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Panama's Precedent
00:06:09
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unidentified
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Lunar Surface, plus relive the race to the moon, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle program. | |
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| His books include And There Was Light, Thomas Jefferson, and the prize-winning American Lion, Andrew Jackson, in the White House. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubenstein. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club with John Meacham Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Retired Brigadier General and former George W. Bush Administration Assistant Secretary of State Mark Kimmett joins us as our guest this morning. | ||
| In general, in a little over an hour, Secretary of State Marco Rubio set to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the future of U.S. involvement in Venezuela. | ||
| What questions do you think he should be expecting from senators at that hearing? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I think he's going to obviously get hit by a number of questions. | |
| Let's not talk about the acrimonious questions he will be asked because I think what's really important is what is the future of Venezuela? | ||
| We've taken a different approach towards Venezuela than we have for, say, Iraq, Afghanistan. | ||
| It's more like what we did with Panama when we brought Noriega out, left the government in place, and then worked with Panama to sort of restore its democracy. | ||
| So I think the real issues that will be brought up is how quickly will the country transition to free and fair elections? | ||
| How are we going to control the oil industry when the oil executives have said at this point it's not an investable environment? | ||
| What is going to happen if Darcy Rodriguez, who is already starting to push back, just refuses to work with the United States? | ||
| Are we going to take another set of actions in regards to that? | ||
| And of course, they're going to be the acrimonious question. | ||
| Why do you think you need to do this? | ||
| Why Venezuela? | ||
| Explain to us the Don Road doctrine. | ||
| So there are a lot of questions that will be asked, and they're legitimate questions that the executive branch has a responsibility to answer. | ||
| If Panama is the roadmap here and not Iraq, what are the pitfalls that we should be worried about here so we follow one road and not the other? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, I said that Panama was an example, but I don't think it's an exact analog. | |
| The issue, of course, is what are we going to do with the military and the paramilitary forces if they decide not to work alongside with us? | ||
| I don't think we're going to try to change them, but they need to be supportive of Darcy Rodriguez. | ||
| And if that doesn't happen, then we've got a problem. | ||
| They've got a long-standing administration. | ||
| I don't think we should go through any kind of debathification program. | ||
| I hope we don't want to put any litmus tests on those senior administrators, but that could be a problem as well. | ||
| And of course, doing this with somewhat of a 6,000-mile screwdriver, how are we going to be able to, are we going to be able to fine-tune our objectives in Venezuela without interference? | ||
| And the other problems I would expect to see is what's Russia going to do about this? | ||
| What's Iran going to do about this? | ||
| There's a Hezbollah presence inside there. | ||
| How are we going to handle if the Chinese try to block our actions there? | ||
| So there are a lot of questions that he will need to answer. | ||
| You used the term debathification in your answer there. | ||
| Explain what that means and explain your experience with that term. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, I wrote an article about this for Politico EU talking about the missteps from Iraq that we didn't want to replicate inside of Venezuela. | |
| The Iraqi government was, if you wanted a job, you had to belong to the Bath Party. | ||
| It was a nationalist party organization that came originally from Syria. | ||
| So if you wanted to be a teacher, if you wanted to be a doctor working for the federal health system, if you wanted to be a senior official, you had to belong to the Bath Party. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, the Bath Party and under Saddam was responsible for the genocide, attempted genocide of the Kurds, and the attempted takeover of the Shia South. | |
| So when the expats we brought in, such as Ahmed Chalabi, took over, they established an incredibly, incredibly thorough debautification program down to the fourth or fifth level of the administration. | ||
| So we fundamentally just pushed out all the experts. | ||
| We pushed out all of the experienced teachers. | ||
| And we did that in the military as well by pushing out most, if not all, of the army because they had been responsible for the repression. | ||
| So it's generally known under the broad term of debautification. | ||
| Didn't work inside of Iraq and it wouldn't work inside of Venezuela in my estimation. | ||
|
NATO Forces Shift: Venezuela to Gulf
00:15:53
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| Retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmett is our guest with us this morning and taking your phone calls on phone lines as usual. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| A special line for current and former military. | ||
| 202748-8003. | ||
| Go ahead and get your calls in, having this conversation ahead of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. | ||
| That's set to take place at 10 a.m. | ||
| And you can watch that on C-SPAN too. | ||
| Earlier this month, Secretary Rubio laid out a three-part plan for the future of Venezuela. | ||
