Ten days separate two inaugurations that will determine the course of relations between Venezuela and the United States for the next four years. On January 10, Nicolás Maduro will be sworn in in Caracas, barring a major surprise and despite opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia’s statements that he will be in Venezuela for his own inauguration and to take the reins of government. On January 20, Donald Trump will once again assume the presidency in Washington.
Questions remain as to what may happen from then on in the relationship between Venezuela’s Chavista leaders and the American president. The real estate magnate opted in his first term for a policy of “extreme pressure” toward the Maduro government and recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president. That position, also adopted by the European Union, Canada and other allied countries, did not change things: Maduro continued to lead Venezuela, but the increase in sanctions only succeeded in impoverishing the oil-producing nation and increasing migration to the U.S. and other countries.
During Maduro’s presidency, nearly eight million Venezuelans have left their country due to economic mismanagement and international sanctions. Of these, nearly 700,000 have ended up in the United States. Polls suggest that the flow of migrants could continue if the Chavista regime remains in power.
During Joe Biden’s term, the White House has opted for a more flexible stance. It partially lifted some sanctions and allowed U.S. companies such as Chevron to market Venezuelan oil, in exchange for Maduro’s commitment to allow free elections. The logic behind these steps, for the United States, was to try to stem the flood of migrants crossing illegally from Venezuela. But the regime did not keep its word and declared itself the winner of the July 28 election without ever having presented the ballot tallies to certify it. The minutes presented by the opposition confirm that Edmundo González was the winner.
It is now doubtful that Trump, upset by his experience with Guaidó, will want to take the same step and recognize Edmundo González as the legitimate president. The Biden administration has recognized the former diplomat as the “president-elect.” This month, Washington imposed a new round of sanctions against 21 figures of the regime, including the daughter of the Minister of Justice and one of the most powerful men in Chavismo, Diosdado Cabello. In total, 180 Chavista leaders have been sanctioned by the United States.
A first clue as to what attitude Trump plans to adopt comes from his nomination for Secretary of State. Florida Senator Marco Rubio is a hardline hawk towards Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. So is his future National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz. “This seems to indicate a return to the kind of policy that Trump imposed in 2019, a policy of maximum pressure. No concessions to Maduro, basically a policy of regime change,” says Phil Gunson of the Crisis Group, an organization dedicated to conflict resolution, in a telephone conversation.
But five years ago, that position did not work. “By the end of his first term, once it became clear that it was a difficult issue, Trump had lost interest in Venezuela” and his team ended up applying a policy quite similar to that practiced by the Biden administration, recalls the expert. “And that may be part of the answer. It is possible that Trump is no longer so interested in Venezuela, and his intention is to leave not only Venezuela, but all of Latin America in general, in the hands of conservatives, with the possible exception of Mexico,” notes Gunson.
The start of the Trumpist White House policy, in its second version, is likely to be similar to that of Trump 1.0. A tough policy, or at least one that appears to be, of maximum pressure. “They will probably make a lot of noise about Maduro and his regime,” believes the analyst. But as time goes by, it is possible that this saber-rattling will transform into “a more pragmatic stance.”
“Trump sees himself as a deal-maker, and there is one obvious deal that can be negotiated: oil for immigration,” he says. It is a pact that would be in line with the dominant current of thought among the political class in Washington, which is particularly concerned about the need to control illegal immigration.
The deal is in the interest of both sides. The United States needs to secure cheap oil, and take it away from its geopolitical antagonists — China, in particular. Caracas needs the foreign currency it would get from selling it. And if it accepts repatriation flights from the United States, it calculates that it will help resolve one of the Trump administration’s top priorities.
In the long term, Gunson says, “regime change is not a realistic option. Some kind of negotiated agreement is needed. Right now it is very difficult, because Maduro has closed all channels of communication with the opposition, but in the medium to long term, negotiation is inevitable. And besides, Venezuela has been in a humanitarian emergency for 10 years, and it is simply wrong to continue adding sanctions and making life more difficult for ordinary Venezuelans who do not agree with the system.”
The Venezuelan opposition, especially the sector surrounding María Corina Machado, received the appointment of Rubio with enthusiasm, considering him an ally. Unlike what happened with Guaidó, Machado, through Edmundo González, has won the elections by a very wide margin, according to all indications. This gives the opposition leader a legitimacy that until now nobody among anti-Chavista supporters has had since Hugo Chávez’s emergence in 1999. Outwardly, it has been said very firmly that Edmundo will take office on January 10, but right now there is no mechanism that can make that a reality.
Luis Vicente León, a political analyst, is convinced that January 10 will be “a milestone that will generate a lot of noise,” although he does not feel that Maduro is “in real danger” of not being sworn in. The issue, León believes, lies in what kind of Maduro will govern from now on. “We could find ourselves with an absolutely radicalized Maduro who will do whatever it takes to retain power, including the total pulverization of his adversaries (Nicaraguanization or Iranization as two possible models), or one who pivots around some more moderate strategy, who waits for the U.S. to tone down later because it will not really take the measures to eliminate licenses, leaving open some avenues for future negotiation.”
There is a certain paranoia within Chavismo that a U.S. invasion could take place. That scenario, however, seems remote after the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the time for armed incursions in Latin America seems to be a thing of the past. What the government fears is that outside influence will convince a part of the Bolivarian Armed Forces that it is they who must guarantee the country’s democracy and overthrow Maduro. Historically, the Venezuelan military has been constitutionalist and has enforced the results of elections. However, the high command remains loyal to the current president, some of them out of conviction, others out of strategy. Chavismo has carried out internal purges in the barracks against uniformed personnel who could be considered disaffected.
Maduro has repeatedly denounced plans to assassinate him, driven by the United States and even Spain. The late Hugo Chávez died thinking that José María Aznar, the Spanish prime minister at the time, had tried to kill him. Like Fidel Castro, Chávez was obsessed with being poisoned, a fear that Maduro inherited. The current president has claimed more than 20 plots against him. It is not easy to determine if any of them holds any truth. In any case, these alleged conspiracies have been used as an excuse to arrest dozens of people on each occasion.
For Víctor Álvarez, an expert in economics and politics, a former minister under Chávez and a great connoisseur of the Chavista universe, there is no chance that Edmundo González will show up in Venezuela, as he has announced. Álvarez says that the “most fanatic and extremist” opposition members see the fall of Bashar al-Assad as a mirror, wrongly. Will the opposition parties that supported González challenge the repressive bodies of the state and call for the streets to be filled with protestors to prevent Maduro from starting a new presidential term? He answers his own question: “Let us not fool ourselves, an opposition leadership without the capacity for mobilization does not have the means to stir up national discontent to exert internal pressure.”
Álvarez tackles an uncomfortable topic: that of foreign military intervention. “Many dream of a surgical intervention by Erik Prince, founder of the mercenary company Blackwater. Political change will never come from outside but from within. Calling for foreign or mercenary intervention is a passport to violence that would end up plunging the country into ungovernability and violent confrontation, worsening a massive migration crisis that neither neighboring countries nor the U.S. want.”
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Publish date : 2024-12-16 23:49:00
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