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elliott abrams
A Rebuke to Elliot Abrams’ Venezuela Delusions
When the infamous neocon warns about “criminal regimes,” I don’t think of Venezuela. I think of the mass graves, the scorched villages, the secret prisons, and the tens of thousands of Latin American lives shattered under the policies he championed.
Nov 26, 2025
Elliott Abrams has resurfaced with familiar instructions on how to “fix” Venezuela, a country he neither understands nor respects, yet feels entitled to rearrange like a piece of furniture in Washington’s living room. His new proposal is drenched in the same Cold War fever and colonial mindset that shaped his work in the 1980s, when US foreign policy turned Central America into a graveyard.
My childhood in Venezuela was shaped by stories from our region that the world rarely sees: stories of displacement, of death squads, of villages erased from maps, of governments toppled for daring to act outside Washington’s orbit. And I know exactly who Elliott Abrams is, not from think-tank biographies, but from the grief woven into Central America’s landscape.
Abrams writes with the confidence of someone who has never lived inside the countries his policies have destabilized. His newest argument rests on the most dangerous assumption of all: that the United States has the authority, by virtue of power alone, to decide who governs Venezuela. This is the original sin of US policy in the hemisphere, the one that justifies everything else: the sanctions, the blockades, the covert operations, the warships in the Caribbean. The assumption that the hemisphere is still an extension of US strategic space rather than a region with its own political will.
In this telling, Venezuela becomes a “narco-state,” a convenient villain. But anyone who bothers to study the architecture of the global drug trade knows that the world’s largest illegal market is the United States, not Venezuela. The money laundering happens in New York and London, not in Caracas. The guns that sustain the drug corridors of the continent used to threaten, to extort, to kill, come overwhelmingly from American producers. And the history of the drug war itself, from its intelligence partnerships to its paramilitary enforcement wings, was written in Washington, not in the barrios of Venezuela.
The history of the drug war itself, from its intelligence partnerships to its paramilitary enforcement wings, was written in Washington, not in the barrios of Venezuela.
Even US government data contradicts Abrams’ narrative. DEA and UNODC reports have long shown that the vast majority of cocaine destined for US consumers travels from Colombia through the Pacific, not through Venezuela. Washington knows this. But the fiction of a “Venezuelan narco-route” is politically useful: it turns a geopolitical disagreement into a criminal case file and prepares the public for escalation.
What’s striking is that Abrams never turns to the real front line of the drug trade: US cities, US banks, US gun shows, US demand. The crisis he describes is born in his own country, yet he looks for the solution in foreign intervention. The United States has long armed, financed, and politically protected its own “narco-allies” when it suited larger strategic goals. The Contras in Nicaragua, paramilitary blocs in Colombia, and death squads in Honduras. These were policy tools, and many of them operated with Abrams’ direct diplomatic support.
I grew up with the stories of what that machinery did to our neighbors. You don’t need to visit Central America to understand its scars; you only need to listen. In Guatemala, Maya communities still grieve a genocide that US officials refused to acknowledge, even as villages were erased and survivors fled into the mountains. In El Salvador, families continue lighting candles for the hundreds of children and mothers killed in massacres that Abrams dismissed as “leftist propaganda.” In Nicaragua, the wounds left by the Contras, a paramilitary force armed, financed, and politically blessed by Washington, remain visible in the stories of burned cooperatives and murdered teachers. In Honduras, the word disappeared is not historically remote; it is widely remembered, a reminder of the death squads empowered under the banner of US anti-communism.
So when Abrams warns about “criminal regimes,” I don’t think of Venezuela. I think of the mass graves, the scorched villages, the secret prisons, and the tens of thousands of Latin American lives shattered under the policies he championed. And those graves are not metaphors. They are the cartography of an entire era of US intervention, the era Abrams insists on resurrecting.
Abrams now adds new threats to the old script: warnings about “narco-terrorism,” anxieties about “Iranian operatives,” alarms over “Chinese influence.” These issues are stripped of context, inflated, or selectively highlighted to manufacture a security crisis where none exists. Venezuela is not being targeted because of drugs, Iran, or China. It is being targeted because it has built relationships and development paths that do not answer to Washington. Independent diplomacy, South-South cooperation, and diversified alliances are treated as threats—not because they endanger the hemisphere, but because they weaken US dominance within it.
