Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega at the ALBA summit in La Habana province, Cuba, in December 2021 / credit: Cuba’s presidential office
Editor’s Note: This article was first published by Multipolarista.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s top Latin America advisor has admitted U.S. sanctions against Russia over Ukraine intentionally seek to hurt Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
The United States imposed a series of harsh sanctions on Russia following Moscow’s recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on February 21, and its subsequent military intervention in Ukraine on February 24.
Juan S. González, Biden’s special assistant for Latin America and the U.S. National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, made it clear that these coercive measures against Russia are also aimed at damaging the economies of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba have socialist governments that Washington has long tried to overthrow. All three currently suffer under unilateral U.S. sanctions, which are illegal according to international law.
Former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, an architect of the Iraq War, referred to these three Latin American nations as the so-called “Troika of Tyranny.”
Biden’s advisor González did an exclusive interview with Voz de América, the Spanish-language arm of the U.S. government’s propaganda outlet Voice of America, on February 25.
“The sanctions against Russia are so robust that they will have an impact on those governments that have economic affiliations with Russia, and that is by design,” González explained.
“So Venezuela is going to start feeling that pressure. Nicaragua is going to feel that pressure, along with Cuba,” he added.
Biden’s Latin America advisor noted that Washington has imposed sanctions on 13 top financial institutions in Russia, including some of the largest in the country. He proudly said that these coercive measures will, “by design,” harm other countries that do a lot of trade with the Eurasian power.
González also used his interview with the U.S.-funded Voz de América to reiterate Washington’s call for regime change against these three socialist governments in Latin America.
His comments were reported by the independent Bolivia-based news website, Kawsachun News.
Biden advisor: U.S. sanctions against Russia are 'designed' to impact Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. pic.twitter.com/Zbqg3mgB2N
Maduro stressed that Washington and NATO bear responsibility for the conflict, and “have generated strong threats against the Russian Federation.”
Venezuela rechaza el agravamiento de la crisis en Ucrania producto del quebrantamiento de los acuerdos de Minsk por parte de la OTAN. Llamamos a la búsqueda de soluciones pacíficas para dirimir las diferencias entre las partes. El diálogo y la no injerencia, son garantías de Paz. pic.twitter.com/Y7N1lwZfpi
Cuba blamed Washington for the crisis as well. Its Foreign Ministry stated, “The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided.”
Denouncing Western governments for sending weapons to Ukraine, Cuba declared, “History will hold the United States accountable for the consequences of an increasingly offensive military doctrine outside NATO’s borders, which threatens international peace, security and stability.”
The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided. 1/5
The chairman of Russia’s State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, traveled to Nicaragua to meet with top officials from the Sandinista government, and thanked them for their support against NATO expansion and U.S. threats.
🇳🇮🇷🇺 #Nicaragua recibió a una delegación de alto nivel de #Rusia, encabezada por el Presidente de la Duma Estatal de la Cámara Baja, Vyacheslav Volodín. La visita tiene por objetivo fortalecer la cooperación y la solidaridad bilateral. pic.twitter.com/BMY1AjnviF
An image of U.S. dollar bills, Canadian dollars, Czech koruna notes and U.K. pound sterlings. Developed countries are required to fund climate-change mitigation and adaption efforts of developing countries / credit: John McArthur on Unsplash
Last month, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry visited India in an effort to bolster the United States’ bilateral and multilateral climate efforts ahead of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26), which will be held in Glasgow in just a few weeks. Countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will attend the conference to deliberate as well as negotiate actions needed to combat the climate crisis.
Kerry’s visit to India also marked the launch of Climate Action and Finance Mobilization Dialogue (CAFMD). CAFMD is part of the U.S.-India Agenda 2030 Partnership Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden announced in April at the Leaders Summit on Climate. The talks took place within the context of India’s membership within an alliance colloquially referred to as “The Quad.” The alliance comprises Australia, Japan, India and the United States, and is aimed at countering a growing China in the Indo-Pacific region.
Soon after Kerry’s visit to India, Quad leaders met at the White House for discussions on a host of issues, including climate change. They agreed to work on climate targets aimed at 2030 and pursue enhanced actions in the 2020s.
But what tools are available to India—and other developing countries—to support them as they face climate-change impacts like eroding coastlines and droughts? And how will such tools be made available?
Mobilizing finance is considered key to helping developing countries meet their emission-reduction targets and adapt to climate-change impacts. At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries committed to a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion per year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries.
But while COP15 set a clear target of $100 billion, it allowed flexibility in terms of what forms of financial support qualify as climate finance. The Paris Agreement, the successor to the Copenhagen Accord, reiterated the $100 billion per year commitment, but it also allows a wide range of financial instruments.
