A veteran diplomat says American actions in Venezuela and rhetoric on Greenland do not show any foreign policy advantage for the U.S.
Gordon Duguid is the Donald F. McHenry Visiting Professor in Diplomacy and International Affairs at Illinois State University. Duguid spent more than three decades with the State Department, and since retiring has been a public diplomacy consultant for various entities.
The Trump administration has offered a number of conflicting statements since the military intervention in Venezuela that captured its leader Nicolas Maduro to stand trial on drug charges in the U.S. Those include claims the U.S. will be running Venezuela and a walk-back of that by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In this interview with WGLT's Charlie Schlenker, Duguid says it's not clear what's next and what it all means. [This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
Duguid: I don't think there is an answer to that. The agency that would be in the lead to plan what comes next was dismantled a year ago. The U.S. Agency for International Development [USAID] would have been the body that would have been planning for what do you do now to encourage change on the ground.
That 'we are going to run things' statement has been walked back. Who is running Venezuela right now? Nicolas Maduro was taken away. The regime itself, and most of its nasty participants are still in place, and they're running things. I know that Secretary Rubio has said, they better watch themselves, and we have a ‘second wave’ that's also been sort of walked back.
But if you don't have the military threat, then what threat do you have? And it seems from their statements collectively, what the administration is saying is we've come to a deal with the Chavez regime that if they behave in certain ways and can give us the U.S. concessions on Venezuelan oil, then we won't go in and change anything. And that is a confusing line.
The administration gave several reasons to go into Venezuela … Maduro was indicted. He was a bad actor. There is no doubt about that. Many people are glad that he's gone. I suspect that most of his regime colleagues are also glad that he is gone so they can now exercise the power that he held.
But the idea that the removal of Maduro will reduce the drug flow into the United States, I think, is an error. It will not. It was a transit point, rather than a producer, or the most part. Most of the drugs transiting Venezuela go to Europe and the Middle East, not to the U.S.
There were also statements about, well, 'this will end corruption.' Venezuela is a corrupt state that has reduced its GDP by something like 85% under the Chavez and Maduro regimes. I don't see that ending either. If we stay on this course, the people who are corrupt are still in place.
And then there’s the reasoning that this will stop migration. The people who cause the migration are still in place. So, I don't see that stopping.
We then come to the oil, and the president has said that the oil is ours. I disagree with that. It's not ours. It belongs to the people of the country. There are people who believe in democracy. There's the opposition to the recurrent regime. We are not working with them, even though the United States certified they won the last election by a majority. A majority of Venezuelans oppose Maduro and would like to have better relations with the U.S., and we're not working with them.
We have come to an agreement with the current regime on oil. Now, we haven't seen any of that oil yet, and you know the idea that it is somehow owed to the United States has some bearing when you consider companies, Conoco-Phillips, Exxon-Mobil, did build much of the infrastructure, and had it confiscated. They sued in court for compensation. Some of their claims have been granted, and some not. But there was a legal process going on that Conoco-Phillips has claimed $12 billion that they lost in the nationalization, and they have been awarded by courts, $10.2 billion from Venezuela. Exxon Mobil claims. $26 billion. They've only been awarded $2.4 billion from the courts.
WGLT: Since they're still owed money, and since they've had their assets confiscated twice, why would they be willing to go back in and rebuild infrastructure in Venezuela?
That is a question that was answered by the head of Exxon Mobil after a recent meeting in the White House. He said, Venezuela is uninvestable.
WGLT: So where is the U.S. going to get the oil?
It's a question that has not been answered. The infrastructure of the Venezuelan oil industry, as I understand it, is decrepit.
WGLT: Is the oil, even at the present market rates, worth getting, since it is a heavier grade of oil and to process costs about $80 a barrel, according to some accounts. And the current market rate per barrel is about $60 per barrel.
$56 was the last one I heard. Oil companies do not want cheaper oil, not ours, not internationally. People who follow the oil markets fear that if the price of oil goes any lower than it currently is, there are American companies that would face bankruptcy.
WGLT: Does it send a message to China about involvement in other South American countries, or does it send a message to Cuba?
