from so many people. So the know-how of repression that's being exported by the Castro regime has to be confronted by Canada and the Lima Group. As long as that doesn't happen, Venezuelans are going to face two dictatorships in one."

On Feb. 21, Maj.-Gen. Hugo Carvajal, Venezuela's former chief of intelligence and once the right-hand man of then-president Hugo Chavez, turned on the Maduro regime in a spectacular video statement, pronounced with the Caracas skyline behind him.

After praising the army that once liberated Venezuela, he said: "It can't be possible that that same army, now in the hands of generals subjugated to Cuban commands, has become the main collaborator of a dictatorial system designed to afflict our people with misery."

CBC News in Venezuela spoke to two former Venezuelan officers, recently departed from the armed forces, who said there was widespread discontent in the ranks at having to take orders from Cubans.

Venezuelan military analyst Rocio San Miguel told CBC there is also a longtime Cuban presence in the Strategic Operations Centre of the Venezuelan armed forces under the command of Admiral Remigio Ceballos Ichaso.

Military sources confirmed to CBC News in Venezuela that Cubans are prominent in the hunt for "traitors" in the armed forces, which have seen hundreds of defections to Colombia since Feb. 23.

Cubans are also in Miraflores, the presidential palace. Last week, Nicolas Maduro lost his temper during an interview with Jorge Ramos of U.S. network Univision, after Ramos showed him video of Venezuelans grabbing food from the back of a garbage truck.

He stormed out and his guards took over, locking the crew in a dark room and confiscating their camera discs. After they were deported from Venezuela, Mexican native Ramos and his Cuban producer Maria Martinez-Guzman said the agents who stole their interview were Cuban. Indeed, Maduro has been forced into ever closer dependence on Cubans as defections by Venezuelans have reached right into the upper ranks of Maduro's presidential honour guard.

"Cuba and Venezuela have always demonstrated that 'yes we can'," said Nicolas Maduro as he sat down with his Cuban counterpart in Havana in April last year.

Maduro was the first (and one of the few) world leaders to visit Miguel Diaz-Canel as the first non-Castro took the reins of power as president of revolutionary Cuba. Thousands of Cubans live and work in Venezuela, and while some do work that is harmless or beneficial, such as doctors, others are at the heart of the Maduro regime's machinery of repression.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought greater freedom to Eastern Europe, but to Cuba only hunger and hardship. The island's economy was built around exchanging Cuban sugar for Russian oil. Cuba's oil imports dropped by 90 per cent, leaving the country almost without gasoline or fertilizer.

During the so-called Special Period that followed, severe food rationing caused Cubans to lose an average of 20 pounds.

Today, Cuba has largely recovered from that hardship, and it is Venezuelans who are going hungry. Cuba lies less than 1,000 kilometres from Venezuela's oil heartland, and in the early '90s the Castros saw in Venezuela a political movement that might take the place of the Soviet Union.

Thirty years ago this week Venezuela erupted in nine days of deadly riots known as the Caracazo, that began as a protest against austerity. In the aftermath, a secret movement of Venezuelan officers formed around a charismatic paratrooper called Lt.-Col. Hugo Chavez.

Chavez leaped to fame in 1992 with two failed coup attempts, the second while he was in prison for the first.

When Chavez was pardoned in 1994, Fidel Castro invited him to Havana. Thus began a relationship that would ultimately lead to a near merger of the two countries' security organs.

In the late '90s, Chavez gave up on coups and decided to try the electoral path to power, which proved successful.

Following his inauguration in 1999, he returned to Havana and announced: "Venezuela is travelling towards the same sea as the Cuban people, a sea of happiness and of real social justice and peace.… I appeal for the unity of our two peoples, and of the revolutions that we both lead."

Tens of thousands of Cuban doctors and teachers crossed over to Venezuela in return for tens of thousands of barrels of Venezuelan oil delivered daily to Cuban ports. Thousands of Venezuelans were flown to Cuba for medical treatment.

Critics have argued that Venezuela could have achieved a better return for its oil by selling it on international markets and investing the money in training its own people. But at least in the early days of "Cubazuela" there were tangible benefits for poor Venezuelans.

In April 2002, President Chavez was himself the target of a coup. The attempt failed, but it increased Chavez's distrust of his own officers, and was the beginning of an ever-deeper dependence on Cubans to secure his government.

