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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us. So today we are going to dive into what's been happening in Venezuela and what that means for us here in the U.S. as well as kind of the rest of the world. In the wake of the U.S.
military actions in the country, including the capture of Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro, we're left with a lot of questions about what all this means for the future of U.S. foreign policy and the global economy. So here to help us unpack this and get smart about it is Jason Marzak. He's vice president and senior director at the Atlantic Council's Adrian Arsht Latin American Center.
Jason, welcome to the show.
Kimberly, great to be on the show.
Chapter 2: What recent events in Venezuela have impacted U.S. foreign policy?
What was your reaction when you started seeing the news about the capture of Nicolas Maduro over the weekend?
Well, my reaction was this is a seismic moment for Venezuela. And it's a moment that the Venezuelan people had long hoped for. The Nicolas Maduro regime has been one that's put Venezuela on an incredible downward trajectory.
Everything from the economy, 500% inflation, 90% of the people that live below the poverty line, but as well, of course, the political repression, the hundreds of people that are locked up in Venezuelan jails, including wrongfully detained Americans.
Can you sort of lay out why this moment matters in terms of the overall Trump administration foreign policy?
Well, the Trump administration foreign policy is a shift from what we've seen in previous administrations. And why? Well, every year there's a new national security strategy that gets put out. And the national security strategy of this new administration was released toward the end of last year. And that has a heavy emphasis on the Western Hemisphere.
Previous national security strategies, including the first Trump administration, He gave the hemisphere maybe a page, maybe a few paragraphs, but the Western hemisphere focused more prominently in this strategy than any other region of the world. It was like four pages, right? It was four pages, Kimberly.
And what was interesting about that strategy, those four pages, is it didn't call out one specific country, unlike even the Trump administration's first national security strategy. But it called out a broader strategy for the region, which was about expanding our partners and listing new partners and doing so focused on things like counter-narcotics.
reducing the influence of foreign adversaries, but also a heavy emphasis on how to accelerate U.S. investment in the hemisphere. That's important, Kimberly, because over the last couple decades, specifically the last 10 years, We've seen tremendous inroads from China and the hemisphere on the commercial front, on the investment front.
And so this is a strategy that's seeking to use the collective power of the United States government to facilitate more investment into the hemisphere, but investment, of course, for the president that also benefits the American homeland as well.
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Chapter 3: Why is the capture of Nicolás Maduro considered a seismic moment?
But what was the Roosevelt Corollary?
And the Roosevelt Corollary to that was the fact that if things go awry in certain countries that would impact U.S. interests, that we have the right to intervene and to set things straight. It wasn't Monroe Doctrine said stay out of the hemisphere. The Roosevelt Corollary said, actually, we have an opportunity to intervene if we need to do so, right? Much more kind of on the
On the economic front. So what we saw then after World War II was, of course, the U.S. becoming a global superpower and framing relations within the hemisphere from a global perspective. So the Castro revolution in Cuba, that was framed from a communist – combating communism around the world. The US interventions in Central America in the 1980s, that was also under President Reagan.
That was also under the auspices of confronting the global threat – communism. So now what we're seeing is a shift to the Western Hemisphere, less from a confronting that global threat, but more from a perspective of that we need a secure, friendly Western Hemisphere, where the U.S. is the primary partner, because that is ultimately beneficial for our own national security.
You mentioned earlier about the U.S. kind of using a more investment strategy to specifically counter China. China just pumped so much money into, I guess we could say, the southern hemisphere, if we want to put it that way, with its Belt and Road Initiative over the last few decades. Can you talk about how this new U.S. focus on the western hemisphere relates to China's investments over time?
Well, China's investments, Kimberly, have... accelerated astronomically in the last decade. China is now the principal trading partner for pretty much every single country except for one in South America. China has slowly weaned away Taiwan's allies in Central America over the last decade. China has established not only the commercial ties, but also significant investment ties.
I've witnessed firsthand I travel to the region once or twice a month talking to heads of state, ministers, business executives. And this Chinese investment is just proliferating. And there's a yearning for more U.S. investment. But the concern is that it just doesn't simply come. People will say to me, I go to Beijing and I come back with a check.
I go to Washington and I come back with a photo. What this new strategy is trying to do is change that reality so that there actually is more U.S. investment coming in, especially –
in those strategic sectors, telecommunications, technology, critical resources that are held across the hemisphere, lithium, copper, a number of resources that are fundamental for our economy today, the economy of the future. But China has... has established strong commercial channels, investment linkages into those natural resources because it needs them as well for its economy.
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Chapter 4: How is the Trump administration's foreign policy shifting towards the Western Hemisphere?
investment into the hemisphere.
We need to take a quick break, but we've got much more. We're going to be right back.
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All right. We are back with the Atlantic Council's Jason Marzak. And I want to take a step back and look at Venezuela's place in the region. Can you talk about Venezuela's economy, which I know you mentioned earlier was just in the garbage, but its economy, particularly relative to other Latin American countries and their relationship with other Latin American countries?
Well, Venezuela, I think you take a step back here and look at Venezuela pre-Hugo Chavez. So look at Venezuela from the last century. And Venezuela, it's important to point this out to your listeners, that Venezuela was at one point the hallmark of a strong, functioning democracy.
In a region in which there were significant democratic challenges in the last century, Venezuela stood out, and not only on the democratic side, but also on the economic side. Middle-income country, world's largest petroleum reserves. It was in its heyday, 3 million barrels per day that were being pumped out. And so the Venezuelan economy had been strong.
Venezuela was also an important commercial partner for a number of countries, Colombia specifically, given the fact that they share a a long border. The impact on the Venezuelan economy that we've seen, especially over the Maduro years, because Maduro is much less popular than Hugo Chavez, because Chavez was a popular authoritarian and Maduro turned more into a coercive authoritarian.
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Chapter 5: What historical context does the Monroe Doctrine provide for current U.S. actions?
16,000 structures were destroyed, most of them homes. I can quote you figures about insured versus uninsured losses measured in billions. But as people in the fire zones face year two, we go from macro to micro. I'm checking in with the neighbors on one street in Altadena, where 15 homes were destroyed on a single block. These are my own neighbors. I lost a home on that street, too.
Join us for on-the-ground reporting as we hear from people still dealing with insurance, getting permits, finding contractors. One guy had to go through 30 contractors to find one with the right skills he could afford. Plus, for most, rebuilding is taking years. How do people find the money to live elsewhere? Listen to the Marketplace Morning Report using your favorite podcast app.