Those are two very different scenarios. Does it send a message to Cuba? It could have but Secretary Rubio was very quickly out in public, saying there is no intention to do the same thing in Cuba.
Does it send a message to China? China gets about 4% to 5% of its oil from Venezuela, but China has a number of contracts with Venezuela for other materials, such as raw materials, mining and so forth.
WGLT: China has also made economic overtures to other South American countries. President Trump has talked about the Monroe Doctrine, although it's a different slant on the Monroe Doctrine than the traditionally understood ones. Sort of get out of our hemisphere, kind of language. Is that a message that will be taken up? Is that the intended message? What's your take on this?
It is a confusing message. If we want to expand US exports to other countries, how can we then oppose exports and financial or trade agreements between countries other than us? It has to work for everybody. If it's only working for us, everyone will oppose it. And when everyone joins together, you find that you become isolated and unable to do anything.
China has legal agreements with a number of entities, either private companies or countries in this hemisphere that are done under the existing global trade rules. Now, I know that several administration officials are now calling these sorts of arrangements international niceties. They are not niceties. They are the way that we work, so that we do not come into conflict with one another.
WGLT: And that's the post-war world order. How much does this weaken that?
Its been weakened severely over the past year. We [the U.S.] went after Noriega in Panama. It’s a different case, seemingly, on the face of it. He was not an elected leader. We don't consider Maduro to have been elected legally. But he was not seen as the leader of the country, officially the political leader. So we went after him. We've gone and done other things during the global war on terror, where we extricated individuals back to the U.S. for criminal or terrorist actions.
Those things, however, even if not done under a UN umbrella, were done with the consent of the Congress. This was not done with the consent of the Congress. There is a danger for any country that if you flout the international agreements you have signed onto, you begin having a dissonance in the way that you act. You think you're only acting one way outside of the nation's borders, but very soon, and I've seen this happen in other countries, if you start ignoring international rules, you start ignoring domestic rules, and that's a real danger.
WGLT: What are a couple examples of that?
Russia, which follows no international laws that you can point to since 2014. How Russia behaves in Ukraine, is what it also can do and has done to certain sectors of its civil society.
China, as well, organizes itself internally as it organizes itself externally. Iran is another example. It organizes its external actions the same way it organizes its internal actions.
WGLT: What are the implications for world order, from U.S. actions in Venezuela and rhetoric on Greenland? Particularly the order as understood by the web of allies that the U.S. has constructed since World War II.
The international order is changing. This administration is changing it. We have to recognize that a majority of Americans voted for this administration, with many of them believing that the international order was not working for the United States.
It's curious to me, who worked in the international order for 31 years, that that is the case. We constructed it. We're the only hegemon in history that ever constructed a world order in which we gave other nations a chance to have a voice in how things would run. We did that on purpose because the complete reliance on power that existed before World War I is what got us into the two worst wars in history. The generation that grew up in the 1890s saw this and the greatest generation saw this and didn't want it to ever happen again.
I think we've lost sight of that the international order, as it has existed, has delivered so much to us. We take a lot of it for granted. And people decided that no we were paying too much for the benefits we were receiving.
WGLT: Remind us of what it what it has given the U.S.
The United States is the richest, the healthiest, the most powerful country in the world. That didn't happen last January. That has happened over the past 85 years. It has happened under the order that we constructed. If you go to any other country in the world, they all look at, understand, and follow U.S. policy, because whatever the United States does affects every country in the world. We have businesses in every country in the world. We have citizens living in almost every country in the world, and those types of things have given us the economy that we have today.
It's given us the ability to construct a military that is second to none ever. It has given us the ability to not be dominated by any other power for 85 years, and if we break down into a Hobbesian world of spheres of influence, what's going to happen is we will have fractures along the borders of those spheres, as happened in 1914 where wars will begin. We have had a relatively war-free period under U.S. domination. If we aren't in control of the order, that will break down.
WGLT: To your point, does intervening in Venezuela and talking about intervening in Greenland affect the calculus of China and Taiwan?
It can certainly be used as an excuse by China for Taiwan.
