Eduardo González
Veteran Democratic politician Bill Richardson, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, believes that the new Administration of Joe Biden will maintain the same “hard-line” policy with the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro and hopes that Spain will act as a “bridge” to improve U.S. relations with Cuba, greatly deteriorated during the presidency of Donald Trump.
“In the current international context, Democrats believe in direct aid for technological development, the fight against climate change and renewable energies and, unlike the isolationism, protectionism and nationalism of the Republicans, we have always supported multilateral institutions, such as NATO, the UN, the WTO and the WHO, and international treaties to resolve differences between nations,” said Richardson during his participation by videoconference in the third session of the II Cycle of digital meetings great powers: United States, organized by INCIPE and the Fundación Consejo España-EEUU.
“Thanks to these institutions, the world has been free of global wars for 80 years and when the United States has stayed out of them, the consequences have been serious for the United States and for the rest of the world”, continued the former Secretary of Energy during Bill Clinton’s presidency and Governor of New Mexico. “Republicans have always been internationalists, but with Trump everything changed and the Republican Party shifted to protectionism, isolationism and even xenophobia, weakening institutions such as the UN or NATO, inviting the serious mistakes of the past that have cost Humanity so much and benefiting the bad actors of the world, who have filled the vacuum left by the United States to advance their totalitarian agendas”, he continued.
Another major problem generated by the Trump Administration, he lamented, was “the abuse of the imposition of economic sanctions for its foreign policy objectives”. “Trump made excessive use of these measures to pressure political adversaries, but they were counterproductive because they weakened his allies in the world and only contributed to intensifying tensions”, as has happened, he assured, in the case of Iran. “Pressure measures only work when they are accompanied by diplomacy, but on their own they only lead to failures”, he warned.
Likewise, Richardson denounced the deterioration of “US relations with Europe, with France, Germany or Spain,” because of “Trump’s frequent and unnecessary disrespect”, a policy that has only contributed to “weakening the United States and its European allies to the benefit of their common adversaries”. “Spain must play a greater role in the EU’s relationship with Europe”, added the former ambassador, who also rejected “Trump’s exaggerated emphasis” in calling for increased quotas by NATO partners and urged the United States and the EU to “agree on an alliance to prevent China’s trade policies from damaging their economies”.
Regarding Latin America, Bill Richardson believes that Joe Biden “wants to improve the relationship with Cuba” and make U.S. policy more flexible in areas such as travel, remittances and tourism investment. “With (former President) Barack Obama relations improved a lot, even to the point of diplomatic ties, but Trump ended all that for electoral reasons in Florida and for the domestic situation”, he said. “It is true that Cuba must do something in human rights, because they want us to give a lot and them little, but there is mutual interest in improving the relationship”, he continued. “Spain can be a bridge to improve U.S. relations with Cuba”, he added.
Regarding Venezuela, he affirmed, “it is very likely that Biden will follow the hard line until the regime changes its behavior”. However, he admitted, “for Joe Biden, the first foreign policy issues will be the restoration of relations with Europe and then Iran, the Middle East, Russia and China. The issue of Venezuela will not be among the first”. Apart from that, he warned, the United States must “return to normalcy in its relations with Mexico, after four years of abusive and humiliating policies by Trump, abandoning tariff policies and safeguarding the trade agreement with Mexico and Canada”.
