Political Report #1466 The April 2002 Coup Through Time

 by LAP Editor, Steve Ellner

Published in NACLA: Report on the Americas. Vol. 54, no. 1

On April 14, 2002, the folly of the abortive coup staged against the government of Hugo Chávez three days earlier was clear, but the depth of its long-lasting impact was not. The April 11 coup was a milestone event that shaped politics in Venezuela and the region for the next two decades. Most important, the coup and the events that immediately followed it set off polarization marked by the radicalization of the government and the opposition, which impacted not only national politics but also government policy on all fronts.

The year 2002 was thus a turning point in Venezuelan politics. How did the nation reach such a defining moment? In the initial period after gaining power, the Chavista movement, like Fidel Castro's Movimiento 26 de Julio in 1959, did not stand for thoroughgoing socioeconomic transformation, even though both movements originated in attempts to gain power using force. Castro in 1959 denied being a leftist, and Chávez embraced the “third way” doctrine that stood between pro-capitalist and pro-socialist.

In both cases, however, powerful adversaries viewed the movements as existential threats. In Cuba’s case, the Eisenhower administration took steps to overthrow Castro shortly after he came to power. And in Venezuela, the nation’s two main parties, Acción Democrática (AD) and Copei, joined forces in an eleventh-hour attempt to avoid Chávez’s triumph at the polls in 1998, while the business organization Fedecámaras staunchly opposed his candidacy. Shortly after his election, the Catholic hierarchy claimed that Chávez had earned the wrath of God. By 2002, Washington officials, who for the most part initially refrained from criticizing his government, questioned his democratic credentials and then, in effect, supported the April coup. These developments intensified the polarization that has plagued Venezuela ever since.

In our article “The Remarkable Fall and Rise of Hugo Chávez,” published in the July/August 2002 issue of the NACLA Report, NACLA director Fred Rosen and I showed how the radicalization of the opposition unfolded the day after the April 11 coup. The article defined two contrasting positions within the opposition that, despite changing political terrain, have continued to this day: a hardline, right-wing strategy that on April 12 decreed the elimination of democratic institutions, and a centrist strategy of working through existing institutions. The latter favored reaching an agreement with former Interior Minister Luis Miquilena and other disenchanted Chavistas to achieve regime change through the legislative branch and in a way that “broad sectors of the population would be represented,” we wrote.

We pointed out that the hardliners, guided by “a well-conceived plan” that gave them an advantage over the centrists, seized control of the government in what we called “nothing less than a coup within the coup.” Economic policy lay just beneath the surface. We noted that “as a member of the export-oriented business class, [provisional president Pedro Carmona] and his followers very likely wanted once and for all to remove all the obstacles to full-fledged, neoliberal formulas.” To do so required “a clean and violent break with the populist past.” In other words, to achieve pressing objectives, democratic principles had to be compromised.

Carmona was set on implementing a radical neoliberal program, sometimes referred to as the “shock treatment,” consisting of harsh and swiftly implemented austerity measures. He staffed his cabinet with members of the elite while excluding labor leaders of the AD-controlled Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV), even though the CTV had made April 11 happen in the first place and its president, Carlos Ortega, was originally slated to head the provisional government, as Gregory Wilpert later noted in a piece for Venezuelaanalysis.

The absence of leaders of AD, the nation’s largest party, which had wholeheartedly supported the mobilizations against Chávez, was not by accident. Throughout the 1990s, a major faction within AD had opposed the shock treatment brand of neoliberalism, a position that partly explains the party’s decision to expel neoliberal ex-president Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1993.

The neoliberal radicals, however, attributed Venezuela’s backwardness to the allegedly left-wing populist tradition associated with AD, which they blamed for Chávez’s rise to power in 1998. On the eve of Chávez’s election, one prominent academic supporter of neoliberal reform, Aníbal Romero, ominously wrote in Latin American Research Review: “Venezuela is experiencing the agony of populism…and one cannot be sure of where it may lead.”