Russia has already come out and said, 'Now that you've done this action in Venezuela, you no longer have any moral standing to criticize us for going into Ukraine.' Russia is already using it.
Taiwan is different. Taiwan is well armed. We have made sure of that. Taiwan has a good relationship with the United States. We have also made sure of that. China has different calculations. China wants Taiwan to be part of its governance system as well as technically, part of the One China that we recognize. But it's not going to be like the Venezuelan operation. So, you see recently that China has been sort of sending signals to Taiwan that we could do this if we wanted, but they haven't done it yet. Their calculations are different.
On Greenland, the idea that we need to own Greenland in order to secure American safety or the American homeland, is curious in that the administration does not believe that Russia is a threat to the United States, and yet, the reason for occupying or taking control of Greenland is because of Russian interests in the Arctic. But we already have a 1951 agreement that gives us the ability to place as many troops as we want anywhere in Greenland. We do not need to own Greenland to do that.
WGLT: Is there an economic reason to get Greenland?
Some people have talked about rare earth minerals in the future. They're under 12 feet of ice and snow. I leave that to experts in the industry to say how easy it would be to get at those minerals. But Denmark has been one of the staunchest allies of the United States. They have been with us in every NATO action. And I am sure if we went to Denmark and said, ‘We would like to negotiate with you to extract minerals from Greenland,’ that we would get a favorable hearing. We do not need to take it over to do these things.
And some would say, 'Well, if we want all this stuff, why not take it over?' It's a foreign country and taking over a foreign country unilaterally is not only something that no other country should be doing but it is unnecessary. We've criticized Russia for trying to do it. It is also something that will break the NATO alliance, the alliance that has kept us safe for the last 85 years, and the most effective alliance for U.S. security that ever existed.
WGLT: You say break. Do you mean end, kill, reduce faith in? Break in how significant a way?
You're asking for scenarios. If one NATO country invades another, right? Would Article 5 be invoked? Unlikely. What would probably happen is that the Europeans would say we cannot work with the United States anymore. If you are going to say we're taking this over because we want it, because we think it has assets that we need, then no country is safe.
The Europeans, I believe, would walk away from NATO and re-form under the European Union as a separate defense alliance that excludes the United States. And we are excluding ourselves voluntarily from dozens, scores of international bodies already.
WGLT: Not directly on point, but which way does Britain bounce in that scenario?
I won't speak for Britain. I lived there for 10 years, so I do know something of the domestic politics. None of these scenarios is as clear cut as perhaps my short description might lead you to believe. Britain would have something that is difficult to come to grips with. There is no doubt the British economy has suffered since their departure from the European Union. It might be that Britain would have to reconsider that and rejoin the European Union. Whether the political will is there to do that or not, I can't say.
Whether they would try and become a balancing power between the U.S. and the EU? That's possible. But Britain itself, if the United States decides that we are going to take over countries because we want their stuff, Britain is not safe, and they understand that. They will not side with us.
WGLT: In the cycle of nations rising and falling, it's sometimes thought that, you know, different nations have a [finite] time of great power. Does this put a period or hasten the diminishment of the U.S.’s time of ascendancy?
There are a couple of ways to break that down, and you can point to different historical examples. One of the wiser lines of thinking behind the establishment of the current international order, which involves interlocking international institutions, is that if we could get a majority of the nations of the earth working with us, sharing political models, sharing economic aspirations, then any relative decline in U.S. power would protect the remaining U.S. power because we would be in a world in which countries discussed their differences and tried to reach some accommodation in order to avoid conflict.
I was a U.S. diplomat for 31 years. Our job is to keep the U.S. out of conflict.
WGLT: Do the current actions, the rhetoric on Greenland and the action in Venezuela and whatever may come with escalating language on Iran, already put paid to this world order?
There is no doubt that the world order is changing. As I said, a majority of Americans voted for a change, and part of that change was they looked at how the world was working and believed it was working against the U.S.
Nothing is perfect, neither international institutions nor the State Department. There are serious reforms needed across the board, but I don’t think the Administration is going to improve things with the way they are trying to get there. They are reorganizing yes, but I don’t see the reform.
