In the run-up to the election, there was palpable hope both in Venezuela and abroad that this could finally be it for the brutal dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, who has misruled the once-wealthy and once-democratic country since taking over in 2013 from the left-wing populist Hugo Chávez. Although the chief opposition leader — María Corina Machado — was not allowed to run, the opposition had consolidated around a formerly obscure diplomat named Edmundo González. The opposition parties braved harassment from the government and violence to urge a vote against Maduro.
On election day itself, millions of Venezuelans flocked to the polls in their eagerness for a better, freer life. Exit polls showed that González won a resounding victory, but Maduro’s election authority decreed otherwise, claiming that the president had won 51 percent to Gonzalez’s 44 percent. The Venezuelan electoral system actually has two ways of counting votes: a computer system and paper ballots. That the regime refuses to release the paper ballots is all but a confession of fraud.
William LeoGrande, a specialist in Latin American politics at American University, suggested to me that things had not exactly worked out as planned for the regime. “The Maduro strategy was to boost his international legitimacy by having a more or less credible election that he would win. U.S. sanctions would then be lifted, and the economy would begin to recover,” LeoGrande told me. “But when the regime finally had to confront the possibility of either surrendering international legitimacy or surrendering power, they decided to surrender international legitimacy.”
The question is, where does this leave the United States, which has long been agitating — with scant success — for Maduro’s ouster?
The Trump administration imposed some of the most draconian sanctions in history against Venezuela. Those sanctions, combined with Maduro’s egregious corruption and mismanagement of the economy, have contributed to an economic free fall twice as precipitous as the one the United States experienced during the Great Depression. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans — roughly one-third of the population — have fled the country, with many coming to the United States. More are likely to leave now. But no amount of economic immiseration has dislodged Maduro.
In 2019, the Trump administration declared National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó the rightful president of Venezuela. Other nations followed suit. With U.S. support, Guaidó tried to foment a popular uprising, including a call for the Venezuelan military to abandon Maduro. That too failed, reportedly leading even President Donald Trump to question his own Venezuela policy.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration continued to ratchet up the pressure, issuing more sanctions until Trump’s very last day in office. In 2020, the U.S. Justice Department also indicted Maduro, along with other senior Venezuelan leaders, on charges of narcoterrorism, and the State Department offered a $15 million bounty for information leading to his arrest. Yet, unlike former Panamanian president Manuel Noriega, Maduro has so far escaped a U.S. courtroom — and a prison cell.
The Biden administration tried a different approach: It offered to ease sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector if Maduro would allow free and fair elections monitored by the international community. Maduro failed to fulfill his promises, and U.S. sanctions were reimposed in April. But as late as Friday, senior administration officials, speaking with reporters in a background briefing, were still taking a premature victory lap, claiming that “very few people would have expected us to get this far.” By Sunday night, with Maduro having claimed an illegitimate victory, it was evident that the administration had not gotten nearly as far as hoped.
It will now be up to Machado and other opposition leaders to figure out how to respond to the government’s blatant election fraud. From the “people power” revolution in the Philippines in 1986 to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, stolen elections have often been the catalyst for popular uprisings. Machado must now decide whether to call the people into the streets. If she does so, the success or failure of the popular revolt will turn on the attitude of the military: Will it fire on its own people, as it has in the past? Or will it finally tire of Maduro’s gross mismanagement?
There is, alas, little reason to expect the generals, who also benefit from the current system, to suddenly embrace democracy. But Bill Brownfield, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, told me that the United States cannot give up hope, no matter how many times it has failed to oust Maduro. “The international community now must stand squarely behind the democratic movement and Machado,” he told me in an email. “Just as it did with Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa, and Cory Aquino.” He added: “We certainly cannot recognize the election of Maduro and return to business as usual.”
Brownfield is right, but I don’t have much hope that his strategy will pay off anytime soon. Granted, González, unlike Guaidó, was almost certainly elected president, so it makes more sense to recognize him as Venezuela’s rightful leader. But Maduro can count on support from the usual coalition of antidemocratic, anti-American states led by China and Russia. Indeed, while most European and Latin American nations called out his transparent election fraud, Russia, China, Iran and Cuba congratulated Maduro on his “victory.”
The dismal reality is that we are stuck with a failed policy in Venezuela. But no one, including me, has an idea for a better one. The United States certainly cannot relax sanctions now; doing so would simply reward Maduro’s power grab.
Venezuela has joined a long list of rogue nations, including Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, Syria and Cuba, that have withstood decades of U.S. pressure. The long record of U.S. futility in Venezuela is not an indictment of either Republican or Democratic administrations. Rather, it is an unwelcome reminder of the limitations of American power. Some problems simply don’t have an obvious solution — at least not one made in America.
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