THE VENEZUELA GAMES
Sleepwalking through another round of democratic mockery won't help Biden get re-elected
The regime of President Nicolas Maduro continues to take all available steps to ensure the July 28 presidential election in Venezuela will be rigged in its favor. Its rubber-stamp judiciary banned popular opposition leader Marina Corina Machado from running and barred her duly nominated proxy, Carina Yoris, from registering her candidacy. Much of the democratic opposition’s top advisors and campaign organizers have been jailed, its candidates blocked from media appearances and its supporters beaten and harassed.
Edmundo González Urrutia, the only opposition figure to successfully register his candidacy, has Machado’s full backing as he struggles to campaign around the country. But despite the obstacles in his path, all reliable indications show that González would defeat Maduro in a free and fair election, which seems increasingly unlikely to take place. The regime appears unfazed and relatively free of significant international pressure, and it is unclear what consequences Maduro will face afterwards from the United States or Venezuela’s powerful democratic neighbors Brazil and Colombia.
What is underneath?
Presidential elections in Venezuela have become a regular ritual of mocking any semblance of democratic values or human rights, and each exercise has become darker and more destructive for the country and the region. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country under Maduro’s socialist dictatorship, adding a frantic layer to the region’s already serious migration crisis. Most refugees have spread out through Latin America and strained the ability of Venezuela’s neighbors to cope. But much of the region’s democratic governments continue to embrace Maduro’s legitimacy, welcoming him to diplomatic red carpet events and joining him for grinning photo opportunities.
The U.S. policy on Venezuela has become inscrutable. The Biden Administration has consistently advocated a return to full democracy but has made no progress in securing it nor built up any meaningful leverage to exert.
The U.S. played a supportive role in the international mediation between Maduro and the opposition that led to the October 2023 agreement in Barbados on holding the presidential election this year. Maduro agreed to a set of basic guarantees for a relatively fair election in exchange for the U.S. lifting some sanctions as an “incentive” for him to keep his word. There was also an exchange of prisoners where the U.S. recovered wrongfully detained Americans and one fugitive from justice in exchange for the biggest criminal catch for U.S. law enforcement from the regime’s inner circle, Maduro’s chief global money launderer Alex Saab.
Of course, Maduro didn’t keep his word. The governments of Brazil and Colombia expressed “concern” over Maduro breaking the Barbados accord, which was met by a quick and ferocious response from Venezuelan state media. That seemed to do the trick, as there hasn’t been more than a peep from Bogotá or Brasilia since.
In April, a group of senior administration officials held an embargoed background press call with reporters to announce that the temporary lifting of U.S. sanctions was expiring and would not be renewed. The messaging was low key and monotonous.
The history of U.S. sanctions policy in Venezuela has been wrought by failed outcomes. The late President Hugo Chavez had the personal popularity to win his last election in 2012 but it was plagued by heavy handed state interventions around the margins, particularly in the strangling of independent media. The Obama Administration tried to use sanctions to pressure Caracas to relent on its authoritarian descent, but to no avail. Chavez’s subsequent death left the regime in the hands of the inept and unpopular Maduro, who unabashedly rigged the 2018 election in his own favor.
In response, the Trump Administration organized a global diplomatic effort to strip the regime of its international legitimacy, positing Maduro as an unconstitutional “usurper” under Venezuelan law. Washington went on to recognize Juan Guaidó, president of the democratically elected National Assembly, as the legitimate president, and was joined by the European Union, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and much of the democratic world. In short, the U.S. drew a diplomatic red line and for a while it held.
The U.S. applied a policy of “maximum pressure” through escalating sanctions against individual regime figures and Venezuela’s oil sector that eventually amounted to a blockade. It was designed to tempt the military or rivals within the regime to overthrow Maduro in favor of a democratic transition process. In April 2019, an attempted coup was launched with popular support in the streets, but quickly failed as the military decided to stick with Maduro and carry out a brutal crackdown.
Washington stepped up its pressure by unsealing criminal indictments against Maduro and leading regime figures. In March 2020, the U.S. published a framework for democratic transition that publicly spelled out the roadmap for an end to the pressure. In private, Trump Administration officials were talking through back channels with figures in and around the regime to yield results. But Maduro tightened his grip and waited out Guaidó’s legislative term in office, after which recognition of his interim presidency quietly fell apart around the world. Guaidó was then expelled from Venezuela last year and fled to the United States.
Our take:
President Biden came into office promising better outcomes, but has not articulated a robust policy for achieving them. This has been described by some analysts in Washington as an embrace of “realism” that is slowly being shared by some Republicans.
This approach is described as “balancing U.S. interests with the need for a democratic solution” to the political crisis in Venezuela. In short, it is about prioritizing domestic U.S. political concerns over gas prices and inflation while paying lip service to the aspiration for democracy someday down the road. By reading all the public messaging and actions by the U.S. since Biden took office, this seems to be an accurate take on his Venezuela policy.
It’s an extraordinary turn of events for Biden. No other U.S. president in living memory came to office with more knowledge and experience on the history and details of the Venezuelan conflict and all of its regional implications, as well as the roles being played by Russia, China, the drug cartels and the terrorist factions still running through the region’s jungles, towns and cities. If there is some brilliant plan or strategy in the Oval Office to solve the problem, no one in Washington seems to know much about it. Nor has Biden apparently leaned on his decades of close relationships in Colombia and Brazil to demonstrate the kind of crisp allied coordination seamlessly achieved by his more inexperienced and decidedly undiplomatic predecessor.
Furthermore, if domestic concerns are the real driver of Venezuela policy, why hasn’t Biden looked more closely at his polling among Latino voters? They are going soft on him, and not because he doesn’t attempt his slogans in Spanish at rallies or in ads. It is because they don’t know where he stands on the issues that they care about.
Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were able to win 40% of Latino votes and cut into or overcome Democratic margins in key states. This was in large part because they stood firm on freedom and democracy in the region and around the world, and took visible steps to defend it. Latino voters didn’t need to go into the weeds of foreign policy to know where they stood because the messaging was clear and consistent. It added a baseline of trustworthiness to their broader campaign messaging. Venezuela is the biggest flashpoint in the region in this election cycle and the messaging from Biden couldn’t be less clear.
And then there are the national security and foreign policy consequences of inertia on Venezuela. The Maduro regime is the region’s most enthusiastic ally of Russia, China and Iran, and eagerly seeks to promote their tactical policy of destabilizing the hemisphere as a way to thwart U.S. interests. Surrendering Venezuela to this adversarial gambit is dangerous enough, but we are sending a message that it is working and our enemies should hunt for new territory to conquer in our region.
In the end, it behooves the White House to take a step back and see that sleepwalking through the Venezuela crisis is not going to benefit the president’s re-election or the interests of the United States. A magic solution is outside of anyone’s grasp right now, but half the battle is putting up a real diplomatic and political fight. The ripple effects of our inaction will be wide and destructive far beyond Venezuela’s borders.