Five years after U.S.-funded groups were associated with a failed coup against Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez, the U.S. government continues to meddle in Venezuelan domestic politics with its political aid programs . A new focus of foreign "democracy builders" in Venezuela and around the world is support for nonviolent resistance by civil society organizations. In the name of promoting democracy and freedom, Washington is currently funding scores of U.S. and Venezuelan organizations as part of its global democratization strategy—including at least one that publicly supported the April 2002 coup that briefly removed Chávez from power. When he first heard the news of the coup, the president of the International Republican Institute (IRI) praised those "who rose up to defend democracy," ignoring the fact that Chávez was the twice-elected president of Venezuela. Despite this declared support for a coup against an elected president and for the opposition's blatant disregard for the rule of law, IRI still runs democratization programs in Venezuela that are underwritten by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The International Republican Institute, a branch of the Republican Party established to channel U.S. democratization aid,1 is one of five U.S. nongovernmental organizations that channels funding from USAID to Venezuela organizations and political party programs. USAID also funds the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDIIA), which is the international branch of the Democratic Party, and two U.S. nongovernmental organizations: Freedom House and Pan-American Development Foundation, and Development Alternatives Inc., a private U.S. contractor. The United States has supported democratization and human rights groups in Venezuela since the early 1990s. But funding for "democracy-building" soared after Chávez was elected president in 1998. Both USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which funds the IRI and NDIIA, sharply increased their funding to business associations, the official labor confederation, human rights organizations, and political party coalitions. USAID's Transition InitiativeSeveral months after the unsuccessful April 2002 coup, the State Department established an Office of Transition Initiatives in Caracas with funding from USAID. Operating out of the U.S. embassy, the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) has two stated objectives according to the agency: to "strengthen democratic institutions and promote space for democratic dialogue," and to "encourage citizen participation in the democratic process." USAID established its OTI with the all-but-explicit intention of aiding efforts to oust President Chávez. According to USAID, the new office would "provide fast, flexible, short-term assistance targeted at key transition needs." Although it did not spell out what would be the desired "transition," USAID warned that Chávez "has been slowly hijacking the machinery of government and developing parallel non-democratic governance structures." In its 2001 job description for the new OTI director in Caracas, USAID stated that the director's responsibilities would include "formulating strategy and initiating the new OTI program in close coordination with U.S. political interests" and "developing an exit strategy and operational closeout plan." Rather than directly funding Venezuelan organizations and political parties, OTI channels USAID funding through U.S. NGOs, including the for-profit Development Alternatives Inc., that in turn fund scores of Venezuelan NGOs and political party projects. In its January-March 2007 report, USAID reported 139 subgrants to Venezuelan entities working in 19 of the country's 23 states. OTI, which has channeled an estimated $30 million in democratization aid to Venezuela, is not the only source of U.S. political aid. It describes itself as part of a "comprehensive assistance program to shore up the democratic voices and institutions in Venezuela" that includes NED and other State Department initiatives, including "educational" trips to the United States for selected members of the Venezuelan media. As U.S. economic aid decreases, OTI is seeking local funding to complement its own programs, noting in its January-March 2007 report that it has succeeded in leveraging $3.5 million in local contributions in the year's first quarter. In its most recent appraisal of its "transition initiatives," OTI boasts: "The partnerships that have formed between NGOs and citizens eager to participate directly in their own governance attest to the success of the program ... that is filling an important need that is laying the groundwork for a sustainable democratic future." Although the U.S.