Category Archives: We Asked

March 5, 2019

Macedonia’s position on Venezuela: A Perspective from the Left

by Recep Haktan Ismail  

1. Has the government in your country taken an official position regarding the situation in Venezuela? If yes, what is the position? If we consider the twitter posts of the Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov as official statements of the ministry and the Government itself, then we could say that our government has an official position on the situation in Venezuela. The position is not the least bit surprising if we take into account that our country’s government is subordinated to Western imperialism and has completely lost its sovereignty in the last year. Namely, the Tweet read as follows: “In line with our E ..

March 4, 2019

Georgia’s position on Venezuela: A Perspective from the Left

by Dato Laghidze  

1.Has Georgia’s government country taken an official position regarding the situation in Venezuela?  Georgia recognized Guaido as an interim head of the government of Venezuela. The country’s official position is no surprise as it is always in a line with Washington’s and Brussels’ stance. There was only one peculiarly Georgian angle to this story. Since independence, Georgia experienced two ethnic/political conflict within its own territory as a result of which Tbilisi lost control on the breakaway regions – Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In 2008, the Russo-Georgian war escalated as Georgian mili ..

February 25, 2019

WeAsked: Left Perspectives on Venezuela from the (Semi)Periphery

by lefteast  

Venezuela has been at the center of heated left-wing polemics for some time now. As tensions rise in the border regions of the country, concerns grow over the possibility of an intervention. As with previous interventions, legitimacy is being drawn from a combination of propaganda and a display of an apparent “international” consensus against Maduro’s Government. Many countries from the European periphery have been complicit in this agenda. LeftEast approached left-wing voices from the region about the different perspectives (not) taken by their country’s governments and left groups regar ..

February 25, 2019

Turkey’s position on Venezuela- a Perspective from the Left

by Justus Links  

1.Has Turkey’s government taken an official position regarding the situation in Venezuela? If yes, what is the position? Turkey presents the peculiar case of a right-wing government with historically close geopolitical ties to the USA supporting President Maduro both verbally and commercially. Over the last year, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has developed an ever friendlier rapport with Maduro, visiting him in Caracas and receiving him in Ankara. Over the course of these visits the Turkish and Venezuelan governments concluded a deal by which Venezuela exports unrefined gold to Turkey in return for crucial food ..

February 25, 2019

Croatia’s position on Venezuela: A Perspective from the Left

by Marko Milosevic  

1.Has Croatia’s government country taken an official position regarding the situation in Venezuela? If yes, what is the position? The government of Croatia has already moved to recognize Guaido as “interim president” about a week ago, when a handful of regional right-wing governments and a handful of imperialist Western countries did so, proving yet again Croatia’s spotless record in neo-colonial bootlickery. 2. What does this  (fail to) reveal about the foreign policy/international standing of your country? Like i said, it proves first and foremost that Croatia has no “foreign poli ..

February 25, 2019

Serbia’s position on Venezuela- A Left Perspective

by Nebojsha Milikic  

1. Has Serbia’s government taken an official position regarding the situation in Venezuela? If yes, what is the position? The government is trying to keep a low profile. After a period of some sort of a constrain, Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic gave a moderate statement for Sputnik: “The least we can do is to not change our position towards Venezuela”. In fact the government is openly on Maduro’s side but tends not to insist this position because most of European countries- including Germany, which is super influential in the governing party- act as hard-liners on the issue. 2.What does this (fail to) ..

February 25, 2019

Bulgaria’s position on Venezuela – A Left Perspective

by Mariya Ivancheva  

1. Has the government in Bulgaria country taken an official position regarding the situation in Venezuela? If yes, what is the position? In Bulgaria the Venezuelan crisis produced a somewhat unexpected cleavage between the government and the opposition. I say somewhat unexpected because Roumen Radev, the President elected from the mandate of the Bulgarian Socialist Party which has deferred any position on Latin American politics, took a stance in support of President Maduro and against the intervention of the US. He said that the events were a matter of concern with risk of escalation of violence and called for ..

February 25, 2019

Israel’s position on Venezuela – A Left Perspective

by Matan Kaminer  

1.Has the government of Israel taken an official position regarding the situation in Venezuela? If yes, what is the position? The Israeli government has come out strongly in support of Juan Guaidó’s claim to the presidency of Venezuela. PM Netanyahu has strongly stressed that this position is in accordance with the stances of “the US, Canada, most Latin American countries and [some] European countries”. According to press reports, the announcement was delayed by a few days due to concern that it might lead to reprisals by the Maduro government against the Venezuelan Jewish community (which is ..

April 26, 2018

We Asked: Geopolitics & the Left, Part II

by Rossen Djagalov  

In continuing the theme of the conflict between Russia and the West, which we discussed last week, now we turn to the broader issue of a leftist perspective on geopolitics. Even though most of the articles LeftEast publishes deal in one way or another with the transnational connectivities, we have been somewhat reticent about the whole issue of geopolitics. For two reasons. In the first place, because of our method of seeking authors based in or at least with deep knowledge of concrete societies, who would share that knowledge with our readers. If so much news analysis, even on the left, starts with some geopolit ..

April 19, 2018

We Asked: Geopolitics and the Left (Part I: Russia & the West)

by Rossen Djagalov  

The latest wave of confrontation between Russia and the West—from the Skripal affair and the following diplomat expulsions and sanctions on Russia to the gassing of Douma residents most likely perpetrated by the Assad regime and the resulting US-UK-French bombing raids on Syria–rarely left the front pages of mainstream media. LeftEast has until now resisted the topic: it is not quite our fight. Not to sound nostalgic, but if the original Cold War, for all the devastation of its proxy wars and the dictatorships it bred, created conditions that sometimes favored the processes of decolonization, the victory ..