Dictators Laugh at U.S. Support for Democracy

I n the past week, the cause of democracy and respect for human rights suffered two great setbacks.

In Tunisia, the deepening dictatorship of President Kais Saied took the significant step of arresting and jailing the leader of the opposition, 81-year-old Rached Ghannouchi. Ghannouchi is the long-time leader of the Ennahda Party and was the speaker of parliament — which was shut down in 2021 by Saied.

In Venezuela, the former interim president, Juan Guaidó, fled the country and entered Colombia — from which he was immediately expelled. “The persecution of the dictatorship, unfortunately, spread to Colombia today,” Guaidó said.

The two cases are different in many ways. In Tunisia, the United States has been powerless to slow or stop Saied’s destruction of the only democracy in the Arab world. In fact, Tunisia is the only country that turned from democracy to dictatorship during the Biden administration — while the administration watched from the sidelines. In Venezuela, the administration has slowly but surely abandoned the opposition, sending top U.S. officials to Caracas to meet with regime leaders and softening U.S. sanctions despite zero concessions from the regime. That abandonment of the opposition led Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to do something he has previously been afraid to do: threaten Guaidó so forcefully that Guaidó felt compelled to flee the country. Venezuela is scheduled to have a presidential election next year and primaries this year, so it is convenient for Maduro to have Guaidó out (and, one must admit, it may also be convenient for other opposition politicians who want to run in the primaries).

But the two cases are the same in the most significant way: They represent contempt for the United States. In just one week, Saied and Maduro have both acted against the top opposition figures, emboldened without doubt by the belief that they would get away with it. They acted without fear of Washington and any possible American reaction.

Two years ago, the Biden administration came into office with lectures about human rights and democracy. Secretary of State Blinken said in February 2021 that “President Biden is committed to a foreign policy that unites our democratic values with our diplomatic leadership, and one that is centered on the defense of democracy and the protection of human rights.” The president then said in September 2021, “I’ve been clear that human rights will be the center of our foreign policy.”

But Saied and Maduro have concluded that this is just rhetoric. They have tightened their tyrannies without significant U.S. pushback — or, if one wants to claim that the Biden administration has indeed pushed back, it has done so without effect and the dictators feel free to ignore the Americans. It is worth noting that the expulsion of Guaidó from Colombia came just four days after Colombian president Gustavo Petro met with Biden at the White House. Similarly, Brazil’s president, Lula da Silva, allowed Iranian warships to dock in Brazil just two weeks after his own White House visit.

Much larger matters are at stake when Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin make judgments about American power, but the moves this week by Maduro and Saied give us real insight into the declining influence of the United States in the Middle East and Latin America.