Indian Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav (left) and U.S. special presidential climate envoy John Kerry kick off the U.S.-India Climate Action and Finance Mobilization Dialogue on September 13 in New Delhi / credit: twitter/climateenvoy
Developing Countries’ Perspective
Developed and developing countries have different perspectives on climate finance. Chandra Bhushan, a public policy expert and founder/CEO of International Forum for Environment, Sustainability & Technology (iFOREST), explained when developing countries speak of climate-finance requirements, they largely mean public grants from developed countries. But when developed countries talk about climate finance, they mean “everything from loans to grants to bilateral and multilateral funding,” Bhushan said.
Bilateral funding refers to financial support from one country to another. Multilateral funding involves agencies such as the World Bank, which derives its source of funding from multiple countries.
India’s official position on climate finance is only grants and grant-equivalent elements of other instruments, like loans and guarantees, ought to be recognized as climate finance. For example, in a recent interview to CarbonCopy, Rajni Ranjan Rashmi, a former principal negotiator for India at the UN climate change negotiations, said it is “logical” to include only the grant portion, or the concessional part, of the loans in the definition of climate finance.
Publicly available information about CAFMD does not reveal what exactly “financial mobilization” would entail. This reporter filed a Right to Information (RTI) request with the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) for minutes of meetings held between Kerry and the ministry. However, the request was denied.
Bhushan also expressed skepticism, noting how pre-COP launches of dialogues, like CAFMD, are not uncommon. But he said their progress is rarely tracked to ascertain achievements.
Mud cracks formed on a dried-out river bed in the district of Kutch in the Indian state of Gujarat / credit: Renzo D’souza on Unsplash
Unpacking “Finance Mobilization”
In general, “finance mobilization” can happen on both concessional and commercial terms. Arjun Dutt, program lead at Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) said concessional capital typically is channeled through grants and soft loans to market segments that are not commercially viable to catalyze investment. And as for finance on commercial terms, Dutt noted it typically flows into sectors that have achieved commercial viability and large-scale deployment, such as utility-scale renewable energy.
Elaborating on what India needs, Dutt said if the world wants India to decarbonize at an accelerated pace and commit to net-zero goals, the country “would likely require greater international [climate-finance] flows on both concessional and commercial terms.”
Through financial instruments such as guarantees, concessional capital could help lower the risk of loan defaults with new clean-energy technologies, which could catalyze more private-sector investments, Dutt explained. And as for commercial international capital, it would be needed because of the sheer scale of India’s decarbonization requirements.
Pays to note, in her meeting with Kerry, Indian Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitaraman also underscored a need for enhanced climate finance for developing countries, or funding beyond the $100 billion commitment made at the Copenhagen summit.
Recently, even African nations called for a 10-fold increase to the $100 billion climate finance target.
Climate Finance’s Track Record
Developed countries have largely failed in fulfilling their climate finance obligations, a September 2021 report shows. Out of 23 developed countries that have a responsibility to provide climate finance, only Germany, Norway and Sweden have been paying their fair share of the annual $100 billion goal. More specifically, it states that the United States has the biggest shortfall in paying its fair share of climate finance, based on historical emissions and national income.
Drought in Ooty, a town nestled in the Western Ghats mountain range in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu / credit: Shravan K Acharya on Unsplash
And closer examination of delivered climate finance reveals other issues. According to a report by Oxfam, the share of grants in global public climate finance was only 27 percent in 2019, whereas loans—both concessional and otherwise—totaled 71 percent. The remaining 2 percent comprised finance mobilized from private sources. Oxfam referred to this reliance on loans to fulfill climate-finance obligations “an overlooked scandal.”
Recently, a climate negotiator from a developing country, who anonymously wrote for The Guardian, pointed out how climate finance in the form of loans is creating a debt trap for countries in the Global South, where the COVID-19 pandemic has hit economies.
Interest rates on concessional loans are unequal, too. “The rate of interest in developed countries is around 2 percent and in India, it is around 14 percent,” said Bhushan of iFOREST. “So, if the United States gives a loan for 6 percent, will you consider it as a loan given on concessional terms?”
Funding Mitigation Versus Adaptation
Climate finance usually aids two solutions: Mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation refers to efforts aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions like investments in renewable energy technologies or even making existing energy generation more efficient. Adaptation means remodeling and reorganizing society and the physical environment to address risks posed by climate change. Climate adaptation includes enhancing the resilience of coastal communities with nature-based solutions like restoration of mangroves and providing food security with climate-resilient agricultural practices.
