25 more thoughts on Venezuela and “regime change”
On Delcy staying put, messy transitions, and the “morning after” problem
“There’s a strange happiness, but also a lot of frustration. We’re between something that won’t die and something that won’t be born. I have the feeling this could go on for years, and how does that benefit me?”
This was the quote that stood out to me from one of the many excellent pieces of reporting coming out of El Pais, the New York Times of the Spanish-speaking world. There’s top-notch reporting happening there, much is in flux, and things look quite different from last week, when I wrote my last post on Venezuelan “regime change.”
“Regime change” as typically discussed has not happened. Delcy Rodriguez, Nicolas Maduro’s #2, remains in charge. This changes some things, but I wonder how stable it is. We may see more dramatic “regime change” and US intervention soon enough.
I wanted to offer 25 more thoughts, in particular drawing on Spanish language sources that may be less available to English-speaking readers.
The big thing that I (and most of the world) got wrong was the assumption that the US would install a new leader in Venezuela or try to immediately call elections. As is, it appears that they’ve left Delcy Rodriguez in charge.
The institutionalization of Chavista rule was stronger than I realized, here’s Venezuelan academic Colette Capriles with details. I’ve long wondered how the inept Maduro was able to hold on after the sudden passing of the incredibly charismatic Hugo Chavez, this is how.
There is some wisdom in not attempting a rapid change in political leadership. Given that deep Chavista institutionalization and the mass exodus of dissenting Venezuelans, I doubt that an imposed leadership change would be sticky.
Perhaps people overestimate the deep roots of the Chavez regime. Surely you could have written a similar analysis of Pinochet’s grip on power a decade into his 16-year reign? But Chile returned relatively smoothly to democracy.
“Regress to the mean” is a good rule of thumb here, as I said in my previous post. Venezuela has been a democracy much longer than it has been a dictatorship. Even Chavez won elections, he was just bad.
For that reason, I bet that Venezuela has free and fair elections again by 2030, the year of their next Presidential election. Regardless of whether the Chavistas win that election, return to democracy is a win for the Venezuelan people.
As my sister said, perhaps the biggest favor Trump did Maria Corina Machado is not installing or endorsing her. I don’t think it was his intent, there seems to be some personal pettiness around the Nobel Peace Prize involved. But if the US puts its weight on the scale for any particular leader, that’s likely to backfire and hurt their popular support.
I wouldn’t assume the Rodriguez Regime is a stable equilibrium. What happens if the Chavista-controlled military pushes back on Delcy Rodriguez and she thus can’t fully comply with US demands? Will Trump just go “ah, well, we tried once and we didn’t want to do full regime change, oh well?” Probably not.
Venezuela liberated many political prisoners earlier this week. A nice gesture of goodwill, but what happens once they start agitating against the regime again? Maduro did not just lock them up for fun.
“Regime change” is a fuzzy concept. If Venezuela goes the route of Deng Xiaoping’s China, would that count?
What about if we actually return to democracy, but the Chavistas actually win the 2030 election (quite possible if they have an economic resurgence). I’d probably call that regime change, because we’ve moved from dictatorship to democracy.
One way of judging whether this intervention “succeeded” is going to be if there are eventually free and fair elections. But for Venezuelans I suspect the primary test will be economic. Will their hospitals have medicine again? Will they be able to afford food? Will Venezuelan emigrants (including just over the border in Colombia) return?
This is part of where Delcy Rodriguez’s track record as a more pragmatic leader comes into play. It is funny that Venezuela is so deeply in the hole and screwed up that the massive improvement is that she’s hired economic consultants from Rafael Correa’s Ecuadorian government. He’s not exactly the gold standard for responsible management in the region, but in Venezuela “not totally insane management” would be a regime change of its own.
Oil is more of a factor in Trump’s decision than it should have been but also less important than much coverage (and left-wing horror) has suggested. As many have noted, the US is a massive oil exporter now and does not need Venezuela’s low-quality oil.
