On February 25, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) made a major foreign-policy speech at George Washington University, in which she vowed that, as president of the United States, she would not meet with the “dictators” of various countries without “preconditions.”¹ “I will not be penciling in the leaders of Iran or North Korea or Venezuela or Cuba on the presidential calendar without preconditions,” Clinton said, “until we have assessed through lower level diplomacy, the motivations and intentions of these dictators.” She also stated that she would not “legitimize rogue regimes … by impulsively agreeing to presidential level talks that have no preconditions.” Evidently, Clinton considers the countries on her list, including Venezuela, “rogue regimes” ruled by “dictators.”

Numerous major news organizations carried news stories or commentary on the speech. The Wall Street Journal², the Boston Globe³, CBSnews.com⁴, CNN.com⁵, FOXnews.com,⁶ the Miami Herald⁷, USA Today⁸, Bloomberg,⁹ and Agence France-Presse¹⁰ specifically quoted Clinton’s remarks about “preconditions,” “dictators,” or “rogue regimes”— remarks widely interpreted as a rejoinder to Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) statement, in a debate in July, that if he were elected president he would meet, without preconditions, the leaders of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela (The Guardian)¹¹.

None of the news organizations commented on, nor appear to have inquired with Clinton or her staff, whether she is aware that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez won presidential elections in 1998, 2000, and 2006, survived a recall referendum in 2004, and accepted defeat in a constitutional reform referendum last year. Neither do the news organizations appear to have asked for Clinton’s definition of “dictator” or “rogue regime,” or by what definition Chávez or Venezuela would qualify.

Whether a head of government has come into and remains in power via competitive elections—as opposed to force, family succession, or other means—is a common criterion for judging if that leader is a “dictator” or not. The Carter Center (founded and led by former President Jimmy Carter) sent election monitors to all the recent Venezuelan elections mentioned above. Its reports frankly criticize some of the votes as “flawed,” but they do not report widespread violence, intimidation, or fraud. They do not conclude that Chávez’s victory in any of the presidential elections was stolen.¹² The Carter Center’s findings are publicly available and, in fact, HuffingtonPost.com reported them in a critique of Clinton’s speech focusing specifically on Venezuela.¹³ None of the mainstream news organizations, however, mentioned the Carter Center reports or any other findings on the conduct of Venezuela’s recent elections or referenda in their reporting on Clinton’s speech.

None asked whether Clinton believes (contrary to the Carter Center’s findings) that Chávez achieved his election victories by force or fraud, or whether she had other criteria for this characterization, unrelated to the validity of the polling results. This suggests that reporters and editors themselves are either unaware of the contrary facts about Venezuela (by the Carter Center and others) or share some underlying view in which Clinton’s characterizations of the country and its government are uncontroversial.

During the same speech in February, Clinton referred to Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf not as a “dictator,” but with his self-granted title of “president” (even while criticizing the Bush administration’s uncritical support for his regime). She did describe him as moving “further and further away from democracy,” a rather understated description of someone who came to power via military coup, overthrowing an elected government. She did not call Pakistan a “rogue state.” Along with her characterization of Venezuela, this suggests that Clinton was using the terms “dictator” and “rogue regime” much as U.S. leaders have in the past. That is, heads of government perceived as “friendly” to the United States (e.g., anti-Communist, supportive of U.S. foreign policy, welcoming to U.S. investors) are not tagged with these labels, regardless of how they came to power or the means they use to retain it. The terms “dictator” or “rogue regime” are reserved for those who impinge on the interests of U.S. corporations or oppose U.S. foreign policy. By those criteria, Clinton’s characterizations of Chávez and Venezuela are not at all puzzling.

The mainstream media’s failure to raise these issues, even from the narrow standpoint of effective electoral reporting, is a serious failing. Reporters should certainly care whether a major presidential candidate knows if the government of another country—especially a major actor in regional politics and a country with which the U.S. government has a recent history of conflict—is a dictatorship or not. They should inquire as to whether the refusal to have certain kinds of relations (in this case, top-level talks, at least without “preconditions”) with certain kinds of countries (here, “dictatorships”) is meant as a general foreign-policy principle. Would the U.S., under a Clinton administration, impose “preconditions” for top-level talks with any non-democratic government—including such stalwart U.S. allies as Egypt, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia? Would a Clinton administration, as a general principle, change other kinds of policy stances (e.g., military aid, or foreign aid generally) with respect to such governments? Above all, the media should demand to know whether labeling a country a “rogue state” or “dictatorship” may signal future aggression by the U.S. government.