Fast forwarding to the Maduro years, the polarization between the Chavista government associated with socialism and an intransigent opposition remained intact, as did the high stakes of Venezuelan politics. Various features largely dating back to 2002 stand out.

Most important, a dominant radical faction of the opposition continues to overshadow a moderate one. The moderates, unlike the radicals, advocate electoral participation, favor recognizing the legitimacy of the nation's democratic institutions and the Maduro presidency, and oppose U.S.-imposed sanctions.

As in 2002, radicals—headed by self-proclaimed president Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo López of the Voluntad Popular party—have had a distinct advantage over moderates, this time due to decisive support from Washington. The State Department demanded that the Maduro administration refrain from taking judicial action against Guaidó despite his numerous attempts to overthrow the government, and it influenced Maduro to privilege Voluntad Popular in the negotiations held in Mexico in 2021. In contrast, Washington placed sanctions on four important moderates including Bernabé Gutiérrez, a long-time AD politician.  

Radicals under Carmona prevailed the day after the April 11 coup even though they did not necessarily represent a majority of the opposition. Similarly, hardliners have relied throughout the Maduro years on U.S. support to maintain the upper hand over the rest of the opposition, even as most Venezuelans opposed sanctions and Guaidó’s popularity precipitously declined over the course of 2019 and 2020.   

Another overlap between 2002 and the current state of Venezuelan politics is the prospect of a revanchist wave should radical sectors of the opposition take power. The first day of Carmona’s two-day rule saw efforts to round up leading Chavistas as "Wanted: Dead or Alive" leaflets with prominent Chavista names circulated. Similarly, threats against Maduro supporters upped the stakes in the confrontation between him and Guaidó. In an indirect threat against Maduro supporters in the armed forces, the opposition-controlled National Assembly headed by Guaidó introduced a law in 2019 that granted “amnesty” to officers who supported regime change.

Blunders by opposition hardliners in 2002 repeated themselves over the next two decades, resulting in one fiasco after another. In April 2002 the opposition lacked a fallback plan. When sectors of the military, specifically among the high command, resisted the coup, the entire undertaking imploded. Similarly, as the prolonged general strike of 2002-2003 faltered and its regime change objective seemed lost, opposition leaders failed either to take stock or change strategy, instead letting the protest peter out. It was a pattern repeated in the months-long street protests known as La Salida (The Exit) in 2014 and later, during even more pitched protests against Maduro’s call for a Constituent National Assembly in 2017, as well as in numerous attempts at regime change undertaken by Guaidó beginning in January 2019.

The events of 2002 also affected Chavista leaders. Chávez reacted to the defection of his right-hand man and possible father figure Miquilena, and then the support of oil company personnel for the 2002-2003 general strike, by privileging political loyalty over competence and calling for unity at all costs. Hence Chávez’s oft-repeated slogan: "unity, unity and more unity." This type of learning experience—which political scientists call “political over-learning"—downgraded the importance of technical expertise, prompting frequent cabinet shuffles under both Chávez’s and then Maduro’s governments with little or no consideration of the professional training of incoming ministers.

The April coup also convinced Chávez and those closest to him of the need to prioritize social goals over economic ones to ensure the future support and mass mobilization of the popular sectors, so instrumental in defeating the coup. The government’s failure to put the accent mark on economic diversification to sever economic dependence invited criticism from across the political spectrum.

Another consequence of the 2002 events is that they exposed unreliable military officers as a result of their actions during the coup and general strike. Subsequently, loyal officers were privileged with promotions to higher ranks, particularly those involving troop command. The loyalty of the armed forces in the face of multiple efforts by the opposition and Washington to encourage rebellion has been a key factor in the Maduro government’s survival. Indeed, the U.S. strategy has backfired, as Washington failed to take into account the nationalist sentiment of military officers.