Here, too, disparities exist between the needs of developing countries and what the developed world actually delivers.
Little doubt remains that climate change disproportionately impacts the Global South, given pre-existing conditions like food insecurity and lack of adequate healthcare. And so, countries in this region need as much financial support, if not more, for adaptation as they do for undertaking mitigation measures to arrest the global temperature rise. Even the Paris Agreement recognizes developing countries need equal amounts of funding towards mitigation and adaptation. But funding flows largely towards mitigation.
Oxfam points out 66 percent of global public climate finance supported mitigation while only 25 percent went toward adaptation. “Profitability drives the flow of money,” Dutt said, noting how climate finance goes toward mitigation efforts—like enhancing deployment in the renewable energy sector—and not to adaptation. But this is where public finance—or that which is provided by taxpayer money—can flow.
It also is unclear if developing countries have undertaken climate-change impact assessments and drafted clear policies aimed at mitigation, which could then be implemented using international climate financing.
Solar Power Plant Telangana II in the Indian state of Telangana / credit: Thomas Lloyd Group
Developing Homegrown Climate Technology
Article 4.5 of the UNFCCC states developed countries have undertaken a commitment to
“take all practicable steps to promote, facilitate and finance, as appropriate, the transfer of, or access to environmentally sound technologies and knowledge to other Parties, particularly developing country Parties, to enable them to implement the provisions of the Convention.”
But little clarity is available on what “practicable” entails, what “as appropriate” means and what “environmentally sound technologies” encompass.
More rudimentary questions exist about whether developing countries like India need technology transfers.
“Renewable energy technologies like modules and inverters are produced at a mass scale across the world and even in India. These technologies are well-understood,” Dutt said. The only challenge, Dutt added, is India has not been able to produce renewable-energy equipment at globally competitive rates.
Expressing similar concerns, Bhushan spoke of how technologies like solar photovoltaic (PV) panels have hundreds of parts and algorithms that could have hundreds of intellectual property rights (IPRs). “Many of these IPRs are from developing countries themselves,” he noted. These IPRs are then packaged together and sold to companies to manufacture solar PV modules and panels. “Technology transfer is not like giving a formula to someone to produce a chemical. It is a combination of hundreds of formulas, many owned by Indians themselves,” Bhushan said. “The bottomline is, if you have money, you can buy whatever technology you want.” And so, the issue is not about freeing technology, like with the COVID-19 vaccines.
India has largely handled its own mitigation pathway because the country has access to renewable-energy technologies—both imported and domestically produced. Bhushan said talk of technology transfer is largely rhetoric without substantive demands detailing what exactly developing countries need.
Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.
Joe Biden (left) and Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi / credit: Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, Mehr News Agency
It was common knowledge that a U.S. failure to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, before Iran’s June presidential election would help conservative hard-liners to win the election. Indeed, on Saturday, June 19, conservative Ebrahim Raisi was elected as the new president of Iran.
Raisi has a record of brutally cracking down on government opponents and his election is a severe blow to Iranians struggling for a more liberal, open society. He also has a history of anti-Western sentiment and says he would refuse to meet with President Biden. And while current President Hassan Rouhani, considered a moderate, held out the possibility of broader talks after the United States returned to the nuclear deal, Raisi will almost certainly reject broader negotiations with the United States.
Could Raisi’s victory been averted if President Biden had rejoined the Iran deal right after coming into the White House and enabled Rouhani and the moderates in Iran to take credit for the removal of U.S. sanctions before the election? Now we will never know.
Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement drew near-universal condemnation from Democrats and arguably violated international law. But Biden’s failure to quickly rejoin the deal has left Trump’s policy in place, including the cruel “maximum pressure” sanctions that are destroying Iran’s middle class, throwing millions of people into poverty, and preventing imports of medicine and other essentials, even during a pandemic.
U.S. sanctions have provoked retaliatory measures from Iran, including suspending limits on its uranium enrichment and reducing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Trump’s, and now Biden’s, policy has simply reconstructed the problems that preceded the JCPOA in 2015, displaying the widely recognized madness of repeating something that didn’t work and expecting a different result.
JCPOA talks held July 14, 2015. From left to right: Foreign ministers/secretaries of state Wang Yi (China), Laurent Fabius (France), Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Germany), Federica Mogherini (EU), Mohammad Javad Zarif (Iran), Philip Hammond (UK), John Kerry (USA) / credit: Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration und Äusseres
If actions speak louder than words, the U.S. seizure of 27 Iranian and Yemeni international news websites on June 22, based on the illegal, unilateral U.S. sanctions that are among the most contentious topics of the Vienna negotiations, suggests that the same madness still holds sway over U.S. policy.