Nicolas Maduro's wife, Cilia Flores, a prominent member of Chavez's inner circle and today Venezuela's first lady, encouraged Chavez to draw closer to Cuba, and by 2008 her husband Nicolas, then foreign minister, declared, "We have become a single people, a single nation."

Today, says Lima Cuadra, the symbiosis of the two governments is such that either one would have trouble surviving without the other.

And so, he says, neither Cuba's new president, Diaz-Canel, nor his officially retired mentor, Raul Castro, is likely to listen to Canadian appeals to withdraw support.

Global Affairs Canada's director for the Americas, Michael Grant, told a Senate committee last week that that has indeed been the reaction.

"Recently we held our annual discussions on a senior level," he told the committee, "and I can tell you that Venezuela was a topic of those discussions, with a view to sharing points of view and trying to find a common way forward.

"Did we? No. We have a fundamental disagreement."

CBC News asked Freeland if Canada still considered Cuba an "ally".



 "Cuba is a country with which Canada has a longstanding relationship," she said, "a relationship that includes tourism, and where there's a relationship with many Canadian businesses, and Cuba is a country where we have a relationship that allows us to raise serious concerns."

Lima Cuadra says the Cuban Communist Party can't afford to give up on Maduro, and believes its fate may be tied to that of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

"The Maduro regime supplies almost 50,000 barrels of oil to the Castro regime. Forty to 45 per cent of Cuba's exports go to Venezuela. So the Castro regime would be in major economic trouble if the Maduro regime collapses.

"Ideologically, it would be equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall. '21st century socialism' would collapse. It would be the biggest international failure of the Castro regime. So on both fronts, economic and ideological, it would be a major defeat."</s>With his tough approach to Venezuela’s crumbling dictatorship, President Donald Trump is carrying on the traditions of the Cold Warriors who toppled the Soviet Union, using a policy of measured strength and direct work to help liberate those people who were inflicted with “the perfect implementation of socialism.”

At a critical juncture, Trump extended diplomatic recognition to opposition leader Juan Guaidó, the elected president of the National Assembly, declaring him Venezuela’s legitimate president and urging other countries to do the same.

The Venezuelan people have reached a breaking point under Nicolás Maduro and his socialist dictatorship. After Hugo Chavez’s hand-picked successor declared himself the winner of a blatantly-rigged election, the National Assembly declared his victory illegitimate and installed Guaidó as interim president, in accordance with the country’s constitution.

It took terrible privations and broad human rights violations to drive the Venezuelan people to this point. Over the past 16 years, in a country rich in natural resources and abundance, the Marxist Chavez-Maduro dictatorship has pillaged Venezuela’s once-considerable wealth to such an extent that people literally starve on the streets. With this long-oppressed population taking this crucial step, Trump could not stand on the sidelines.

The president is now publicly throwing the diplomatic weight of the United States behind the Venezuelan people’s courageous effort to reclaim their country despite the omnipresent risk of torture and imprisonment.

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As we now know, Trump, his administration and other U.S. leaders such as Republican Sen. Marco Rubio have been working behind the scenes for years to build the international support these brave Venezuelans needed to ensure their efforts are not in vain.

In throwing a lifeline to the Venezuelan people, Trump has re-established and truly lived up to his role as “Leader of the Free World,” and he’s done so without resorting to the knee-jerk military interventionism practiced by his recent predecessors.

Trump’s strategy has brought new life to the Cold Warrior mettle of presidents such as Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, which is exactly what America needs today as we confront a resurgence of the types of international threats that characterized the Cold War era.

While the successors to Marx, Lenin and Stalin may have lost their place as the greatest threat to Democracy with the fall of the Soviet Union and its satellites, they have by no means disappeared from the world stage.

Nowhere was this more clear than in Venezuela, which was the richest country in Latin America before Hugo Chavez ushered in a new “friendlier” brand of communism in 2002. Western liberals and socialists cheered this “Socialism of the 21st century” for years, just as they did for its Stalinist predecessors, but Chavez-style communism has proven just as brutal as any Soviet-era regime.

Can anyone imagine 1 million percent inflation?! How can any government of man inflict this kind of suffering on its own people? This is why Trump has acted — and will continue to act to correct this obtuse relic created by the failed political constructs of the Cold War era.