The overthrow of a president who in the previous three years had won two presidential elections with 56 and 60 percent of the vote—and went on to win again with 63 percent in 2006—proved a fatal move for the opposition. Refusing to recognize their error led to continuous insistence that the Chávez government was authoritarian and illegitimate, resulting in electoral boycotts and non-recognition of electoral results, even ones certified by international observers. As a consequence, the opposition time and again forfeited its presence on elected bodies at the national, state, and municipal levels.

The events of 2002 also locked Chavista leaders in a polarizing mindset of viewing Venezuelan politics as a faceoff between Chavistas and insurgent adversaries with little room for constructive criticism. As I discuss in a forthcoming article in Science and Society, the resultant sectarianism toward critical allies on the left led to the exit in 2020 of various parties from the governing coalition, including the nation’s oldest one, the Communist Party.  

Ultimately, what revisiting the April 2002 events shows is an urgent need for both chavismo and its opponents to take a step backward and critically analyze both the coup and its legacies, intended and otherwise, and examine their lessons against 20 years of hindsight.

________________________________________

Steve Ellner is an Associate Managing Editor of Latin American Perspectives and a retired professor of the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela. His latest books include his edited Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism and Resistance in Broad Perspective (2021).

To cite this article: Steve Ellner (2022) The April 2002 Coup Through Time, NACLA Report on the Americas, 54:1, 16-19, DOI: 10.1080/10714839.2022.2045097

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2022.2045097

Political Report #1463 - Venezuela’s November Elections: Washington’s New Strategy but Same Old Assumptions

by Steve Ellner

Posted by Venezuelanalysis.com

It seems just yesterday that Eliot Abrams declared the Trump administration was "working hard" to oust President Nicolas Maduro from office. Now Abrams (currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations), along with the Biden administration, is urging the Venezuelan opposition to participate in the state and local elections slated for November 21. Washington’s change of tack, however, is a far cry from renouncing the right to intervene in Venezuela’s internal affairs.

Not surprisingly, Washington has prevailed on the rightist opposition led by self-proclaimed president Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo López to abandon their three-year policy of boycotting elections, which they claimed totally lacks legitimacy. Electoral participation is a hard pill for both politicians to swallow because it shatters the illusion nurtured by Washington that Guaidó is the rightful and existing president and that he is just days or weeks from occupying the presidential palace.

In the way of damage control López announced that he opposed participation in the November contests but that the rank and file of his and Guaidó’s Voluntad Popular party pressured him into accepting the new line. López, who represents an extreme position even within his party, was for the U.S. “our man in Caracas” until Guaidó’s self-proclamation in 2019. Recent examples of López’s extremism are his remark that the main business organization Fedecámaras “betrayed the country” by inviting Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez as guest of honor at its annual meeting and his attack on the European Union for legitimizing Maduro by agreeing to send electoral observers in November.

The rejection of Maduro’s legitimacy dates back to early 2015 when President Obama declared Venezuela an "extraordinary threat to U S national security." The statement not only scared off a number of large US corporations which closed shop and left, but it set the stage for the Trump administration’s severe sanctions and activist diplomacy designed to intimidate corporations throughout the world into severing relations with Venezuela. Francisco Rodríguez, Venezuelan economist formerly with Bank of America and a leading opposition advisor, extrapolated that had it not been for the sanctions oil production in the high-yielding Orinoco River region would have been three to five times greater this year.

In the November elections, Voluntad Popular will run candidates on the ticket of the Democratic Roundtable Unity (MUD) alliance which groups the major parties of the opposition. Unlike the MUD, a host of smaller moderate parties of the opposition are running candidates which have criticized the sanctions and recognize Maduro’s legitimacy. The opposition’s fragmentation enhances the possibility that Maduro’s United Socialist Party (PSUV) and its allies will achieve a plurality at the polls. The polling firm Hinterlaces puts the PSUV’s popularity at 34% compared to 13% for Voluntad Popular and the rest of the opposition combined. In contrast, opposition pollster Luis Vicente León claims that the PSUV is at 20 to 25%. In spite of the PSUV’s lead, the Nicaragua phenomenon of 1990, when Nicaraguans voted the Sandinistas out of office out of fear of continued U.S.-promoted violence and economic sanctions, may factor into November’s results to the opposition’s benefit.