| Let me flash back to that from January the 7th. | ||
| This is about a minute and a half long. | ||
| Step one is the stabilization of the country. | ||
| We don't want it descending into chaos. | ||
| Part of that stabilization, and the reason why we understand and believe that we have the strongest leverage possible, is our quarantine. | ||
| As you've seen today, two more ships were seized. | ||
| We are in the midst right now and, in fact, about to execute on a deal to take all the oil. | ||
| They have oil that is stuck in Venezuela. | ||
| They can't move it because of our quarantine and because it's sanctioned. | ||
| We are going to take between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil. | ||
| We're going to sell it in the marketplace at market rates, not at the discounts Venezuela was getting. | ||
| That money will then be handled in such a way that we will control how it is dispersed in a way that benefits the Venezuelan people, not corruption, not the regime. | ||
| So we have a lot of leverage to move on the stabilization front. | ||
| The second phase will be a phase that we call recovery, and that is ensuring that American, Western, and other companies have access to the Venezuelan market in a way that's fair. | ||
| So at the same time, begin to create the process of reconciliation nationally within Venezuela so that the opposition forces can be amnestied and released from prisons or brought back to the country and begin to rebuild civil society. | ||
| And then the third phase, of course, will be one of transition. | ||
| Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Capitol Hill back at the beginning of the month. | ||
| Listening to that description, General Kimmett, does that sound like a plan like the one you're calling for? | ||
| One with a lighter hand, a shorter timeline, a healthy dose of humility, and lower expectations. | ||
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unidentified
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It really does, except we've got to ask the question, what happens if those phases are interrupted or blocked? | |
| What is the U.S. plan for that? | ||
| What he also needs to answer, and he doesn't answer that in his objectives, what are the second and third order consequences within the region? | ||
| For example, Cuba, which is going to be significantly affected with this, what's China going to do, who desperately needs the oil to maintain their economic engine over there? | ||
| On your political article that we've been referring to on what's next for Venezuela, a healthy dose of humility. | ||
| Can you dive into what you mean on that one? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, listen, I was part of the first military forces that went into Iraq, came in a little bit after Baghdad had fallen. | |
| And the sense that I think the administration conveyed was a bit of hubris, that somehow we were going to try to not only change out Saddam Hussein and the top leadership, but also change the society inside of Iraq from a Bathist, somewhat backward 70s-era administration and society. | ||
| We were going to bring them in to the modern world. | ||
| Oil was going to feed an industrial boom inside the country, and this was all part of the Democracy Project. | ||
| Oddly enough, the democracy has held inside of Iraq. | ||
| They just finished their seventh set of elections. | ||
| They're arguing about who's going to be the prime minister now since parliamentary system. | ||
| But I'd say the hubris that I saw and experienced from both the U.S. government and candidly some expats that we probably should have screened a little bit closer when they were saying we will be greeted as liberators. | ||
| I think that's the kind of humility we ought to consider as we work with Venezuela to recover and prosper as Secretary Rubio was suggesting. | ||
| General Mark Kimmett, our guest taking your phone calls. | ||
| And Michael is up first out of Florida. | ||
| Independent, Michael, good morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Hi, good morning. | |
| My question, well, two questions are, why do you think the United States has the right to violate the sovereignty of another country and kidnap its leader? | ||
| And further, what right do we have to determine the use of Venezuelan oil? | ||
| It's their resources. | ||
| They should be able to determine for themselves the use of their own resources. | ||
| Well, let's not spend too much time on that. | ||
| The fact remains, the oil was designated not only by the United States, but I suspect, if I remember, also by the United Nations in terms of how it was distributed and the government that was distributing it. | ||
| The other part about it is that's the patrimony of the Venezuelan people. | ||
| It's money that needs to go back to them, not to bolster an illegal and for the most part corrupt regime that is benefiting the regime, benefiting from the oil more so than the people that it belongs to. | ||
| A question from a viewer watching and tweeting along on X asking about how we defend our carrier group that is down there, which speaks to a bigger question of how long you expect the military presence that we have off the coast of Venezuela, how long can we keep that up? | ||
| And what limitations does that bring for other U.S. operations around the globe? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, the group has reduced considerably. | |
| And as we know now, the Navy is able to surge a force back to the Persian Gulf. | ||
| The United States does have a worldwide mission. | ||
| We talk about the aircraft carriers being 50,000 tons of diplomacy. | ||
| The view right now is that the ability to move those forces all around the world means that we're going to pull some out of Venezuela as it's no longer as much of a threat as perceived before and move some of those assets and that capability over to the Persian Gulf. | ||