Trump has countered authoritarian regimes since the start of his administration. Under his leadership, the United States has taken an unceasingly harsh line against the world’s remaining totalitarian socialist states.

In a dramatic reversal of Barack Obama’s rapprochement with the Castro regime in Cuba, for instance, Trump restored and redoubled the policies of his Cold Warrior antecedents against Castro, applying maximum economic and political pressure to hasten the demise of the communist dictatorship in Cuba.

Similarly, the president has reversed decades of soft-touch trade policy toward China, using targeted counter-tariffs to compel the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party to abandon its illegal trade manipulations.

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In Venezuela, the president is doing his part to bring Maduro’s man-made nightmare to an end by granting legitimacy and moral support to the opposition movement that is bravely standing up to the dictator and his enablers.

Maduro, in his desperation to cling to power, has resorted to all the same brutal tactics employed by other communist dictators, using state violence to stifle free speech and intimidate political opponents while calling his international critics fascists and Nazis.

In opposing him, however, an American president has shown he’s willing to carry on the tradition of the great Cold Warriors who defeated Maduro’s forebears and ended their ideals of enslaving the human spirit. Thanks to unflinching American leadership, Maduro will soon be joining them on the ash heap of history.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer is a retired senior intelligence operations officer and Acting President of the London Center for Policy Research.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.</s>MIAMI (CBSMiami/CNN) – US claimants can begin bringing suits against Cuban entities in US federal courts beginning on March 19, according to a senior State Department official.

The entities that can be sued starting later this month are on the on the State Department’s Cuba Restricted List, meaning they are under the authority of the Cuban military, intelligence, and security forces.

Foreign businesses operating on the island will be excluded from any lawsuits under the decision to partially suspend Title III of the Libertad Act.

The decision to not fully suspend Title III will allow Americans who have claims to property or assets seized in the 1959 Cuban revolution to bring lawsuits if they haven’t received payment from the Cuban government.

The US government has waived Title III of the Act every year since 1996 preventing a swathe of lawsuits being launched against businesses including hotel chains, cruise-ship companies and airlines operating in Cuba.

The official said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decided against hitting European countries doing business in Cuba, but added the decision to exclude foreign investors would be reviewed after 30 days. This is a much shorter review time, as the waiver is usually signed every six months.

The senior State Department official said that during this time the US will also encourage international partners to hold Cuba accountable for “propping up” the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

There are some countries currently doing business in Cuba — such as Spain — that the US wants to see take a harder stance against Nicolás Maduro. Those countries could be impacted if the US ultimately decides to go after international entities doing business with Cuba.

The senior official said that is “hard to say” the exact number of lawsuits that would be brought as a result of the decision.</s>The Trump administration partially reversed more than two decades of U.S. policy toward Cuba on Monday, authorizing lawsuits by American citizens against Cuban government entities “trafficking” in property that was confiscated six decades ago by the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that the administration was lifting a prohibition against such suits, as long as they were filed against one of about 200 companies and businesses in which the Cuban security services have a financial interest. Last year, U.S. companies and travelers were prohibited from conducting any business with the listed Cuban entities.

The new step comes as the administration tightens the economic screws on Cuba in an attempt to move back from the Obama-era opening to the island. That effort has intensified with administration accusations that Cuba is the main prop holding up the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro.

“Today expect the United States to take the first in a series of steps to hold the regime in #Cuba accountable for its 60 years of crimes & illegality which includes its support for the murderous #MaduroCrimeFamily,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote on Twitter early Monday in anticipation of the announcement.

Others saw an additional motive. “This is all about Florida 2020,” where thousands of Venezuelans are a voting bloc along with the always-important Cuban Americans, said Richard Feinberg, a professor of international economy at the University of California at San Diego and a Latin America specialist.

“It’s clear that by this action, we are ratcheting up pressure on the Cuban government,” said a senior State Department official who briefed reporters on a department-imposed condition of anonymity.

The measure allows legal claims only against property held by the listed Cuban entities and for now, at least, does not affect any foreign investment or the foreign part of joint ventures with those entities. In 30 days, the official said, the administration will assess the situation and decide, among other things, whether to expand it.

“In addition to taking this action,” the official said, “we are also continuing to encourage the international community to press Cuba on human rights . . . encouraging anyone doing business in Cuba to consider, whether intentionally or not, they’re trafficking in confiscated property and therefore abetting the regime’s repression.”