Political Report #1461 Castillo's Path

Castillo's Path

By: Tony Wood

30 August 2021

Nearly two months after Pedro Castillo’s narrow victory in Peru’s second-round runoff, the new president has only just managed to get his first cabinet appointed. The 73 to 50 vote through which the Peruvian Congress approved the ministers on 27 August came at the end of several weeks of obstruction and outcry from the opposition. This included a prolonged refusal by Keiko Fujimori, the defeated candidate, to acknowledge the result, as well as yet more of the hysterical redbaiting that had marked the presidential campaign. The turbulent weeks since the 6 June election provide a depressingly clear indication of what Castillo can expect in the months (and indeed years) ahead; yet at the same time, they also amply demonstrate the profound dysfunction that brought him to power in the first place.

The Peruvian political establishment has in many ways still not recovered from the initial shock of the first round of voting on 11 April. Though the field was crowded, few expected Castillo, the former leader of the teachers’ union and a native of the northern province of Cajamarca, to emerge as the front-runner with 18% of the vote. Still more surprising was that he did so as the candidate of Perú Libre, an avowedly Marxist-Leninist party, in a country still sharply polarized by the legacies of the Shining Path insurgency and state repression of the 1980s and 1990s.

The campaign for the second-round runoff duly brought a crescendo of anti-communist outrage. In Peru the specific form this takes is terruqueo ­– ‘calling someone a terrorist’; that is, tainting anyone on the left by (imaginary) association with the Shining Path – though the media also conjured the reliable spectres of Cuba and Venezuela. Such was the need for elite unity in the face of the supposed Communist threat that Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, who in both the 2011 and 2016 elections had branded Keiko Fujimori a threat to democracy, now hailed her as the representative of ‘freedom and progress’.

The scare tactics almost worked: in the run up to 6 June, Castillo’s poll lead narrowed day by day. But when the votes were finally counted, he had edged home by a mere 44,250 votes – a nationwide margin of 0.2%. The miniscule gap between the candidates’ totals concealed a yawning geographical divide, however. Across much of the country’s interior, especially the poorer highland departments, Castillo won by crushing margins. Five Andean departments – Apurímac, Ayacucho, Cusco, Huancavelica, Puno – reported scores of over 80% for Castillo; in Puno, which borders Bolivia, his total was a staggering 89%. Altogether, Castillo carried 16 of Peru’s 25 departments, in areas that account not only for the lion’s share of the national territory, but also for some of its deepest deprivation. At the same time, it is from these areas that Peru’s mineral wealth is extracted, while the benefits of the boom of the late 2000s and early 2010s were mostly felt elsewhere. Hence the resonance of Castillo’s campaign slogan: ‘No more poor people in a rich country.’

Yet Fujimori carried the more populous coast – most notably the capital, Lima, which contains 30% of the national population, and which she won by 31 percentage points. (Her margin of victory in Lima department, which surrounds the capital region and stretches as far as the Andes, was only 7%.) While there are many complexities to consider – there is much poverty on the coast, too – the disparities of Peru’s geography largely account for the fact that Castillo’s victory provided both a resounding, historic rebuke to coastal dominance and at the same time the slimmest possible mandate.

Fujimori immediately contested the result, alleging ‘systematic fraud’ and demanding that as many as 200,000 votes be annulled. Some of her allegations involved scarcely concealed racism: the votes Fujimori contested were from the predominantly indigenous highlands, and in one case her campaign complained that too many of the election officials had the same surname, and therefore must be related. (In indigenous areas, surnames often recur regardless of kinship.) Though Fujimori’s legal challenges lacked any basis, it took weeks for the courts to exhaust them, delaying Castillo from formally taking office until 28 July. The day of the inauguration was also the two-hundredth anniversary of Peru’s independence from Spain, but the historic occasion was clouded by the ongoing uncertainties of the presidential transition.