But all of the changes that could be made peacefully would require the United States to cede power, not to gain more, in order to keep the world order functioning as we wanted it to function.
WGLT: Unpack that one would you?
For example, we had a large diplomatic corps. Some of the needs [for that were] based on participation in international organizations. Any international organization that we belong to, we staffed fully. It was to the lament of many other countries who didn't have the people or the resources to do this. But things go through committees. We had an American on every single committee in every single organization protecting U.S. interests from the minute an idea was proposed until it got to the Security Council or the North Atlantic Council or any other place. No other nation had that ability.
Anything that reached the level of a head of state and government, a president, a prime minister who would sign on to it had U.S. equities protected. Other nations didn't have that luxury. We don't do that anymore. The one nation that does is China. China has taken our playbooks on how to work in the international order and is now following it almost to the letter.
WGLT: You don't need to be a democracy to follow that playbook.
Not in the international order. You don't need to be a democracy to follow that. And the idea of — we're going around the world building democracies every which way— was never true. On the face of it, we supported democracies where they had a chance to grow. Not every country is ready for democracy.
In China, there is an active government effort to stifle democracy, but this administration says we are not worried about what happens internally, and that countries will do what they do. We are worried about how they act in the international order. China has picked up on that, and they are now using international organizations to ensure China's voice is protected all the way through the systems. That's okay, as long as we're there too, but we're not. We're withdrawing.
WGLT: Is there any historical analogy to this moment?
What there seems to be is more of a philosophical debate. I heard Stephen Miller on one of his many interviews talking in a very Hobbesian language about there are iron rules, and it's all about power. One of the rules of power is the more you use it, the less you have of it. He seemed to neglect that one.
The United States was not founded on Hobbes. The United States was founded on Rousseau and Locke and the words that you know we believe these truths are self-evident means that we have universal values. If they're universal, it means they apply to everyone. Other countries also have those values. Those are the countries that we were working with and that we wanted to maintain as close allies to us.
You hear some argument saying, well, that never did anything for us. I reject that argument. NATO doesn't have soldiers. Countries have soldiers. So, every Brit, every Frenchman, every Dane, every Norwegian or German who died in Afghanistan and Iraq for helping us, saved an American family the tragedy of the death of one of their sons or daughters. That's what alliances do for us. It also gives us the moral sway and the raw power that other countries don't.
WGLT: Forgive me for saying so, but you sound like you're, as a diplomat, a little bit in grief over the present developments.
I don't think the present developments serve the country well. I think we're destroying our diplomatic corps. We're certainly getting rid of the one of the very valuable aspects of our diplomacy, and that is the reporting angle.
The State Department is excellent at informing an administration of what's happening all around the world in the countries in which we're stationed. The State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research is the only member of the U.S. intelligence community that predicted accurately what was going to happen in Iraq in 2003 the only one.
Most of the president's daily briefing is based on State Department reporting. Right now, we're recalling ambassadors. We're forcing out senior diplomats. We're getting rid of the people who have been trained to tell truth to power, the people who have said, this is your policy, this is the result. If you want to achieve these ends, you should do it this way, not that way.
We're getting rid of those people. What are we going to have? We're going to have people who serve Saddam Hussein and told them he had so many weapons, no one would ever invade him. We're going to have people who work for a Maduro saying, yeah, no one will ever come. You're great. Everything is good. We're going to have people like those who worked for Vladimir Putin, who said it'll be a three day operation to take over Ukraine.
When you have people who don't tell the truth about what they see the policies are developing, you are setting yourself up for disaster.
WGLT: Thank you, sir.
You're welcome.
Gordon Duguid served as a U.S. diplomat for 31 years, including posts such as Chargé d’Affaires in Montenegro, deputy chief of mission in Serbia, and deputy State Department spokesperson. Assignments also included senior advisor on Bosnia for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, public diplomacy positions at the U.S. mission to NATO and U.S. embassies in India, Burundi, Zambia, and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Duguid also served as the executive secretary for the Inter-American Committee against Terrorism at the Organization of American States from 2010-12.