At stake are potentially hundreds of thousands of claims — nearly 6,000 of them already certified by the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission — billions of dollars, and protracted legal and diplomatic battles with U.S. and foreign companies operating on property claimed by original owners.

An unprecedented aspect of the act, at odds with traditional practice and international law, would allow Cuban Americans who were not U.S. citizens at the time their property was taken to make claims in federal court.

Most of the existing and potential claimants fled the island in the years immediately after Castro took over the government in January 1959. The properties range from vacation beach houses to some of Cuba’s largest state-owned and joint-venture companies. Cuba’s intelligence and military services are involved in many of the businesses, particularly in the tourism sector.

The measure is part of the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, commonly called Helms-Burton after the lawmakers who initiated it. The law codified and expanded the economic embargo against Cuba’s communist government — applying it to foreign countries and mandating that it remain in place until lifting it was determined to be in the U.S. national interest and would expedite Cuba’s return to democracy.

The bill, initially opposed by many Democrats, was passed and signed by President Bill Clinton after Cuban fighter jets, in February 1996, shot down two private planes operated by a Miami-based humanitarian group. Cuba disputed that the planes were over international waters.

But the law’s Title III provision, allowing U.S. citizens to sue for three times the current value of confiscated property worth more than $50,000, has been suspended every six months since it was enacted, as successive administrations determined it would be harmful to U.S. trade and relationships with allies that have investments in Cuba.

Several European countries, along with Canada and Mexico, passed laws prohibiting cooperation with any of its extraterritorial provisions, and the European Union threatened to bring it before the World Trade Organization.

As it continues to push for Maduro’s ouster in favor of opposition leader Juan Guaidó, whom more than 50 countries have recognized as Venezuela’s interim president, the administration has repeatedly charged Cuba — along with Russia and China — with keeping Maduro in office.

“Part of the problem in Venezuela is the heavy Cuban presence, 20,000 to 25,000 Cuban security officials,” White House national security adviser John Bolton told CNN on Sunday.

Josefina Vidal, Cuba’s ambassador to Canada, spoke out Monday against a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation report repeating Bolton’s charges. Vidal said there were 20,000 Cubans in Venezuela, 94 percent of them health workers and the rest “in other sectors such as education,” according to Prensa Latina, the Cuban news service.

In years past, Cuba sent thousands of physicians and other health workers to Venezuela in exchange for sharply discounted — or free — oil shipments that have now been substantially curtailed as Venezuelan production has lagged.

But while there are disagreements over the numbers, many experts in this country say thousands of Cuban intelligence and military personnel are also in Venezuela, where they hold significant sway over forces loyal to Maduro’s government.

Although the administration has increased economic pressure on Cuba, even those who disagree with U.S. policy have been leery of investment there.

“The main deterrent to foreign investment in Cuba is the Cuban government itself,” Feinberg said. “The domestic economy is stagnant if not declining . . . they have severe foreign exchange problems and delays in repatriation of money. Who’s going to invest under those circumstances? Not a lot of companies.”</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration said on Monday it would allow lawsuits by U.S. citizens against dozens of Cuban companies and other entities on Washington’s blacklist but will maintain, for now, a ban against suing foreign firms doing business on the communist-ruled island.

The move marked an intensification of U.S. pressure on Cuba and also appeared aimed at punishing Havana over its support for Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro. But it stopped short of the more severe step of targeting foreign investments in Cuba - though it left the door open to doing so in the future.

Lawsuits in U.S. courts against potentially dozens of Cuban entities linked to military and intelligence services will be permitted beginning on March 19. But Washington will keep in place until at least April 17 a prohibition against legal action against foreign firms using property confiscated in the 1960s by the Cuban government, the State Department said.

Every U.S. president has suspended on a rotating six-month basis a section of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act that would allow such lawsuits due to opposition from the international community and fears it could create chaos in the U.S. court system with a flood of lawsuits.

But President Donald Trump’s administration first announced in January a 45-day review of the matter and has now added another 30 days for further study.

A complete lifting of the ban could let billions of dollars in legal claims move forward in U.S. courts and likely antagonize Canada and U.S. European partners, whose companies have significant business holdings in Cuba.

It could also affect some U.S. companies that have begun investing in the island since former President Barack Obama’s opening to the old Cold War foe.

