Juan Guaidó, the self-proclaimed interim president of Venezuela returned home after a tour of Latin American nations. Most significantly, he met in Colombia, a long-term recipient of U.S. military aid, given ostensibly to fight drug lords, with Vice President Mike Pence. Most governments in the world would not tolerate someone who challenged the legitimacy of its president and then went abroad to meet with representatives of other governments that had pledged to take steps to undermine and overthrow that president. However, I expect the Maduro government will not want to give the U.S. a pretext to invade and so will not arrest Guaidó.
We should not assume there will be a rapid or clear end to the Venezuelan crisis. Both the American and Russian resolutions placed before the United Nations Security Council failed to pass. The U.S. one was vetoed by Russia and China, and the Russian one did not command a majority vote and if it had it would have been vetoed by the U.S. Sanctions are destroying what’s left of the Venezuelan economy after the crash of oil prices and Maduro’s economic mismanagement. Nevertheless, most of the Venezuelan army is standing with Maduro and street demonstrations so far are insufficiently large or violent to threaten his government. Army attacks on demonstrators are not yet bloody enough to create a level of revulsion that would lead foreign governments to intervene militarily. In any case, as long as the Venezuelan army remains committed to Maduro the costs of an invasion would be high enough to dissuade the U.S. or any Latin American governments from sending in troops.
It certainly is possible for the stalemate to continue for months or even years. After all, the U.S. has imposed sanctions of Cuba for more than half a century, and in the early years of the Castro era the U.S. sponsored exile invasions and engaged in sabotage. Cuba’s communist government remains in power to the present, and U.S. economic sanctions ended only during the Obama administration and have resumed under Trump. Venezuela could become another Cuba for the U.S., as Nicaragua once was. Politically, Republicans in the U.S. benefit from having a “socialist” country it can present as proof of the failure of leftist policies and paint as a supposed sponsor of terrorism. An invasion of Venezuela, like all other recent U.S. invasions, has the potential to end in stalemate or failure and most likely will produce a government and situation worse than what existed before the U.S. decided to intervene.
Maduro, as should be clear by now, is not a skilled politician, and so there is a chance he could miscalculate badly and arrest Guaidó. Demonstrations could escalate, as could the army’s response. Sometimes mass opposition coheres into effective revolutionary movements. There certainly is enough discontent in Venezuela to people a mass movement. As the economy gets worse, Maduro will be unable to pay his soldiers and then army loyalty could be undermined, making it far less likely troops will use violence to suppress the opposition.
All of the likely outcomes will lead to increased and sustained suffering for the Venezuelan people. If Maduro is able to remain in power, the U.S. sanctions will continue, and hunger and lack of access to medicines and other essential supplies will deepen. Whether a revolution succeeds or fails many of the revolutionaries will be killed. The US. will be able to remove Maduro and place Guaidó in power only by using force that also would lead to many deaths. We need to remember that Guaidó comes out of the extreme right wing and any government he heads would probably be brutal, not alleviate mass suffering, and very well could lead to dictatorship or the sort of sham democracy the U.S. has a long history of imposing in Latin America and elsewhere in the world.