-government funded NGOs insist they are independent, they closely coordinate their programs among themselves and with U.S. government representatives. In February 2007, OTI's "team leader" visited Venezuela to participate in "a strategic planning" session with the "five implementing partner organizations." OTI has also been organizing a meeting with two dozen NGOs "that promote citizen participation in local democratic spaces." In its January-March evaluation of ongoing operations, OTI says that "given the political parties' growing appreciation of the importance of democratic spaces, the meeting will provide opportunities to discuss the synergistic overlap between civil society and political parties." With OTI support, the IRI and NDIIA institutes offer "technical assistance for political parties," working directly "with political parties to improve their capabilities in constituency outreach and institutional development," according to USAID. The institutes help parties and candidates with "candidate profiles" and "message development." Both institutes say they offer their services to both government and opposition parties—although only the opposition parties avail themselves of this "democracy-building" aid. Freedom House is best known for its widely cited Freedom in the World and Freedom of the Pressreports. But it is not commonly known that Freedom House is a major recipient of U.S. government funding, directly from USAID or through the government-funded NED. Relying almost exclusively on government funding for its overseas operations, Freedom House says it works "directly with democratic reformers on the front lines in their own countries" in Central Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, the former Soviet Union, and the Balkans. According to Freedom House, its overseas activity "acts as a catalyst for freedom by strengthening civil society, promoting open government, defending human rights, and facilitating the free flow of information." With USAID funding, Freedom House sponsors a Human Rights Defenders program in Venezuela that it promotes as "facilitating the interaction of Venezuelan civil society with counterparts in Latin America to help them improve domestic human rights reporting and to expand protections for human rights." The "longer-term goal," says Freedom House, is "to assist groups who will strive to safeguard and improve the functioning of democratic institutions in Venezuela." For its part, the Pan-American Development Fund in early 2007 provided funding to "document the following activities: the constitutional reform process, discrimination based on political affiliation, and persecution of human rights practitioners." Meanwhile, Development Alternatives Inc. has focused on "training in democratic leadership and values, increasing citizen participation at the local level, and supporting NGO participation in international events." "Destabilization Plan" or "An Action Agenda" for DemocracyEva Golinger, Venezuelan-American author of The Chávez Code and a prominent critic of U.S. aid programs in Venezuela, in May 2007 accused Freedom House and other U.S. organizations receiving U.S. government funding of orchestrating a "destabilization plan" (see www.Venezuelanalysis.com, May 26, 2007). She accused Freedom House of designing a campaign of nonviolent resistance to the Chávez government. Freedom House collaborates with the Belgrade-based Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (Canvas), which has singled out Venezuela along with Zimbabwe and the Ukraine as principal targets for its training programs. Describing its approach to political transitions on its website, Canvas says, "Mass political defiance has occurred in Burma, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Tibet in recent years. Although those struggles have not brought victory over dictators, they badly harmed the authority of those oppressive regimes both in the countries and in the international community." At her May 2007 press conference in Caracas, Golinger noted that the clenched fist featured on the promotional flyer for a protest against the closure of RCTV (accused by the government of having supported the attempted coup) is the same logo used in opposition campaigns in Serbia, Georgia, and the Ukraine. It is also the symbol featured on the Canvas website. USAID and NED funding of NGOs in Venezuela reflects the U.S. government's conviction that the democratic process is badly flawed and that political aid to groups not associated with the government will contribute to a "transition" to more democratic governance—or at least to a leader more acceptable to Washington. The NGO focus of recent democratization aid is also a reflection of a new trend in political aid that regards nonviolent resistance by nongovernmental organizations as the most effective instrument for moving dictatorships to democracies. Among the centers for this new thinking about supporting and training foreign NGOs to foster regime changes are NED, Freedom House, Albert Einstein Institution, and the Council for the Community of Democracies. Over the past few years Freedom House, which receives funding from both USAID and the National Endowment of Democracy, has been a prominent advocate of nonviolent organizing by civil society groups to overturn dictatorial regimes. Its 2005 study entitled "How Freedom is Won" concluded that 50 of the 67 "transitions to democracy over the previous third of a century" were driven in largely part by "civil resistance, featuring strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, and mass protests." Freedom House president Peter Ackerman, who is also chairman of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, is a leading advocate for international funding of NGOs engaged in nonviolent organizing against