Since Biden took office, the critical underlying question is whether he and his administration are really committed to the JCPOA. As a presidential candidate, Biden promised to simply rejoin the JCPOA on his first day as president, and Iran always said it was ready to comply with the agreement as soon as the United States rejoined it.
Biden has been in office for five months, but the negotiations in Vienna did not begin until April 6. His failure to rejoin the agreement upon taking office reflected a desire to appease hawkish advisers and politicians who claimed he could use Trump’s withdrawal and the threat of continued sanctions as “leverage” to extract more concessions from Iran over its ballistic missiles, regional activities and other questions.
Far from extracting more concessions, Biden’s foot-dragging only provoked further retaliatory action by Iran, especially after the assassination of an Iranian scientist and sabotage at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, both probably committed by Israel.
Without a great deal of help, and some pressure, from the United States’ European allies, it is unclear how long it would have taken Biden to get around to opening negotiations with Iran. The shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna is the result of painstaking negotiations with both sides by former European Parliament President Josep Borrell, who is now the European Union’s foreign policy chief.
The sixth round of shuttle diplomacy has now concluded in Vienna without an agreement. President-elect Raisi says he supports the negotiations in Vienna, but would not allow the United States to drag them out for a long time.
An unnamed U.S. official raised hopes for an agreement before Raisi takes office on August 3, noting it would be more difficult to reach an agreement after that, according to an Axios report. But a State Department spokesman said talks would continue when the new government takes office, implying that an agreement was unlikely before then.
Even if Biden had rejoined the JCPOA, Iran’s moderates might still have lost this tightly managed election. But a restored JCPOA and the end of U.S. sanctions would have left the moderates in a stronger position, and set Iran’s relations with the United States and its allies on a path of normalization that would have helped to weather more difficult relations with Raisi and his government in the coming years.
If Biden fails to rejoin the JCPOA, and if the United States or Israel ends up at war with Iran, this lost opportunity to quickly rejoin the JCPOA during his first months in office will loom large over future events and Biden’s legacy as president.
If the United States does not rejoin the JCPOA before Raisi takes office, Iran’s hard-liners will point to Rouhani’s diplomacy with the West as a failed pipe-dream, and their own policies as pragmatic and realistic by contrast. In the United States and Israel, the hawks who have lured Biden into this slow-motion train-wreck will be popping champagne corks to celebrate Raisi’s inauguration, as they move in to kill the JCPOA for good, smearing it as a deal with a mass murderer.
If Biden rejoins the JCPOA after Raisi’s inauguration, Iran’s hard-liners will claim that they succeeded where Rouhani and the moderates failed, and take credit for the economic recovery that will follow the removal of U.S. sanctions.
On the other hand, if Biden follows hawkish advice and tries to play it tough, and Raisi then pulls the plug on the negotiations, both leaders will score points with their own hard-liners at the expense of majorities of their people who want peace, and the United States will be back on a path of confrontation with Iran.
While that would be the worst outcome of all, it would allow Biden to have it both ways domestically, appeasing the hawks while telling liberals that he was committed to the nuclear deal until Iran rejected it. Such a cynical path of least resistance would very likely be a path to war.
On all these counts, it is vital that Biden and the Democrats conclude an agreement with the Rouhani government and rejoin the JCPOA. Rejoining it after Raisi takes office would be better than letting the negotiations fail altogether, but this entire slow-motion train-wreck has been characterized by diminishing returns with every delay, from the day Biden took office.
Neither the people of Iran nor the people of the United States have been well served by Biden’s willingness to accept Trump’s Iran policy as an acceptable alternative to Obama’s, even as a temporary political expedient. To allow Trump’s abandonment of an Obama-brokered agreement to stand as a long-term U.S. policy would be an even greater betrayal of the goodwill and good faith of people on all sides.
Biden and his advisers must now confront the consequences of the position their wishful thinking and dithering has landed them in, and must make a genuine and serious political decision to rejoin the JCPOA within days or weeks.
Paul Sankara, consultant, activist and brother of assassinated Burkina Faso leader Thomas Sankara; Eugene Puryear, community organizer and host at BreakThrough News; Erica Caines, a Black Alliance for Peace Coordinating Committee member, co-editor of Hood Communist and founder of Liberation Through Reading; and Nebiyu Asfaw, co-founder of both the Ethiopian American Development Council and the #NoMore Movement discussed connecting African peoples’ struggles across the continents at the first-ever African Peoples’ Forum. The event was held December 11 at the Eritrean Civic & Cultural Center in Washington, D.C. Journalist Hermela Aregawi and activist Yolian Ogbu moderated.