His fantasy for Venezuela rests on another imperial delusion. The notion that the United States can bomb air bases, sabotage infrastructure, deploy Special Forces into a sovereign country, tighten sanctions until society buckles, and then “install” a compliant government as if Venezuela were an uninhabited outpost is a breathtaking escape from reality. Venezuela is a nation of 28 million people, with a national identity shaped by resisting foreign control, above all, control over oil. Abrams presents a military-assisted overthrow as if it were a routine administrative task, erasing the human cost, the regional fallout, and the absolute certainty of popular resistance. It is the same imperial fantasy that has haunted Latin America for generations: the belief that our countries can be redesigned by force and that our people will obediently accept it.
The notion that the United States can bomb air bases, sabotage infrastructure, deploy Special Forces into a sovereign country, tighten sanctions until society buckles, and then “install” a compliant government as if Venezuela were an uninhabited outpost is a breathtaking escape from reality.
He also assumes that once Washington’s preferred government is installed, the oil will conveniently flow. Nothing could reveal a deeper ignorance about Venezuela. Oil in Venezuela is not merely an export or a source of revenue; it is the ground on which its sovereignty was fought for, betrayed, reclaimed, and fought for again. It was the terrain of foreign concessions, the site of the 2002 sabotage, the backbone of the Bolivarian project. Venezuelan refineries, pipelines, and fields are the archive of a century of struggle to control its own destiny. Believing that foreign troops would be welcomed as managers of their most intimate sovereignty is to be utterly blinded by arrogance.
Then there is the matter of sanctions. In Washington, they are treated as technical measures, policy levers, bargaining chips. In Venezuela, there are shortages in hospitals, lines at pharmacies, collapsed revenue, currency freefall, and families forced into migration. And here Abrams’ fingerprints are impossible to ignore: during Trump’s first administration, he served as “Special Representative for Venezuela,” helping design and defend the very sanctions that strangled the economy he now blames the government for failing to manage. Abrams says sanctions “failed,” as though they were meant to improve Venezuelan life. But sanctions did not fail. They succeeded at destabilizing society, suffocating public services, and manufacturing the humanitarian crisis now used to justify further intervention. It is circular logic: create the conditions of collapse and then point to the collapse as evidence that the government must be removed.
Abrams now frames regime change as a solution to migration, but history tells another story entirely. U.S. interventions do not stop migration; they generate it. The largest waves of displacement in our region came in the wake of U.S.-backed coups, civil wars, counterinsurgency campaigns, and, more recently, the weaponization of economic sanctions. People fled not because their governments were left alone, but because Washington treated their countries as battlefields or, in the case of sanctions, as laboratories for economic collapse. Central Americans ran from bullets and death squads; Venezuelans have been pushed out by a siege designed to break the economy and fracture society. The result is the same: migration engineered by U.S. policy, then used as justification for further intervention.
It is circular logic: create the conditions of collapse and then point to the collapse as evidence that the government must be removed.
Washington’s case against Venezuela now leans on a familiar set of fabricated alarms: claims that the country has become a hub of “narco-terrorism,” that it harbors Iranian operatives, that Chinese investment is a Trojan horse for hostile influence. Venezuela is not being targeted because of drugs, Iran, or China. It is being targeted because it has built relationships and development projects that do not answer to Washington’s dictates. Independent diplomacy, South-South cooperation, and diversified alliances are treated as threats, not because they endanger the hemisphere, but because they weaken U.S. dominance within it.
Until Washington abandons the idea that it owns the hemisphere, Latin America will never be safe. Not from Abrams, not from coups, not from CIA programs, not from blockades, and not from the Monroe Doctrine.
And perhaps the clearest sign of this imperial hypocrisy is watching Trump accuse his domestic opponents of “sedition” for a simple video where lawmakers remind US service members that they are legally bound to refuse unlawful orders. Yet the very same political forces praise the idea of Venezuelan officers breaking their own constitutional order to topple a government Washington dislikes. Latin America has lived long enough under that double standard, and we are done paying the price for it.
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Architects of the Disastrous Iraq War Want a Do-Over in Gaza
In an echo of Washington's disastrous de-Baathification campaign in occupied Iraq, a new report puts special stress on "deradicalization" efforts in the Gaza Strip.
Mar 03, 2024
Several key architects of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq 21 years ago are presenting a plan for rebuilding and “de-radicalizing” the surviving population of Gaza, while ensuring that Israel retains “freedom of action” to continue operations against Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The plan, which was published as a report Thursday by the hard-line neo-conservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, or JINSA, and the Vandenberg Coalition, is calling for the creation of a private entity, the “International Trust for Gaza Relief and Reconstruction” to be led by “a group of Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates” and “supported by the United States and other nations.”
