(Listen here)

Yesterday I had the opportunity to discuss regional responses to the flood of migrants leaving Venezuela as well as international responses to Venezuela with Jerome McDonnell of WBEZ Worldview and Andreas Feldmann (University of Illinois, Chicago). We discussed the size of the problem, whether these migrants should be thought of as refugees, and what the region should do. We also discussed this weekend’s news that the Trump administration had met with coup plotters in the Venezuelan military three times over the past year. I suggested that the US should seek a leadership role in addressing the Venezuelan crisis, and suggested that other countries in the region needed to develop a “group of friends” (which does not mean “group of allies”) approach, including shuttle diplomacy (Listen here).