| So I'm not too worried about the military capability. | ||
| If we needed to keep a full carrier task force off the coast of Venezuela, we'd rotate new troops and new carrier task force after a while. | ||
| But we've got a pretty good military that can basically juggle many responsibilities at the same time. | ||
| What are your thoughts about another potential U.S. strike on Iran? | ||
| President Trump hinting at that, talking about it amid those protests. | ||
| That has died down since the crackdown on those protesters in Iran. | ||
| But what are your thoughts on our ability to carry that out right now? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I think, well, first of all, I'm not worried about the ability for the U.S. to carry it out, probably with some other allies. | |
| Who they go after and how they go after it, I would suspect part of it will be against their nuclear facilities, which they're rebuilding. | ||
| I'm far more worried about miscalculation on the part of the Iranians that they use this as a provocation to do a preemptive strike. | ||
| One of the reasons we're getting that carrier task force back in the region is primarily because of the missile and rocket capabilities that the Iranians have. | ||
| And what that carrier task force brings with it is a significant capability to augment the air defense capabilities of not only the regional powers, our allies, but also the U.S. troops that we have on the ground in places such as Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and so on and so forth. | ||
| So I hope we're going in there primarily as a demonstration of deterrence. | ||
| It's certainly the case that the president makes the decision to go in. | ||
| I think that if the riots were still going on, the likely target would be against those that are repressing the Iranian people. | ||
| But let's simply hope we get that task force back in place because we routinely have a military force in the water there. | ||
| And let's hope that it provides the deterrence that is necessary at this point until the Iranians give us reason, and hopefully they don't, but give us reason to strike. | ||
| You served in Iraq alongside NATO partners. | ||
| What are your thoughts on the state of the NATO alliance right now in the wake of President Trump's threats to take Greenland? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, well, let's just talk about the NATO. | |
| I've served in NATO far more than I've served in the Middle East, both on NATO operations and actually in the NATO military headquarters. | ||
| So I know the organization quite well. | ||
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unidentified
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You know, there's a joke about the purpose of NATO originally. | |
| Was to keep the Russians out, keep the Americans in, and keep the Germans down. | ||
| And it's been successful in that for over the years. | ||
| But every president since the founding of NATO has argued that our NATO allies are not pairing their fair share for their own defense, for their own contributions to NATO. | ||
| The United States has been burdened with more of its GDP than any other country for defensive capability. | ||
| And in the minds of many and in the verbiage of President Trump, he's not going to allow any freeloading anymore. | ||
| For example, Canada enjoys a wonderful social welfare system because the money they save on defense can be used for that social welfare system because they got the United States providing, in many ways, defense of their country and the NATO contributions. | ||
| So look, he was threatening, President Trump was threatening to pull out in his first term. | ||
| I think he is pretty verbose about how he feels about NATO. | ||
| But interestingly, I think Secretary General Ruta is the Secretary General of NATO, agrees completely with President Trump on his goals, perhaps not his ways and means he's going about to get it, | ||
| his accomplishment, get NATO as a much stronger security organization, but he certainly agrees with the goals, which is a cohesive, capable deterrence to enemies and threats against the North Atlantic. | ||
| More callers for you. | ||
| This is Patricia waiting in Maryland, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Patricia, you're on with General Kimmett. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, good morning. | |
| I just have a question. | ||
| You were talking about debaffing. | ||
| My question is: what you described, hasn't Trump done that already? | ||
| Inside of the military? | ||
| Inside. | ||
| Patricia, go ahead, General Kimmett. | ||
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unidentified
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I'm sorry, debaffification in Venezuela? | |
| No, I don't think he's done that at all. | ||
| He's brought out the two, you know, the president and his wife, and he's left fundamentally the entire Venezuelan administration in place. | ||
| And what are the risks of doing that? | ||
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unidentified
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The risks of doing that is a perpetuation and continuation of the Shavista ideology down there, which is primarily socialist, communist, one-man rule. | |
| But as I say in my article, if that's what the people of Venezuela want in a free and fair election, I think our humility ought to say we can work with that. | ||
| We need to work with that. | ||
| We don't need to go in and bring in some well-spoken expatriate who's been out of the country for 25 years. | ||
| And I'd say the same thing for Iran. | ||
| To Michigan, it's Vicksburg, Michigan. | ||
| This is John, Independent. | ||
| John, good morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I just got a couple of comments. | ||
