Venezuela: How Maduro Is Slipping Through the Cracks of US Politics

President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a press conference at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, on Aug. 2, 2024. Jesus Vargas/Getty Images

Analysis

With only 73 days until Kamala Harris faces off against Donald Trump on Nov. 5, and with a lame duck president in Joe Biden, Venezuela’s embattled President Nicolás Maduro could be forgiven for thinking time is on his side.

Maduro insists he won an election on July 28—despite evidence that proves he lost it—but forcing the socialist dictator out of power does not seem to be high on the list of priorities for any U.S. politician, despite Venezuela generating waves of migrants, many of whom have their eyes set on America.

Victoria Coates, the Heritage Foundation’s Vice President for National Security and Foreign Policy, said there was a danger Venezuela would “fall through the cracks” because of the election cycle.

Maduro claimed he won 51 percent of the votes in last month’s presidential election, despite evidence produced by the opposition that showed its candidate Edmundo González had won 73 percent of the accessible votes, twice as much as the incumbent.

Three leftist Latin American leaders dubbed the “three amigos”—Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro—have suggested calling new elections in Venezuela.

Coates pointed out Biden recently said the United States wanted to see new elections in Venezuela, which contradicted the administration’s own position, as set out in a statement on Aug. 2, that “Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in the presidential election,” and the “wishes of the Venezuelan people” should be respected.

Coates told The Epoch Times: “It was really a mess, and I think that speaks more to the kind of disarray you have in American politics right now, where the president essentially endorsed what’s called the ’three amigos’ plan to do an election, and then his National Security Council came out and said, ‘No, no, no, we don’t want to do that’.”

“So ... there seems to be a lot of confusion about who’s actually making policy in the White House,” she added.

Coates said, “The vice president, who is now the candidate for the presidency, has literally no policy positions that she’s laid out, including Venezuela.

“So something like Venezuela can then really sort of fall through the cracks because they will be dealing with all sorts of flaming disasters.”

She said the situation in Venezuela was, “actually a huge deal for the United States.”

“It’s a large country in our hemisphere, one of the largest energy producers in our hemisphere. Historically it has been a friend of the United States and it could be again.

“And I think we’re really wasting a huge opportunity here to influence the situation,” added Coates.

Waves of Venezuelan illegal immigrants heading north are also a factor.

In Sept. 2023 the Biden administration announced nearly half a million Venezuelans in the United States, including many who entered illegally, would be given Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which allowed them to work and be protected from deportations.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas said it was due to “extraordinary and temporary conditions” in Venezuela.

But just how temporary is the Venezuelan crisis?

The ruling party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) was established by former army commander Hugo Chavez, who was elected president in 1998.

After he died in 2013, Maduro became president and since then, Venezuela’s economy has declined markedly, resulting in a steep devaluation of its currency, a lack of foreign currency, food shortages, and soaring levels of poverty.

But Don Batlle, an expert on Latin America and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, said Maduro had thought he would be able to fool people into thinking he had won the election.

Batlle told The Epoch Times: “He did not expect a landslide.”

After the opposition claimed victory, the Venezuelan defense minister, Vladimir Padrino, flanked by the top brass of the armed forces and the police, appeared on state television and said: “We ratify our absolute loyalty to citizen Nicolás Maduro Moros.”

Venezuela's defense minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez (C) speaks during a press conference in Caracas, Venezuela, on July 30, 2024. Stringer/AFP via Getty Images

Batlle told The Epoch Times: “The military has remained loyal. Many of the top brass in the military have a lot to lose if Maduro loses power, so it will take a lot for any of them to have a change of heart.”

“At lower levels, it’s more plausible that you could see some defections. But we haven’t seen anything yet,” he added.

In the past few weeks, the regime has promoted soldiers wounded in the protests, released a social media campaign that praised the Venezuelan National Guard, and used the slogan, “Dudar es traición [To doubt is treason.]”

‘The Role of the Military Is Going to Be Critical’

Coates said, “The role of the military is going to be critical because they are his security apparatus. And today, to date, they have stayed very much with him. But there are things the United States could do to change that.”

She suggested sanctions needed to be imposed on senior officers in the Venezuelan military as individuals.

“What you want to do is make them worry that they’re not going to be able to go to Miami, which is where they go,” added Coates.

Earlier this month the army stepped in to oust the prime minister of Bangladesh, after weeks of increasingly violent protests.

But Batlle said: “At the moment there’s no sign of that happening [in Venezuela] in the near future.”

Francois Cavard, a human rights activist who specializes in monitoring left-wing regimes in Latin America, said the only way to deal with the Maduro regime was to impose a “military blockade.”

Commercial and diplomatic sanctions have all failed and Maduro and his cronies were “laughing about them.”

“They just adjust and they co-operate within them,” Cavard added.

He said the Maduro regime needed to “physically” feel a blockade and he said, “The people within the country will then say, okay, we’re backed up by someone.”

Cavard believes Maduro has manipulated the West.

In Oct. 2023 Maduro signed the so-called Barbados agreement with the main opposition, after negotiations mediated by Norway. Caracas promised free and fair elections in Venezuela, in return for the West easing sanctions.

The United States was not party to the agreement, but the day after it was signed the State Department issued a statement welcoming it, and agreeing to ease energy sanctions on Venezuela.

Cavard said the Barbados agreement was a “humiliating” example of the United States and other nations “kneeling to the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes.”

He pointed out that as part of the deal, the United States agreed to a prisoner swap which led to the release of Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman, who was accused of helping the Maduro regime to siphon $350 million from a food program designed to alleviate poverty and hunger in Venezuela.

Cavard said Saab was given a presidential amnesty, “because the Venezuelan and Cuban regimes were going to be generous enough to give free and transparent elections in Venezuela and guarantee that the opposition will have equal opportunities. Come on!”

Negotiating With ‘Terrorists’

“There’s no way you can negotiate with terrorists,” he added.

Cavard said: “These are not some guys that are money laundering because they don’t report something they sell, or do some sort of trick with the taxes. No, no, no.”

“This is a multinational criminal machine that not only commits crimes against the ecology and the natural resources of their nations, but also violates constantly, systematically and intentionally human rights,” he added.

The Maduro regime has locked up hundreds, or thousands, of protesters since the election and there is evidence of other forms of repression.

Trade unions reported this week that more than 100 employees at Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA had been forced to resign over their political views since July 29.

PDVSA executives have reportedly ordered workers to attend rallies backing Maduro, and have supervised their social media accounts.

But Coates believes cracks may be appearing in the Maduro regime, and she says the leaking of the vote tallies to the opposition must have been an “inside job.”

So what is the stance of the Republican candidate for the White House?

In 2020 Trump famously challenged the result of the U.S. presidential elections, and Coates said he had made a couple of statements about the “fraudulent” election in Venezuela.

He also imposed tougher sanctions on Venezuela when he was in power.

Coates said, “I think he pays a lot of attention to energy markets and is also keenly aware of, you know, the immigration vulnerabilities we have.”

In the past U.S. presidents moved quickly to remove dictators, and oust bad actors, especially in the Western hemisphere.

The U.S. invaded Grenada and Panama, in 1983 and 1989 respectively, to depose undesirable regimes, while President John F. Kennedy backed the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba in 1961.

But none of those events took place in election years.

That could yet save Maduro’s skin.