nondemocratic states. Ackerman, co-author of Strategic Nonviolent Conflict, is a member of the executive council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In a March 2007 address, "Skills or Conditions: What Key Factors Shape the Success or Failure of Civil Resistance?" Ackerman advocates a sharing of best practices of civil resistance around the world—notably from the successful cases in Serbia and from the "colored revolutions" in Georgia and the Ukraine—to tackle the "backlash to democracy promotion" by repressive regimes, among which he includes the Chávez government. Freedom House, according to Ackerman, is "making every effort to improve the substance and scalability of training tools" for civil society groups engaged in nonviolent action. Another prominent advocate of U.S. government funding for nonviolent resistance is Mark Palmer, a State Department official who played a key role in founding NED and who now serves as the vice chairman of Freedom House. In his June 8, 2006 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, entitled "Promotion of Democracy by Nongovernmental Organizations: An Action Agenda," Palmer called for the "radical strengthening of our primary frontline fighters for freedom," namely nongovernmental organizations. Palmer, who was instrumental in the creation of the Council for the Community of Democracies, lamented the fact that the U.S. NGOs, and "their governmental and private funders," have not made the funding of foreign NGOs involved in building "national movements" as their primary objective. He advocated a major increase in government funding for "NGO programs focused on dictatorships." Current U.S. funding of an array of NGOs and community groups in Venezuela, including training and consultation offered by organizations such as Canvas and the Albert Einstein Institution, raises concerns that the overriding objective may not be so much the advance of freedom, democracy, and human rights but rather the furthering of U.S. strategic interests. By including a democratic state such as Venezuela among the targets of national movement building, the independence and integrity of "democracy builders" in the United States can be called into question. Chávez supporter Golinger, for example, advised Venezuelans: "For the defense of the nation, it would be wise to end the actions of groups like Freedom House and the International Republican Institute, which serve as a front for the State Department and the CIA, and which operate openly in the country." Democracy and InterventionThere is little doubt that democracy is being put to the test in Venezuela. With a history of democratic governance since 1958, Venezuela has had a relatively stable democratic tradition. But a large part of that stability resulted from a pattern of elections in which well-established parties of the elite alternated in power. By breaking that pattern, Chávez disrupted that vaunted stability but at the same time made politics more inclusive. For the first time, the country's rural poor and urban workers had a voice in government. Winning several highly contested elections since 1998 by impressive majorities, President Chávez has earned legitimacy as a democrat. However, in his drive to consolidate his bases of support and to usher in "21st century socialism," he has sparked widespread concerns from human rights and press freedom organizations that his government is riding roughshod over the democratic process of governance. Questions about the integrity of U.S. democratization aid are now being used by the Venezuelan government to press the National Assembly to pass a new law that would subject all NGOs that receive foreign funding to government approval and scrutiny. If such an intrusive measure is instituted, at least part of the blame will lay with the United States and constitute part of the antidemocratic legacy of U.S. democratization strategy. It's past time for the U.S. democratizers to shut down their operations in Venezuela and make their exit. By intervening in Venezuela through NGOs, Washington lends credence to claims by Chávez and others who charge that the U.S. government is pursuing a policy of regime change in Venezuela. The first step toward a more constructive foreign policy toward Venezuela should be an expression of support for the country's self-determination in its political and economic affairs. Concerns about the state of democracy, media freedom, or human rights in Venezuela could then be expressed through normal diplomatic channels without fueling suspicion that the United States and its shadow institutions are part of a campaign to undermine the elected Venezuelan government. As things stand, however, the U.S. government and its phalanx of democracy-building NGOs are not just raising concerns but are also operating to influence internal politics inside Venezuela. The United States would not permit foreign countries and their agents to inject themselves into its own political process; it should assume no right to do unto others what it would not have done to itself. End Notes- For which Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is chairman.
Tom Barry is a senior analyst with the Americas Program, www.americaspolicy.org of the Center for International Policy. | 