| First comment is that I think that the foreign policy of a few administrations, including this one, have been short-sighted at best and almost polyana-ish at worst. | ||
| As far as the policy in Venezuela, I mean, what I wish is I wish that the United States would concentrate more on having our oil industry, our energy industry, benefit us as opposed to how it's going to benefit the Venezuelans because we're getting gouged by the oil and gas industry constantly, and it's been going on for years. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| General. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, I appreciate the comment, and there's some merit to that. | |
| But the whole idea is if you can get the Venezuelan oil on the open market, the supply increase would lower oil prices. | ||
| I think if you take a look at our gas prices, I'm not an expert on it, but if you take a look at what the American consumer would be paying at the gas pump, net of all taxes, of all taxes that were put into the gas prices, you probably, I would estimate, we'd be paying $1.50 a gallon. | ||
| I may be wrong, but I certainly know that we pay a pretty hefty tax at the gas pump. | ||
| Why? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, certainly the case, something's got to pay for the roads, something's got to pay for the bridges. | |
| That money doesn't appear from anywhere. | ||
| And if the gas is in our vehicles that beat up our roads, then we need to bear some of that infrastructure cost. | ||
| I've lived overseas over half my military career. | ||
| I can tell you, compared to other countries in Europe and elsewhere, our gas is much, much cheaper. | ||
| Just about 10 minutes left with retired General Mark Kimmett joining us this morning ahead of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's testimony on Capitol Hill about the future of Venezuela. | ||
| General Kimmett, also the former Assistant Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration, taking your phone calls. | ||
| For Democrats, it's 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Active and retired military, 202-748-8003. | ||
| Coming back to that Politico post that we've referenced a couple times in this conversation, General Kimmett, you write that messaging will be key in Venezuela in persuading the people of that country that the U.S. is a force for good, an agent for change, and committed to returning the national patrimony to its rightful owners. | ||
|
Messages for Venezuela
00:09:48
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| What sort of messaging are we talking about here? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, first of all, it's got to be the counter messaging from our historical operations inside of Central and South America in the past, the banana wars, in many ways, the expropriation of land. | |
| And it's just generally the whole idea about what we're down there for. | ||
| To this day, I've spent a lot of time in Iraq. | ||
| To this day, my friends are still convinced the United States came into Iraq simply to steal all their oil. | ||
| So I think we've got to not only message, but demonstrate to the people through actual cash transfers back to the government and tell the people of the government, the people of the country through television, through radio, through print media. | ||
| This is how much money we've returned to the people. | ||
| And if you want to know where it is, oh, by the way, talk to your government. | ||
| And I think this whole message about all we're trying to do is help you. | ||
| We don't want to mess with your military. | ||
| We don't want to mess with your administration. | ||
| We don't want to make the missteps we've done before and hold us accountable to it. | ||
| So I think those are the types of messages that we need to be given to the Venezuela people, candidly bypassing the current Shavista government, because of course they will try to twist the words. | ||
| You mentioned your friends in Iraq still. | ||
| How would you describe the current relationship between the United States and Iraq? | ||
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unidentified
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Very interesting because that's a 24-hour old question. | |
| We've insisted on free and fair elections inside of Iraq. | ||
| They have successfully transitioned governments, I think, seven times through what have been considered free and fair elections. | ||
| Nobody has disputed them. | ||
| Nobody said that there was cheating involved. | ||
| It's a parliamentary system. | ||
| So once the voters have voted for parties and people, those parties then elect a prime minister by majority vote of the parliament. | ||
| Yesterday, President Trump put out a message that the likely prime minister is going to be Nuri al-Maliki, and we will not work with him. | ||
| So I think there may be some people in Iraq that are glad that Nuri al-Maliki will not return again. | ||
| He has somewhat of a jaded history. | ||
| But there's very little doubt in my mind that there are a significant number of Iraqis that are saying, wait a second, we picked this guy. | ||
| You didn't pick this guy. | ||
| You don't get a veto on who we pick. | ||
| And of course, the concern I have is Tehran is delighted with our view that we should be picking winners and losers in Iraq. | ||
| So that's what I mean. | ||
| What should we know about the history of Nuri al-Maliki? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, again, he had two terms, and during his first two terms, there was a significant politization of the military, which in many ways led to the military falling apart when ISIS invaded. | |
| So I think that's the major concern that he will again politicize many of the institutions well beyond what we expect. | ||
| You know, when a president comes in, he gets to pick some of his people. | ||