With regard to Palestinian participation, the report by the “Gaza Futures Task Force,” envisages an advisory board “composed primarily of non-Hamas Gazans from Gaza, the West Bank, and diaspora.” In addition, the Palestinian Authority, which is based on the West Bank, “should be consulted in, and publicly bless,” the creation of the Trust while itself undergoing a process of “revamping.”
In addition to granting Israel license to intervene against Hamas and Islamic Jihad within Gaza, the plan calls for security to be provided by the Trust’s leaders and “capable forces from non-regional states with close ties to Israel,” as well as “vetted Gazans.” The Trust should also be empowered to “hire private security contractors with good reputations among Western militaries” in “close coordination with Israeli security forces,” according to the report.
The task force that produced the report consists of nine members, four of whom played key roles as Middle East policymakers under former President George W. Bush and in the run-up to and aftermath of the disastrous Iraq invasion in 2003.
The group is chaired by John Hannah, who served as deputy national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2001 to 2005 and then as Cheney’s national security advisor (2005-2009), replacing Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who resigned his position after being indicted for perjury. Libby, who was later given a full pardon by former President Donald Trump, is also a member of the Gaza task force.
Another prominent member of the task force is the founder and chairman of the hawkish Vandenberg Coalition, Elliott Abrams, who served as the senior director for Near East and North African Affairs in the National Security Council under Bush from 2002 to 2009 and more recently as the Special Envoy for Venezuela and Iran under Trump. Ironically, Abrams, who also served as the NSC’s Senior Director for Democracy under Bush, played a key role in supporting an attempted armed coup by Hamas’s chief rival, Fatah, in 2007 after Hamas swept the 2006 Palestinian elections. The coup attempt sparked a brief but bloody civil war in Gaza, which eventually resulted in Hamas’ consolidation of power in the Strip.
Amb. Eric Edelman (ret.), a fourth member of the task force, served as Cheney’s principal deputy national security adviser from 2001 to 2003 and then as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the number three position at the Pentagon, under Rumsfeld and his successor, Robert Gates, from 2005 to 2009, as U.S. troops struggled to contain the mainly Sunni resistance to the U.S. occupation in Iraq.
In addition to their collaboration during the Bush administration, the four men have long been associated with strongly pro-Israel neoconservative groups, having served on the boards or in advisory positions for such organizations and think tanks as the Hudson Institute, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the ultra-hawkish Center for Security Policy, as well as the Vandenberg Coalition and JINSA. Indeed, such groups have promoted policies that have been generally aligned with those of the Likud Party led by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Thus, the report’s “key findings” prioritize as considerations: [these are quotes]
- restoring the deterrence and security needs of Israel, both for its own people and its standing as a powerful regional ally and essential component of resisting Iran’s ambitions; and
- dismantling Hamas as a military and governing force and protecting against its reconstitution through Israel’s continued freedom of action against it and against Palestinian Islamic Jihad; and by de-militarizing, de-radicalizing, and improving conditions in Gaza such that major terrorist attacks like October 7 can’t and won’t happen again…
Its proposed Trust, according to the report, should involve the United States and concerned states that accept Israel’s role in the region” and “should provide the humanitarian assistance and help to restore essential services and rebuild civil society in Gaza as intense combat and over subsequent months. Its activities should be governed by an international board composed of 3 to 7 representatives from the key states supporting the Trust, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others. At least one notable omission from the list is Qatar, which has provided tens of billions of dollars in assistance to Gaza over the last decade.
In an echo of Washington’s disastrous de-Baathification campaign in occupied Iraq, the report puts special stress on “deradicalization” efforts. “The Trust, recognizing that years of radicalization by Hamas has complicated the task of reforming and restoring Gaza, should focus on a long-term program for deradicalizing the media, schools and mosques,” according to the report which adds that “Gazans and the Gazan diaspora should play an active role in developing and implementing these plans, alongside the Trust’s Arab members who have hands-on experience in successful deradicalization efforts in their own societies.” Such efforts in Gaza, it goes on, could “serve as a model to encourage a similar program there that will be essential if a credible two-state solution is to be revived.”
The task force urges the Trust to coordinate with other states’ efforts and with those of NGOs and international organizations, including the United Nations. But, in an echo of a key Likud talking point, “it should recognize that the activities of UNRWA serve to perpetuate and deepen the Palestinian crisis.”
The report said UNRWA’s immediate assistance in providing relief may be necessary, but “plans to replace it with local Palestinian institutions or other international organizations committed to peace should be developed and implemented.”
All of these efforts should be pursued within the more general context of countering “Iran’s aggressive campaign to derail regional peace efforts, including by constraining the threat posed by Hezbollah and resuming progress toward normalizing Israel and Saudi Arabia,” according to the report.
