On the same day that President Obama declared Venezuela a “national security threat, ” and sanctioned seven officials of the country over the alleged jailing of opposition figures, his State Department is renewing commitments to the authoritarian military dictatorship in Egypt.
State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki announced that Secretary of State John Kerry would travel to Sharm el-Sheik this week to attend the Egypt Economic Development Conference.
“The United States is committed to strengthening its long-term strategic and economic partnership with Egypt,” Psaki told reporters on Monday. “We continue to work with the Egyptian government to help the Egyptian people stabilize and grow the economy, create jobs, educate young people, improving access to healthcare and help to realize the aspirations of the Egyptian people for an inclusive, rights and freedoms respecting, and peaceful political climate.”
The administration’s latest commitment to Egypt is awkward in comparison to harsh words the White House leveled against Caracas.
“We are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents—Venezuela’s problems cannot be solved by criminalizing dissent,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a press release. The statement announced President Obama’s executive order declaring Venezuela a national security threat and sanctioning several government officials.
The statement went on to call for the release of “all political prisoners” and to “improve the climate of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, such as the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly.”
The new designation as a national security threat does not amount to any new “technical changes in terms of the relationship” between the US and Venezuela, according to State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
The sanctions, which are targeted against seven officials including the head of Venezuela’s intelligence service, the director of national police and a state prosecutor, are also unlikely to have much of an impact on economic relations between the two countries. They don’t apply to the South American country’s oil industry, which supplies more than 700,000 barrels of oil to the US every day. Venezuela is the fourth largest supplier of crude oil to the US.
Psaki said the order was “an implementation of what we’ve been working on for months, which is cracking down on those who are violating human rights and, you know, human rights abuses and those who are cracking down on civil society.”
Regardless of the extent to which this is true—opposition forces tied to the US tried to overthrow President Hugo Chavez in 2002, and have, in recent years, engaged in violent street protests against the leftist government that have killed innocent bystanders—Egypt is a notorious human rights abuser. According to Human Rights Watch, the Egyptian government threw tens of thousands of political opponents in jail and slaughtered more than a thousand people protesting in the streets in the weeks after the country’s incumbent military commander, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, took power.
Instead of sanctions, the US government supplied Sisi with over a billion in military aid.
Last November, the State Department, working with the US Chamber of Commerce, also led a business delegation of over 150 executives from more than 60 companies to Egypt to discuss investment opportunities with Egyptian businesses and government officials. The contingent was billed as the largest foreign delegation ever put together by the Chamber.
Close military cooperation with Egypt in the fight against the Islamic State has, undoubtedly, been encouraging the administration to overlook human rights abuses by the Sisi government. However it doesn’t explain why the White House ignores abuses committed by officials from Venezuela’s neighbors.
In January, the State Department announced increased security cooperation with Honduras, despite growing concerns from observers over the militarization of Honduran police forces and the violence against peaceful protesters—including the murder of peaceful indigenous activists—which it has fueled
