Guns, Migrants, Oil: Is it Possible to Oust Venezuela’s Regime?

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BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The spectrum of people gathered in a small, sparsely decorated building in this booming South American capital helps tell the story of the escalating crisis in the country next door.

They are migrants from Venezuela, where a dictator’s economically incompetent and politically repressive rule has led millions to flee to Colombia and other countries. As they waited in the Bogotá offices of Juntos se Puede, a foundation that helps such migrants, one woman told me she’d left Venezuela six years ago, is scraping by in Colombia as a house cleaner, and wishes she could go home. Another woman has found work as a nurse in this country, but she hopes to join her brother in the United States. Still another, a political activist, was fleeing a Venezuelan regime crackdown that has followed the July 28 presidential election. He said the regime sent drones to surveil his house.

The Venezuelan opposition insists it handily won that election and publicly posted scanned voting tally sheets as evidence. The U.S. and several Latin American countries are siding with the opposition — or at least refusing to recognize a winner. But Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro won’t concede.

The next few months are crucial, current and former government officials, analysts and activists told me. Venezuela’s presidential inauguration is set for January. If Maduro takes the oath of office, he likely creates another barrier to his removal.

In my discussions, I got the sense that some Venezuelans opposed to Maduro worry other countries will ultimately appease him or simply lose interest in ousting him. “The international community plays a very important role and needs to stay involved,” the political activist stressed.

But the regime in Caracas also happens to encapsulate an astonishing number of the obstacles facing the U.S. and other nations who say they seek a freer world — making it unusually hard to dislodge.

Maduro’s government isn’t merely determined to keep power for power’s sake; it is, prosecutors allege, a criminal gang that is deeply intertwined with the drug trade. It has found refuge in the arms of U.S. adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran, an emerging bloc that can help it evade sanctions. It has a substantial amount of oil, giving it leverage in talks with world powers. It is willing to use violence against protesters and detain foreigners. Reports indicate it also engages in transnational repression by targeting dissidents outside Venezuela.

Further instability in Venezuela also could worsen a migration crisis in neighboring countries and along the U.S.-Mexico border — a prospect that terrifies policymakers in Washington, Bogotá and other capitals.

Few issues are as combustible in this year’s U.S. presidential election than migration and border security. Surveys suggest millions of Venezuelans are considering leaving even before Maduro’s planned inauguration. Maduro could use the issue as leverage, such as to demand sanctions relief.

Like many modern dictatorships, the regime in Caracas cares little about international condemnation. So it doesn’t feel obliged to listen to an opposition that, so far, has bucked trends by being remarkably united. If anything, the regime appears to believe that it can outlast the forces against it — that the opposition will splinter, ordinary Venezuelans will grow too scared and tired, and that the politicians of the democracies aligned against it will be distracted by other interests, or may not even be in office that long.

The opposition and its international backers are limited in the tools they have to take on Maduro and his aides. Military intervention is not realistic, but tightening sanctions, loosening sanctions, export controls, diplomacy, criminal indictments, multi-million bounties on their heads, popular protests and hard-core proof of the regime’s election loss clearly haven’t been enough.

Still, if the Venezuelan opposition, the United States and other partners can somehow come up with the right formula to push this regime out of power, the signal to dictators elsewhere could be profound.

The opposition, led by María Corina Machado, is getting high marks from U.S. and Latin American officials and others for its work documenting the election results, gathering international support and staying unified. Even leftist leaders in places such as Colombia, Brazil and Mexico — who have led faltering efforts to negotiate with Maduro post-election — cannot deny the regime lost, despite their sympathy for the Venezuelan regime’s socialist roots.

But it isn’t clear the opposition has a workable plan for what comes next. And resistance gets harder as Maduro heightens his repression; the regime recently issued an arrest warrant for the opposition’s candidate for the presidency, Edmundo González Urrutia. This weekend, González sought asylum from Spain.