Far from winding down with Castillo’s assumption of power, the Peruvian opposition’s campaign to cripple his presidency simply entered a new phase. By August this had come to centre on the designation of the cabinet – usually a formality for a newly elected administration, but this time the focal point of another round of terruqueo and obstruction. The first casualty was Héctor Béjar, a leftist guerrilla in the 1960s who then worked for the progressive military dictatorship of Juan Velasco Alvarado in the 1970s, and has since remained one of Peru’s most prominent radical public intellectuals. His appointment as foreign secretary augured well for the country’s hemispheric policy, not least his vow to remove Peru from the Lima Group, the anti-Maduro coalition formed in 2017. But in mid-August videos surfaced of him making critical comments about the Peruvian Navy and accusing the CIA of funding the Shining Path, and within days he had been forced to resign. (His replacement, Oscar Maúrtua, a career diplomat who also served as foreign secretary from 2005–2006, was a calculatedly unprovocative choice.)

This was an abrupt retreat, and the opposition smelled blood. The day after Béjar’s exit, Lady Camones of the centre-right Alliance for Progress Party told the media that ‘the resignation of the foreign secretary is definitely not enough’. The next target was, if not the entire cabinet, then at least Castillo’s choice of premier, Guido Bellido. Born in 1979 in a rural district of Cusco in Peru’s southern highlands, Bellido is a native Quechua speaker, which in itself brings forth a visceral reaction from elites in Lima. For instance, when Bellido began his address to Congress on 26 August in Quechua, which is one of Peru’s official languages, he was interrupted by deputies complaining they did not understand. Both Castillo and Bellido very much cast themselves as representatives of ‘Perú Profundo’, the country’s long marginalized interior. In that sense, the tussle over Bellido’s appointment is a microcosm of the historic tension between coast and highlands.

But there is a more specific political backdrop to the opposition’s targeting of Bellido, in which Bellido himself is not even the central player. A loyal cadre of the Perú Libre party, Bellido is widely seen as a proxy for the party’s leader, Vladimir Cerrón – a 50-year-old Cuban-trained neurosurgeon and former governor of Junín in the central highlands. It was Cerrón who founded Perú Libre in 2008, initially as a vehicle for achieving power at the regional level. He was elected as Junín’s governor in 2011 and then again in 2018; but in August 2019, seven months into his term, he was removed from office after receiving a criminal conviction for corruption. Further cases against him are pending, including one launched in July 2021 for money-laundering, and another in August 2021 against him and Bellido for ‘terrorism’ over supposed links to Shining Path remnants.

Both Cerrón and Bellido have denied any such connections, but the right has seized on Cerrón’s unabashed embrace of Marxism to paint him as a terrorist sympathizer. Cerrón’s harsh criticism of state repression during the armed conflict of the 1980s and 1990s also puts him outside the ideological pale. (Personal factors play a role here, too: his father, Jaime Cerrón Palomino, was a respected leftist academic in Huancayo who was kidnapped and killed in 1990 by state-run paramilitaries; in the wake of testimony given to Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2002, four generals were charged with the murder, but they have yet to be tried.)

Keeping Cerrón away from effective power is the opposition’s real goal. No doubt personal animus plays a role, as does the whiff of crookedness surrounding Cerrón – though on that front, most of Peru’s Congress doesn’t have a straight leg to stand on. But the core of the contention over the incoming cabinet was the opportunity it provided for driving a wedge between Castillo and Perú Libre. The former’s ascent was already enough of a blow for Lima’s political establishment. Still more alarming for them was the success of Perú Libre in the legislative elections, held in April at the same time as the first round of the presidential vote. From having no seats in Congress at all, Perú Libre went to being the largest single party with 37 representatives. Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular garnered only 24 seats – an improvement on the 15 it gained in the 2020 snap election, but a considerable drop from the 73-seat tally with which it dominated Congress in 2016–20. The remainder of the 130 seats are distributed between a dozen other parties, most of them arranged across a spectrum from centre-right to right.