There’s magical economic thinking going on here as Trump tries to personally pressure US and Spanish oil companies to invest. But they’re right to be skittish and won’t be bullied into investing tens of billions of dollars, even if they say what Trump wants to hear right now. Exxon is still calling Venezuela “uninvestable.”
Zooming out and considering this in terms of the Trump-Monroe Doctrine, there may eventually be some payoff for the US in having more allies who can flood the world with cheap energy when we want them to. That’s supposed to be the deal with Saudi Arabia, but then they just didn’t do it when the Ukraine War broke out because of Biden/Kashoggi beefing.
There’s been much talk of the US exerting more influence in Latin America, perhaps not enough talk about this as a shot in Cold War 2.0 with China. China has equally imperialist goals in the region and has been Venezuela’s “biggest creditor, their top trading partner, their main supplier of weapons, one of their key diplomatic allies—and, of course, the number one market for their oil and gas.”
I share concerns about violating sovereignty, but I do wish that left-wing critics of US interventionism would apply a similar degree of scrutiny to Chinese influence in the region. There’s been a bit of this analysis around the Belt and Road initiative, but not enough.
As for the impacts on the rest of Latin America, Nicaragua is a good example of the complex dynamics at play. For those who don’t know, it’s one of the most authoritarian countries in Latin America, run by Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo. It’s a very personalistic dictatorship, more about entrenching power within that family than in having a durable political party running the country.
Ortega and Murillo have been defending Maduro and cracking down on anyone who says otherwise. They fear both street protests and Delcy Rodriguez-esque traitors in their midst who might do a similar deal with Trump. This is the kind of fear that Marco Rubio wants to strike into the hearts of US opponents like Nicaragua.
But Ortega and Murillo have also been gifted a great way to “rally ‘round the flag.” Because the people of Nicaragua don’t like Maduro, but they definitely don’t like US intervention (remember Iran-Contra?). This is the “Cuba embargo” paradox: US interventionism can backfire.
Cowen’s model of “Trump just does masculine stuff” seems to still be a good predictor of his actions. Jonathan Blitzer told Ezra Klein that they internally talk about wanting to take “kinetic” actions, which strikes me as the same projection of masculine vigor. That kind of decision-making is not exactly a recipe for strategic, considered action with a long-term view.
There’s lots of naivete and hand waving going on, still. As Thomas Friedman asked of Israel with Gaza, what’s the “morning after plan?”
“We’ll just be involved with day-to-day affairs in Venezuela.” But as I said above, what happens if Chavista militias rebel, the military doesn’t want to stop them, and they oust Rodriguez? Are we prepared for a protracted ground war and military occupation? That probably wouldn’t feel as fun and kinetic.
I leave you with a profound irony, the kind that only geopolitics can provide. As Latin America freaks out about the first outbreak of open war between states in a very long time, we can recall that the most recent person to threaten this was… Nicolas Maduro. He planned to invade Guyana in 2023. Why? For oil.
Regarding point No. 4 where it is mentioned that "Chile returned relatively smoothly to democracy", note that such return to democracy had been sketched into the Chilean constitution eight years earlier by Pinochet himself. Democracy returned to Chile under Pinochet's plan, not because of political opposition or other political pressure.
What confuses some people is that the plan contemplated a referendum for Chileans to decide, at the end of the military regime, whether the government's candidate (which ended up being Pinochet since he decided to run himself) would be the first president to govern under full democratic rules. Pinochet lost that vote and regular elections were held afterwards. The military regime was going to end anyways; the vote was to decide only who would run as democratic president and not to extend the military regime. The military had already created all of the institutions for the government to operate properly once full democracy was restored. This is the political system that still operates in Chile, with some reforms.
Therefore, if the Chavistas have not prepared Venezuelan institutions to operate in a full democracy, it may be even more difficult for Venezuela to return to democracy, especially without the cooperation of the military.
Very clever of you to save the Guyana observation for last! Besides the invasion aspect, both Maduro's rhetoric then and Trump's now contain the "get back what was taken from us" element.