OPINION:
Venezuela is a mess of its own making. Three decades ago, Hugo Chavez promised the citizens “free stuff” through the nationalization of the cash cow oil industry. The result was predictable, and today the nation is in chaos. The leader of the National Assembly has declared the presidency of Nicolas Maduro invalid due to a rigged election and has declared himself to be president.
Some American politicians want direct military intervention by the United States to help Juan Guaido restore democracy. Military intervention would be a bad mistake for a number of reasons. First, there is a deep undercurrent of anti-American sentiment in Venezuela as well in much of South America. In Venezuela, it may be temporarily masked by anti-Maduro sentiment, but American boots on the ground would almost certainly cause it to resurface among a large part of the population.
Second, we aren’t very good at managing the aftermath of covert or overt regime change. With a few exceptions, American-instigated regime changes since the middle of the last century have had disastrous unintended long-term consequences. Much of the animus that Iranians hold for America stems from the 1952 CIA-sponsored coup that put the shah back on the Peacock Throne in Iran. Our 1963 ouster of the Diem regime in South Vietnam was followed by a period of political instability that only ended when the Communist North Vietnamese Army entered Saigon. We are still living with the unintended consequences of the ousters of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadhafi.
The exception that proves the rule is Panama, where the American overthrow of the criminal regime of Manuel Noriega was well conceived and precisely executed. The elder Bush knew how to run a coup; it was carried out against an unpopular dictator amid an economy ruined by corruption and kleptocracy. Some would argue that the same ingredients are present in Venezuela, but that would be a false analogy.
Venezuela is an order of magnitude larger with very different economic problems. In Panama, we already had a substantial U.S. military presence in the canal zone, and a new leader in the wings who proved acceptable to the population. All we really know about Mr. Guaido — the leader of the elected National Assembly who has declared himself president — is that he is a centrist politician who opposes the Maduro regime. Time will tell if he is the real deal. Venezuelans must decide.
However, we do have a positive non-military role to play in the bloodless ousting of the Maduro clique and a return to real democracy. The only pillar that remains holding up the tottering Chavez-era dictatorship is the military. Like all tinpot South American dictatorships, the senior military leadership is pampered and well-off to ensure its continuing loyalty while those in the ranks suffer with the rest of the population. Poverty in the ranks is the critical vulnerability of what remains of the regime’s strength. If the rank and file of the military can be weaned away from their senior leadership, the Maduro regime survival becomes problematical.
This can be done if — as acting president — Mr. Guaido fires the senior leaders of the military and replaces them with either retired officers or younger reform-minded ones. The United States would provide funding in hard dollars to the interim government to pay the rank and file for support in unseating the Maduro clique. This would shift the balance of power to the reformist camp. The Russian mercenaries who have recently been sent in to prop up the Maduro regime would then be placed in an untenable solution allowing a true “people power” uprising.
The conditions for American financial aid to the reformist government should be free and fair elections overseen by international observers within a year and a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission after the elections to prevent any retributions which would de-legitimize the new elected regime whomever wins.
However, there should be an indirect military component to American support in the form of a blockade/quarantine of Russian and Cuban troops and outside military supplies of any kind in order to prevent Venezuela from becoming a second Syria. From a domestic perspective, this would help President Trump dispel the notion that he is somehow beholden to Vladimir Putin.
This solution does not preclude the possibility that Maduro and company might win a free election; that is unlikely, but not beyond the realm of possibility. We can only hand the Venezuelans a shovel. Whether they dig themselves out — or further in — is their business.
• Gary Anderson lectures on Alternative Analysis at the George Washington University’s Elliott School for International Affairs.
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