The new Congress is therefore highly fragmented, which will make governing the country extremely difficult. Perú Libre’s main ally will be Juntos por el Perú, a Syriza-style left coalition led by former presidential candidate Verónika Mendoza. Though it has only 5 seats, it has played a prominent role in the transition, supplying personnel that are undoubtedly more politically experienced than most Perú Libre cadres, but also much more presentable to coastal elites and middle classes. A key example of this is Pedro Francke, Castillo’s pick as finance minister, who had been on Mendoza’s team and was brought in to soothe the markets after Castillo won. (It briefly worked, though the currency nosedived again when Castillo nominated Bellido as premier.) But this raised hackles in Perú Libre: Cerrón has long made clear his dislike of what he terms the ‘caviar left’, and one of the many challenges Castillo faces is how to hold together the very different components of the left on which his government is built.

There are far larger difficulties ahead, however. Well short of a majority, the incoming government will have to cobble together votes for every piece of legislation it puts forward, in a series of confidence-and-supply-type arrangements. Castillo did in the end manage to get his cabinet through Congress – minus Béjar – but the struggle he had in doing so provides a bitter foretaste of things to come. At the same time, both his success and that of Perú Libre are unmistakable symptoms of the profound crisis of the Peruvian political system, which has now experienced several years of rolling dysfunction. A series of corruption scandals, many of them involving the tentacular Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht, led to the ouster of two presidents in succession, as well as graft charges against leading members of the Peruvian congress, including Keiko Fujimori. (She was released from a second spell in jail in May 2020, but more charges were filed in March 2021, in the midst of the presidential campaign.)

Elsewhere in Latin America – Brazil first and foremost – anti-corruption politics have been successfully weaponized by the right, against a coherent rival for power on the left. In Peru, in the absence of such a left, anti-corruption largely became a means of score-settling within the political class, all too obviously cynical and devoid of actual concern for the fate of the country. It was in part the disillusionment sown by years of this that prompted calls for a new constitution, including protests that led to the removal of a third (albeit interim) president in November 2020.

The sense of crisis was hugely accelerated, of course, by the impact of Covid-19. Peru has been among the countries most drastically affected, suffering catastrophic spikes in deaths and infections from early in the pandemic. Though its total figure of 198,000 deaths to date is dwarfed by the casualties elsewhere in Latin America, proportionally it has been hit much harder: at 609 per 100,000, its incidence of death is more than double that of Brazil, and three times higher than Mexico’s. In a country where 70% of workers are in the informal sector, the pandemic reversed whatever gains had been made over the past decade: between 2019 and 2020, per capita incomes dropped by 20%, and the poverty rate rose from 20% to 30% of the population.

It was these overlapping crises – public health disaster plus deepening political disarray plus the ongoing inequalities wrought by a neoliberal extractive economy – that made possible the dual shock of Perú Libre’s advance and Castillo’s victory. If nothing else, they made it abundantly clear that there can be no return to business as usual. But less clear is how much of a transformation Castillo’s government will be able to bring about, given the political constraints and polarized ideological climate in which it will have to operate. Perú Libre’s platform – originally drafted by Cerrón in February 2020, when the party had no seats in Congress – isn’t necessarily much of a guide to what Castillo’s programme will be. Its proposals range from doubling the health and education budgets to nationalizations of mining concerns, and from a ‘second agrarian reform’ (after the one enacted in the late 1960s by the Velasco regime) to a transition away from neoliberalism to a ‘popular economy with markets’.

The effects of the pandemic mean at least some increases in social spending are likely to get through, but it remains to be seen if Castillo can, for instance, revise mining contracts to give the Peruvian state a higher share of resource rents. Perhaps the proposal that is likeliest to be implemented is the call for a referendum on a new constitution. This was already in the air in Peru in late 2020, inspired by the example of neighbouring Chile, and it seems the only way to secure both a mandate and a framework for overhauling Peru’s neoliberal model.