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Elliott Abrams’ Nomination Is an Insult to Diplomacy
In a 1981 memo, written weeks before his confirmation by the Senate, Abrams stated that “human rights is at the core of our foreign policy.” His record says otherwise.
Jul 17, 2023
Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, or any other country that respects human rights do not have fond memories of Elliott Abrams. The Biden administration’s nomination of Abrams to the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy is wrong and, given his track record, is an insult to diplomacy.
Abrams gained prominence when he served as President Ronald Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. He later became Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs. And yet, Abrams has been accused of covering up atrocities carried out by the military forces of U.S.-backed Central American governments in Guatemala and El Salvador and of supporting the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. With characteristic chutzpah, he accused his critics of being “Un-American” and “unpatriotic.”
In a 1981 memo, written weeks before his confirmation by the Senate, Abrams stated that “human rights is at the core of our foreign policy.” In 1985, The Lawyers Committee, Americas Watch and Helsinki Watch charged Abrams for developing a policy that undermined the purpose of the human rights bureau in the State Department.
Abrams dismissed the gravity of the massacre, stating to a Senate committee that the reported number of deaths at El Mozote was not “credible” and that “it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas.”
What has Elliott Abrams done to receive such harsh criticism? In 1983, as Assistant Secretary of State, Abrams advocated aid to Guatemala then ruled by dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt. Abrams stated that Ríos Montt’s ruling “brought considerable progress” to human rights in that country.
Ríos Montt came to power in 1982. In 2013, he was found guilty of overseeing a mass campaign of murder and torture of Indigenous people in the country. Ríos Montt’s defense was that he had no operational control of the military forces involved in the massacre.
In El Salvador, on December 10, 1981, the Salvadoran military bombarded El Mozote, a small town in the Morazán district of El Salvador. An estimated one thousand people were massacred, with almost half of the victims being minors. After the massacre, the troops returned to their headquarters to inform their superiors of the operation’s “success.” To this day, the El Mozote Massacre marks the largest massacre to occur in Latin America.
Abrams dismissed the gravity of the massacre, stating to a Senate committee that the reported number of deaths at El Mozote was not “credible” and that “it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas.” A 1992 Human Rights Watch report criticized Abrams for downplaying the massacre.
The Salvadoran deaths squads—commanded by Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, who proclaimed himself “The Fuhrer of El Salvador”—didn’t even spare religious figures. The most noted victim was Archbishop Oscar Romero. Romero was assassinated while presiding a memorial Mass in the Carmelite Chapel of the Hospital de la Divina Providencia on March 24, 1980.
He had issued an appeal to soldiers carrying out assassinations to disobey their orders. “In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to Heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!” In 2001, Abrams said that Washington’s policy in El Salvador had been a “fabulous achievement.”
In Nicaragua, Abrams worked closely with Contra rebels who were trying to overthrow the Government. In 1982, Congress shut down funding for the Contras through what was known as the Boland Amendment. Behind the scenes, Abrams worked closely with Colonel Oliver North secretly seeking contributions to assist the Contra rebels.
In 1986, to obtain additional funds for the Contras, Abrams met with Brunei’s defense minister General Ibnu Basit bin Apong in London, to solicit a $10 million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei. Because of a clerical error in Oliver North’s office, the money was sent to the wrong Swiss bank account, and the Contras never received the funds. As an intelligence operation it was a total failure; the blunder, however, made someone extremely happy.
In 1991, Abrams admitted in his Congressional testimony that he knew more about the case than he had acknowledged, and reached a plea agreement in which he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress. Abrams was sentenced to a $50 fine, probation for two years, and 100 hours of community service. He was later pardoned by President George H. W. Bush in December 1992.
Abrams also left traces of his nefarious political involvement in Venezuela. Hugo Chávez, the democratically elected president of Venezuela, carried out a series of reforms that infuriated Washington. The U.K. Observer reported that Abrams had advance knowledge of these reforms and had approved the military coup that removed Chávez from power for 47 hours.
Abrams was also one of the intellectual architects of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. In 1998, he co-authored a letter to President Bill Clinton urging regime change in Iraq. It is now widely accepted that the invasion of Iraq was a failure. It didn’t produce any substantial economic development, improve the country’s judicial institutions, or create a better standard of living for the Iraqis.
Abrams’ track record on human rights is the antithesis of public diplomacy. Nominating him for a diplomacy post is wrong. It means that a man who has shown a tremendous disregard for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law can still be rewarded and celebrated.
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