[PanAm Post] Is Spain Maduro’s Ally?
Madrid’s equivocal stance vis-à-vis Caracas benefits the regime’s enduring grip on power. Has the “Axis of Evil” found an outpost in Europe?
The term “useful idiot” entered the American political jargon in the 1950s to describe Cold War leftists who bucked the foreign policy establishment in championing peace with the USSR. Maverick hawks of the McCarthyist sort ascribed them the covert motive of aiding the Soviet enemy — resorting instead to slanders such as “fifth column” or “Moscow’s puppet” — , but History would later largely exonerate them from charges of deliberate subversion. They nonetheless drove a palpable wedge in US public opinion at a delicate time for national security that no doubt played in Moscow’s hands. Whether “idiot” or not, “useful” to the Soviets they certainly were.
Rogue regimes still thrive to his day on the public’s mixed and relativist perceptions of them. For a recent example, check communist Cuba’s official print rag, Granma, praising Bernie Sanders for his kind words on Fidel Castro’s so-called “literacy programs”. Venezuela is another such rogue regime, and much like Bernie’s whataboutery vis-à-vis Cuba’s mass jailing of political dissidents, Spain’s friendly dealings of late with Nicolás Maduro’s narco-tyranny have diplomats and analysts second-guessing whether the two are working in concert or if one is simply playing to the other’s naïveté.
Continue reading the entire piece at the PanAm Post here.