| But it seemed like Nuri al-Maliki, in the impression of many, drove a wedge back into Iraqi society where he showed preference towards his parties, his people, his sect, his religion to the detriment of the Sunnis and the Kurds, primarily the Sunnis. | ||
| Do you think President Trump's statements on Maliki will change enough votes in the parliament to have a different outcome? | ||
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unidentified
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You know, that's a great question and one that I can't answer. | |
| There are a lot of people that don't want Nuri al-Maliki to come back. | ||
| They were very, very happy with Prime Minister Sudani, who's finishing his term, a very successful term. | ||
| Most people agree with that. | ||
| But will this change the needle? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Either those that say, good, we didn't want Maliki in the first place, this gives us the excuse to change our vote, or does it in fact create more parliamentary members who are saying, I don't like Nouri al-Maliki, but telling us who we should pick is an affront to us. | ||
| And I'm going to pick Nuri al-Maliki simply to show the Americans that they don't control us anymore. | ||
| Just a few more calls for you in this segment. | ||
| General Kimmett, this is Raymond in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Independent. | ||
| Raymond, thanks for waiting. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| I appreciate your commentary. | ||
| I want to mention that Venezuela obviously is a different story with the invasion. | ||
| It was needed, and it's because of the facts speak that the military and the government is corrupt, as you said. | ||
| And the people, vast majority, have voted against the system in previous elections. | ||
| So, what's the plan to get the opposition involved? | ||
| The opposition, there's been a brain drain in Venezuela. | ||
| A vast majority of those that are professional think and so forth, they're out of the country because of this whole collapse of the economy. | ||
| And I don't see anything stretching any hands out to the opposition leaders working with that opposition in the country and the expatriate community, which again, as I said, there's been a vast brain drain. | ||
| They're out here in communities in Florida and New York. | ||
| There's one guy, Diego Arias. | ||
| I spoke to him. | ||
| He was the ambassador, UN, for some years for Venezuela. | ||
| And there's people like that. | ||
| So I think that it's not like you're trying to set up a new regime. | ||
| It's a very different story. | ||
| This is all wanted by Venezuelans. | ||
| You know, you're not coming in there and doing regime change, but it needs to be done steps that may look overt and as though it's another puppet state or something, but it's not. | ||
| The people want it. | ||
| So I just want to ask about that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| General. | ||
| Well, yeah, thanks for your comments. | ||
| I mean, the fact remains is the Shavistas have run the richest country by natural resources in the region into poverty and hyperinflation because of their policies. | ||
| In the last election, the party represented by Maria Colchado and other officials were said to, in fact, be the winners of the election, but the votes were manipulated and kept the current Maduro party in power. | ||
| So as I said, I think the United States, and we should listen to what the Secretary of State says today about free and fair elections. | ||
| Are we going to push them? | ||
| What's going to be our timeline? | ||
| Is this going to be a UN program? | ||
| Hopefully, we can get the UN in there to administer it and to declare it free and fair as we do around the world. | ||
| So the timeline for that is going to be important because I think if they parachuted in all the opposition today, we wouldn't hear from them in a couple of weeks, a number of them. | ||
| But I think that ought to be part of that recovery that the Secretary of State is talking about. | ||
| I agree with you completely. | ||
| Free and fair elections and leadership inside the country that represents the people, not the Shavistas. | ||
| Or if the Shavistas win, let them stay in place. | ||
| But there should be legitimate opposition that is not suppressed or stepped on the way we're seeing with the protesters inside of Iran. | ||
| Last call, this is Nancy in Florida. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
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unidentified
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Hello. | |
| I was wondering if you could give an objective history of Cuba before Fidel Castro got there and the U.S. involvement and like the United Troop Company and the casinos and mafia and how the United States participated in that corruption. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I have to book on that, but go ahead, sir. | ||
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unidentified
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Very quickly. | |
| I mean, after the Spanish-American War, the Spanish sort of pulled their hands out of Cuba and the United States, because of the proximity, had a pretty close relationship with Cuba. | ||
| Now, one could argue, up until the time of Fidel Castro, whether that was innocent, pure, and purely in the benefit of the Cuban people. | ||
| Fidel would not have taken root inside of Cuba had the people there not believed that he offered a better alternative. | ||
| I think what has happened since then, of course, I think speaks for itself. | ||
| Yes, Cuba may graduate more doctors than anyone else in the Caribbean, Latin America, or South America, but I think anybody that's been to Cuba realizes the potential for what that country could become. | ||
| But the United States does not necessarily have a unchecked history inside of Cuba, particularly around the time that Fidel was trying to come into power. | ||