The possibility of future U.S. aggression against Venezuela is hardly speculation. The current administration is known to have conspired with coup plotters who attempted to overthrow the Venezuelan government in 2002. Britain’s the Observer reported just days after the coup, in April 2002, that “officials at the Organization of American States and other diplomatic sources . . . assert that the US administration was not only aware the [Venezuela] coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it, presuming it to be destined for success.” Coup plotters were received repeatedly at the White House in the months preceding the coup. “The coup was discussed in some detail,” the newspaper reported, “right down to its timing and chances of success, which were deemed to be excellent.”¹⁴ None of the coverage of Clinton’s recent speech raised the question of whether a future Clinton administration would follow a similar policy of “regime change.”

Presumably, almost all summit meetings between countries require prior negotiations (e.g., on what topics will be discussed), and so involve some “preconditions.” The current invocation of “preconditions,” however, sounds above all like an assertion of U.S. superiority and entitlement: The United States lays down “preconditions” before it deigns to meet with the leaders of other countries, like a lord who will only grant an audience to a peasant who appears hat in hand. The mainstream news media, unfortunately, have done nothing to question the premise of U.S. superiority, which pervades U.S. political discourse on foreign policy, especially with respect to poor countries.

If countries that engage in aggression against their neighbors are “rogue” nations, then is the United States a rogue nation? (Its attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government being only one recent example of a long pattern of such behavior.) Isn’t it the government of Venezuela, therefore, that is entitled to demand “preconditions” from the United States government—such as a pledge that it will make no further such attempts—before its representatives will engage in talks with the U.S. president (rather than the other way around)? These are the kinds of questions that news reporters should be asking U.S. politicians and candidates for high office—but aren’t.

NOTES
1. “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Remarks on Foreign Policy at George Washington University,” http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=6196 [1]
2. “Capital Journal: Clinton, Obama and a Difference That Matters,” by Gerald F. Seib, The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2008, page A2, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120399018818292447.html [2]
3. “Clinton: Be wary of Obama on foreign affairs,” by Scott Helman, The Boston Globe, February 26, 2008, http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/02/26/clinton_be_wary_of... [3]
4. “Clinton Takes On Obama During Foreign Policy Talk,” by Fernando Suarez, CBSnews.com, February 25, 2008, http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/02/25/politics/fromtheroad/entry387466... [4]
5. “Clinton: I'm ready on foreign policy; Obama 'wavers',” CNN, February 26, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/25/clinton.foreign [5]
6. “Clinton Calls Obama Flip-Flopper on National Security,” by Aaron Bruns, FOXnews.com, February 25, 2008, http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/02/25/clinton-calls-obama-flip-flop... [6]
7. “Rivals rip Obama for Cuba remarks,” by Lesley Clark, The Miami Herald, February 26, 2008, http://www.miamiherald.com/political-currents/story/433393.html [7]
8. “Clinton Takes Shots at Rival Obama,” by Kathy Kiely, USAToday.com, http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-02-25-clinton-ob... [8]
9. “Clinton Says She Has Experience to Guide U.S. Policy (Update2),” by Christopher Stern and Julianna Goldman, Bloomberg, February 25, 2008, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=afIu5gEvxo8c [9]
10. “Clinton paints Obama as foreign policy risk,” Agence France-Presse, http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080225/pl_afp/usvote2008clintondiplomacy_080225195326>.
11. “Clinton and Obama clash after YouTube debate,” by Ewan MacAskill and Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, July 25, 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jul/25/digitalmedia.broadcasting [10]
12. The Carter Center, while characterizing the 2000 elections as “politicized” and “flawed,” stated that “we do not believe that the election irregularities would have changed the 2000 presidential results” (“Observing Political Change in Venezuela: The Bolivarian Constitution and 2000 Elections,” by Laura Neuman and Jennifer McCoy, The Carter Center, February 2001, p.22). “The official results” of the 2004 recall referendum, the Center affirmed, “reflect the will of the Venezuelan electorate as expressed on Aug. 15, 2004” (“Observing the Venezuela Presidential Recall Referendum: Comprehensive Report,” The Carter Center, February 2005, p. 14). The Center sent a team to evaluate technical aspects of the new electronic voting system used in the 2006 elections, but did not produce a “comprehensive evaluation” of the conduct of the elections (“Observing the 2006 Presidential Elections in Venezuela: Final Report of the Technical Mission,” The Carter Center, November 2007, p. 6). In its statement on the conduct of the 2007 constitutional referendum, the Center praised the Venezuelan government and electoral commission (“Carter Center Statement on Venezuela Referendum,” December 3, 2007).
13. “Hillary: ‘Ready to Lie from Day 1’ About Venezuela,” by Robert Naiman, HuffingtonPost.com, February 27, 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/hillary-ready-to-lie-fr_b_88... [11]
14. Venezuela coup linked to Bush team, by Ed Vulliamy in New York, The Observer,Sunday April 21 2002, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela [12]

Alejandro Reuss is a historian and economist, and writes extensively on contemporary Latin America and on global political and economic issues. He is a member of NACLA’s Editorial Committee.