A U.S. official familiar with the Venezuela file told me that the opposition’s efforts so far may not be enough to get Maduro to negotiate an exit or a power-sharing deal. One key reason: The leaders of Venezuela’s security forces have been unwilling to abandon Maduro. He and his top aides are more afraid of losing power and facing accountability, so they lack an incentive to negotiate.

“We’re headed a little bit into a stalemate here,” the official said.

I was unable to directly talk to Machado, who has been in hiding. But in a virtual news conference Thursday, she denied any impasse. “I think things are moving, and some are not obvious, but they are,” she said. “And I think the international community is increasing, slowly, the pressure, and I do think it has to be done more significantly.”

I sent emails to Venezuelan government offices but did not hear back. Many of the people I spoke to were granted anonymity to talk frankly about a sensitive topic that could put them and their loved ones in danger. The White House didn’t deny the basics of my reporting in this column when I sought comment.

“They’re hoping that something shakes loose, that the regime comes undone or that there’s some kind of opening,” said Berg, who’s with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They’re hoping that Maduro will at least enter some kind of channel with the U.S., … some kind of diplomatic channel.”

Officially, the Biden administration has taken a back seat to Brazil, Mexico and Colombia’s efforts to mediate the faceoff in Caracas. But those efforts have faltered, especially after Brazil floated the idea of holding another election, which the opposition and the regime both rejected.

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the administration is “considering a range of options to demonstrate to Maduro and his representatives that their misgovernance in Venezuela has consequences.”

Others provided me with details. The White House is evaluating whether to reestablish a framework for direct negotiations with Maduro, the U.S. official said. (A Latin American official familiar with the discussions said the U.S. was further along than merely evaluating.) But so far Washington has not been able to get the strongman to agree on what that would look like, according to both officials.

It is weighing a still-nascent plan that would involve lifting sanctions (it wasn’t clear which ones or how many) if Maduro quits, the U.S. official and the Latin American official said. And there are, according to reports, other potential sanctions scenarios in the works. The U.S. also is making other moves: This month, it seized a plane said to have been intended for use by Maduro.

People I talked to had plenty of suggestions for what the opposition and the international community should do next:

More, and tighter sanctions to act as a stick; fewer, and looser, sanctions to act as a carrot; pull the visas of all the regime’s scions living overseas; unseal all the criminal indictments against Maduro and his associates; raise the bounties on their heads or impose new ones; further restrict Venezuela’s oil trade; be even more tough in rhetoric.

One migrant, the woman who works as a house cleaner, pointed to her Christian faith in saying the next step may have to be “the decision of God.”

I didn’t hear anything particularly creative, though I’ll leave open the possibility of covert efforts I’m not privy to.

Still, Venezuela’s autocratic turn is not a new phenomenon. The United States has been ramping up the pressure on the regime in Caracas for years — and sometimes ramping it down when it thought it saw an opening.

I do wonder if Washington was too slow in recognizing the reality of Maduro. Maybe it should have come down much harder on him much earlier. After all, only a naive optimist would have thought that Maduro would leave this time — publicly available evidence be damned.

A migration crisis may affect the rhetoric in the U.S. presidential campaign, but it’s uncertain how either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump would approach the Venezuela issue if they win the election.

While Harris has indicated she’s following the Joe Biden path on Venezuela, she may look for a new road once in the Oval Office. Trump led a multinational push to oust Maduro during his presidency, but it fizzled out. If granted another term, he might change tactics.

One phrase that arose in more than one conversation was “strategic patience.” The idea is, essentially, that it could take years to oust the regime.

On one level, I applaud the honesty of the people issuing this warning. Too many exiles from other autocracies (Iran and Cuba come to mind) have been repeatedly told that those regimes are just one nudge away from falling, yet decades later they remain exiles.

On another level, if you’re talking about “strategic patience,” you’re basically admitting you have no answers. You’re admitting that you’re hoping for a stroke of luck or divine intervention.

You’re also telling people in Venezuela that they have nothing good to look forward to anytime soon. So why should they stay?

Eric Bazail-Eimil contributed to this report.

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