Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó are engaged in a struggle for the future of Venezuela. Their rivalry is not merely personal. It also has an ideological dimension. Maduro, heir to socialist authoritarian Hugo Chávez, draws strength and support from the world’s autocracies, including Cuba, Russia, China, and Iran. Meanwhile, the United States and some 50 other countries recognize Guaidó, a 35-year-old democrat, as the legitimate president. The duel between these various international antagonists serves as a reminder that the outcome in Venezuela will have consequences beyond that impoverished country’s borders.
Maduro has lost support across the globe, in the streets, and among some members of his regime, who transfer money and even family out of the country. He maintains a monopoly of deadly force through his control of the security forces, including the paramilitary colectivos, and through the help of his sinister allies, who assist him in controlling the flow of information into and out of Venezuela. Dislodging him requires the persistent threat of force combined with diplomatic isolation and economic constriction. That is what the Trump administration has sought to achieve in the five weeks since it recognized Guaidó.
Over the weekend, Maduro’s forces blocked the entry into Venezuela of humanitarian aid organized by Guaidó. At least two people died in clashes between the Venezuelan military and pro-democracy activists desperate to provide food and medical relief to Venezuela’s population. On Monday, in neighboring Colombia, Guaidó met Vice President Mike Pence, who said, “The day is coming soon when Venezuela’s long nightmare will end, when Venezuela will once more be free, when her people will see a new birth of freedom, in a nation reborn to libertad.” The day can’t come soon enough.
Because Maduro’s army did not buckle in the face of civilians carrying medicine for children, the contest between autocracy and freedom in Venezuela is at a standstill. The future depends on which entity frays first: Maduro’s regime or the opposition led by Guaidó. If the answer is the latter, then the United States may find itself dealing with state failure in not one but two South American countries.
The United Nations says that, since 2015, several million Venezuelans have fled their homes. One million of them have gone to Colombia, a key U.S. ally in the region whose journey from civil strife and narcotics trafficking to stability and prosperity is as heroic as it is tenuous. For Maduro to remain in power all but guarantees another mass exodus of Venezuelans — a migration that Colombia’s political and economic institutions might not be able to withstand.
The fate of liberty in Venezuela depends on the allegiances of a most illiberal institution: the military. Ryan C. Berg of the American Enterprise Institute notes,“2019 is the final year in which most of Venezuela’s generals will have received some military training from U.S. counterparts; hereafter, only Cuban-trained officers will rise to that rank.” Cuban-trained personnel are much less likely to accept U.S. offers of amnesty in exchange for abandoning Maduro.
Berg says Guaidó and the United States ought to identify and target specific generals for defection, and to guarantee that the worst criminals and human rights abusers will be subject to the rule of law. “The United States is not going to assist the opposition in defecting its way to victory,” Berg writes,“but an assiduous effort to flip generals may be destabilizing enough to prove decisive for a transition to democracy.” Maduro’s already shaky regime needs to be destabilized before it destabilizes its neighbors. The price of failure in Venezuela — measured in lives, ideals, honor, and America’s strategic interest in a stable and democratic Western Hemisphere — is one we cannot afford to pay.