Allowing the provision to go into effect even on a limited basis could undermine efforts by Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel to foster foreign investment and promote tourism to bolster the Caribbean island’s fragile economy.

A senior State Department official said the Trump administration had consulted with Canada and European partners in deliberations on how to proceed.

Under Monday’s announcement, lawsuits will not be authorized against foreign partners in joint ventures with the Cuban government, the official told reporters.</s>The State Department on Monday announced it would allow lawsuits to be brought against Cuba companies and individuals by people whose property was seized by the communist government during and after Fidel Castro's revolution in the late 1950s.

In the United States' latest move to punish Cuba and encourage democracy in the communist nation, the State Department announced it would suspend for 30 days part of the 1996 Libertad Act, also known as the Helms-Burton Act, and allow some lawsuits to be brought against companies using properties confiscated by the Cuban government after its 1959 revolution.

"Even under a new president in Cuba, nothing has changed," a senior State Department official said Monday. "The U.S. is holding the Cuban regime responsible."

Every president since Bill Clinton has suspended the section of the act that would allow such lawsuits because they could snarl companies from U.S.-allied countries – like the United Kingdom, France and Spain – in years of complicated litigation that could prompt international trade claims against the United States. The State Department, however, made clear that any lawsuits brought in U.S. federal courts would target Cuban entities and sub-entities, not ones owned or controlled by U.S. allies.

Allowing a limited number of lawsuits could make investment in Cuba more burdensome for companies thinking of entering the market, who will now have to do additional research into their legal liability, but it is unlikely to be a major blow against the Cuban economy.

"This is the first time we're not fully suspending this section of the Libertad Act," the senior State Department official said. "We're giving claimants the opportunity to sue for their property."

While State Department officials said the move was focused on advancing the cause of individual rights in Cuba, other officials also linked the actions to Havana's role in supporting the regime of disputed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

CUBA CITES LACK OF EVIDENCE IN MYSTERIOUS SONIC ATTACKS ON DIPLOMATS

In a tweet on Monday, National Security Adviser John Bolton blamed Cuba for its role in “fomenting repression in Venezuela” and said the U.S. would be tightening financial restrictions.

“Cuba’s role in usurping democracy and fomenting repression in Venezuela is clear,” Bolton tweeted. “That’s why the U.S. will continue to tighten financial restrictions on Cuba’s military and intel services. The region’s democracies should condemn the Cuba regime.”

Caracas and other parts of the South American nation continue to be plagued by widespread shortages of basic supplies and political unrest.

On Friday, the U.S. imposed sanctions on six high-ranking members of the Venezuelan security forces and revoked the visas of other officials and their relatives in the latest effort to pressure Maduro to relinquish power.

The sanctions are in response to the blocking of humanitarian aid convoys last week while the visa revocations on dozens of individuals are intended to punish people who have flourished amid the South American country's dire economic crisis, Elliott Abrams, the special representative for Venezuela, told reporters.

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Maduro's forces fired tear gas and buckshot at activists trying to deliver humanitarian aid in violent clashes on Feb. 23, leaving two people dead and about 300 injured.

"Maduro supporters that abuse or violate human rights, steal from the Venezuelan people or undermine Venezuela's democracy are not welcome in the United States," Abrams said. "Neither are their family members who enjoy a privileged lifestyle at the expense of the liberty and prosperity of millions of Venezuelans."

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido arrived back in the country on Monday as hundreds of protestors gathered in a Caracas plaza, heeding a call from the self-declared interim president to turn out for his expected return to Venezuela.

Dozens of countries – including the U.S. – have recognized Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate leader, arguing that last year's re-election of Maduro was invalid.

Guaido returned from a tour of several Latin American nation where he was hoping to drum up support among regional leaders for his claim to leadership in Venezuela.

After nearly 60 years of a trade embargo, meanwhile, the Cuban economy is in a period of consistently low growth of about 1 percent a year, with foreign investment at roughly $2 billion. But tourism, remittances and subsidized oil from Venezuela have allowed the government to maintain basic services.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Trump administration announces it will allow lawsuits by U.S. citizens against dozens of Cuban companies and other entities concerning property confiscated by the Cuban government. A spokesperson says Cuba's support for Venezuela's incumbent president, Nicolás Maduro, was taken into consideration when the decision was made.