Biden Claus: US lifts sanctions on Putin's strongest allies
With Joe Biden's foreign policy, there's always a lot of confusion, a lot of "the right hand knows not what the left hand is groping."
It doesn't help that Biden's point people at the State Department have been identified as "the three stooges" by a senior U.S. diplomat.
This brings us to the Biden administration's latest lame-brained idea — lifting sanctions on the Castroites in Cuba, and the thugs running Venezuela, in exchange for...nothing.
According to the BBC:
US officials have announced plans to ease tough sanctions imposed on Cuba by former President Donald Trump.
Under new measures approved by the Biden administration, restrictions on family remittances and travel to the island will be eased.
The processing of US visas for Cubans will also be speeded up.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said the move would allow Cuban citizens to pursue a life free from "government oppression".
The loosening of sanctions will see a cap on family remittances — funds sent by migrants in the US to family members in Cuba — removed. Previously migrants were prevented from sending more than $1,000 (£811) every three months.
Donations to non-family members will also be permitted under the new plans.
Venezuela got a goodie bag from Biden, too:
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The United States government is moving to ease a few economic sanctions on Venezuela in a gesture meant to encourage resumed negotiations between the U.S.-backed opposition and the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
The limited changes will allow Chevron Corp. to negotiate its license with the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, but not to drill or export any petroleum of Venezuelan origin, two senior U.S. government officials told The Associated Press late Monday. The officials spoke under the condition of anonymity because the formal announcement had not been made.
Additionally, Carlos Erik Malpica-Flores — a former high-ranking PDVSA official and nephew of Venezuela's first lady — will be removed from a list of sanctioned individuals, they said.
This is pretty rich stuff, given that Vlad Putin has exactly that group, and maybe Nicaragua and Iran, as his allies. Even China appears to be deserting him.
While the Bidenites buck for flooding Ukraine with 40 billion taxpayer dollars, send increasingly heavy weapons to help Ukraine win its war, and urge allies such as Germany to cut energy dependence on Russia, all of a sudden, we see relief being poured onto Putin's crummiest allies, the ones who would have been thrown out of power long ago had Putin not stepped in to bolster them through weapons, diplomatic shielding at places like the United Nations, and money, lots of money. Cuba, Venezuela (and Nicaragua) are the cornerstones of his policy in the Americas, his big plan to tweak America at the very least for its involvement in the Black Sea and all the other things that have given Putin his "justification" for invading and assaulting Ukraine.
What's more, these places are likely to become more important to Putin as he seeks to take the war to the states in revenge for the U.S. arming up the Ukrainians. Venezuela, for one, has been spoken of as a potential Russian base for air assaults on the states. Cuba has always been a Russian supplicant with malevolent intentions. Think it couldn't happen?
Now they're getting relief as if there were no bigger economic and strategic picture going on at this point. Sure, we lift sanctions on Cuba, because we love the Malecon and those tourist trips and hope to dampen the Miami Cuban vote as well as turn the Cuban migrants coming in by the thousands at our southern border now into loyal Democrat voters. But how allowing the Castroites to get their hands on remittance money, which is what they want more than anything in the world, or taking assorted Venezuelans off the drug-dealing sanctions list is going to serve U.S. security aims is obviously a question not even an idiot could answer. None of these hellholes has changed its tune on anything. They all remain monster violators of human rights, made their countries into criminal paradises, and wrecked their economies and impoverished their people, driving millions to become illegal migrants.
All this sanctions relief amounts to is relief for Putin, that he doesn't have to boost his allies so much. Who needs Joe Biden as an enemy when all he does is boost Putin's crummiest friends and proxies in exchange for nothing? Biden has been wrong about nearly every foreign policy issue, as former CIA director Bob Gates has famously said. Here's another instance. Don't imagine that this idiocy won't come back to bite us.
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