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Maduro's dubious Venezuela win leaves Biden with few options
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. Plenty of things we could be talking about, but I want to bring up Venezuela, where we just had elections in the last 24 hours, and they were very clearly stolen by Nicolás Maduro, puts the Biden administration in a difficult spot with a clearly failed policy.
It makes US look weak and certainly makes Maduro look strong, but not the outcome anyone wanted, even though it was pretty clearly expected. So there were exit polls, credible exit polls that showed that the unified opposition candidate, Edmundo González, won with at least 60% of the vote across the country, turnout very high, despite it being very difficult to get to a lot of voting spots and clearly with those including from the military and other regime forces that were trying to intimidate people on site, you still had well over 60% of registered voters actually turning out. But it was pretty clear, Maduro saying all the way through it was going to be lots of bloodshed if he didn't win, he was able to fix the outcome that he wanted and announced a win of 51% of the vote. There are very limited details that can back up the claims that they put forward. The Venezuelan government blocked key international observers, including lots of leaders from across Latin America that were unable to either land or deplane in Caracas.
The government impeded the transmission of voting results from a number of polling stations. Over the coming weeks, we’ll clearly see all sorts of additional evidence of irregularities from the opposition testimony of polling station witnesses, paper counts from polling stations that make it clear that this was stolen. And yet, very little is going to happen for a few reasons.
First of all, because the military continues to completely support Nicolás Maduro. And that means the willingness and ability to use force to suppress and repress opposition is very high. Secondly, there have been lots of efforts to engage in anti-government protests over the last decade. And the response has been violence and incarceration. And there isn't a lot of willingness of Venezuelans to continue with that average Venezuelans.
What we've seen instead are millions of Venezuelans that have left the country, fled the country. And that's what we're going to see again. We're going to see a huge amount of emigration. Colombia, of course, is the country that gets stuck with most of it. But there are many of them trying to get to Mexico, trying to get to the United States.
More pressure on a migration policy from the United States, from Biden, from Kamala Harris, that is seen as a failure and is clearly the biggest policy vulnerability that Harris has in her election bid. Also, having said all of this, the United States has been trying to do a carrot and stick approach, saying we're going to remove and reduce sanctions, allow oil licenses if you're willing to go ahead with a free and fair election. And Maduro wants the money, wants to be able to produce more oil and said, “sure, I'll go along,” when he was completely not credible, it was obvious to everyone he was not credible. And now the Biden administration is stuck with a failed policy and yet really doesn't want to put those oil licenses into sanctions, doesn't want to take them away because he doesn't want oil prices to go higher, especially not in an election environment with high inflation.
So what is he going to do? He's going to complain. He's going to say this was a sham, that the Americans support the Venezuelan people, and he'll find some additional sanctions that don't matter as much to put on board while Venezuela and Maduro, the dictator, looks like a winner. This is, unfortunately a bad day for representative democracy, a bad day for US policy, a good day for a dictator in Venezuela.
Munich Security Conference 2024: What to expect
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. It is the Munich Security Conference. It's that time of year, yet again, the 60th Munich Security Conference this year. And you would think that that would be like a big anniversary. It's like platinum or diamonds or something very valuable and exciting. And yet the value of the conference is becoming undermined. And it's becoming undermined not because it doesn't matter, but rather because leaders are less committed to it.
And that is a very deep concern. There's no annual theme to this year's conference, but every year they do put out an annual report. Came out a couple of days ago, and the theme this year was “lose-lose” dynamics. In other words, less focus on multilateralism, less focus on collective security, less focus on global cooperation and instead a prioritization of individual gain of countries and even of leaders. And that's not a great backdrop against a incredibly contentious US election, a war between Russia-Ukraine that isn't going very well, certainly not from the perspective of those that are attending the security conference and also a Middle East war that is expanding and threatens to get the Europeans and the Americans more and more involved. A couple of things that are worth paying attention to that may not be getting as much attention outside Germany.
One is that Christoph Heusgen, the chair of the conference and a good friend of mine for many years now, has come out saying that Trump has a point in terms of his strong criticism of NATO nations not meeting their 2% defense goal. And that, of course, especially means Germany, which is the largest economy in Europe. And they've made lots of commitments, but they've got an economic crisis right now, and there are lots of competing demands inside that country that don't focus on security and defense after all. Germany, not a frontline country dealing with Ukraine or Russia a little bit farther back. And you can really see defense spending fall off the farther you get from Russia, unless, of course, you're talking about the United States.
Another thing that's worth paying attention to and it's going to make it a little harder. Germany last year perceived Russia as their number one security threat.This year, Russia's fallen to number seven. Top issues for the Germans, mass migration and radical Islamic terrorism. That is the Munich Security index that they, you know, sort of take surveys of attendees and of participants. And it's very interesting to see that. That's similar to the view that I got at Davos a few weeks ago. And just talking to people around the world outside of these conferences, Ukraine is nowhere close to the level of prioritization these days, even for countries that are pretty close to it, that it was getting 6 months ago, 12 months ago, 24 months ago, and that, of course, is also a very big problem for the Ukrainians, a very big problem for the frontline states like the Estonians and the Poles and the Nordics, who consider this their top priority but having a harder time telling others that that's what really matters. So those are some of the issues we're looking forward to discussing and you'll be hearing from us again real soon.
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The Graphic Truth: Migrant populations Canada and the US
Few issues are more contentious in US politics than immigration, where policy can swing drastically from one administration to the next. Canada, for its part, has gained a reputation as one of the most hospitable countries to migrants in the developed world.
But in Canada, too, immigration has become an increasingly contentious and politicized issue, with some expressing concern that immigrants – particularly international students – are exacerbating the country's affordable housing crisis, leading to the government considering a cap on the number of student visas.
What’s more, the data shows that the number of migrants as a percent of the total population has in fact grown more in the US over the past few decades than in its northern neighbor. We take a look at how the two countries' migrant populations stack up.