In this context, it is significant that, besides Lenin and Fidel Castro, the main models mentioned in Perú Libre’s programme are Rafael Correa and Evo Morales. Both these Pink Tide leaders, however, were in much stronger positions than Castillo at the outset of their terms, and even if the referendum were to succeed, the balance of forces in Peru is unlikely to produce as progressive a charter as either Ecuador or Bolivia. But in the absence of such a thoroughgoing democratic renewal, a neoliberal restoration on the old terms doesn’t seem likely either. Far more probable is a prolonged and turbulent interregnum.

Read on: Susan Watkins, ‘Politics and Pandemics’, NLR 125.

Read Original Article Here: Here

Link: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/castillos-path?pc=1374

Political Report #1449 What is Next for Washington After Its Failed Venezuela Strategy?

Political Report # 1449

What is Next for Washington After Its Failed Venezuela Strategy?

by Steve Ellner, Consortium News

It’s come out in the open now in Washington that the Trump administration’s Venezuela policy is an embarrassing failure but will the next administration wise up, or double down?, asks Steve Ellner.

Senator Chris Murphy’s recent characterization of U.S. policy toward Venezuela as an “unmitigated disaster” makes it conspicuously clear that many in the political establishment recognize the need for a change in course. The statement by such an influential Democrat may signal a policy revision toward Venezuela, though not particularly comprehensive, on the part of a Joe Biden administration.  

Murphy (CT-D), who made his remarks to Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams at an Aug. 4 Foreign Relations Committee hearing, pointed out that dissension within the Venezuelan opposition threatens the leadership of self-proclaimed “president” Juan Guaidó. Murphy asked Abrams: “Is Juan Guaidó [for the Trump administration] going to be the recognized leader of Venezuela permanently, no matter how conditions change on the ground?” 

The question was a good one because the success of Trump’s Venezuela strategy is predicated on Guaidó’s continued undisputed leadership. There’s no fall-back strategy.

Since Guaidó’s self-proclamation on Jan. 23, 2019, Washington has gone all out to gain world-wide recognition for him and to undermine President Nicolás Maduro’s grip on power. But regime change attempts have turned into one folly after another, including a U.S.-backed military coup attempt on April 30, 2019, and a military incursion from Colombia this May. Even Trump admitted that the politically untested Guaidó (who just turned 37) has not been up to the task. 

Murphy stated at the Senate committee hearing “our big play recognizing Guaidó right out of the gate…just didn’t work.” 

Yet one would think from the words and actions coming out of the White House that just the opposite was happening: that Guaidó was on the verge of toppling Maduro. Every couple of days the Trump administration, eager for a resounding success to be parlayed into votes in November, escalates its war on Venezuela, which it considers to be a more vulnerable target than Iran. 

On June 14, Trump boasted that four oil tankers en route from Iran to Venezuela were forced by the U.S. to proceed to Houston. 

The same day a State Department spokesman touted the success of its “maximum pressure campaign” in which “more and more global shipping fleets [are] avoiding the Iran-Venezuela trade due to our sanctions,” which are now being used to threaten shipping companies, insurance companies and ship captains, among others. 

Washington’s lingering hope is undoubtedly that the situation in Venezuela will go from bad to worse. 

This was alluded to by think-tank analyst and State Department advisor Evan Ellis in his report “Venezuela: Pandemic and Foreign Intervention in a Collapsing Narcostate.” Ellis points out that “Covid-19 now promises to transform the Venezuelan crisis into a broader one.” He adds “the death sentence implied by the disease could be the final straw in disintegrating the remaining discipline of the military and other security forces.”

Murphy’s Arguments Good and Bad

Murphy’s arguments at the Senate hearing were pragmatic, not principled. His position that Trump’s Venezuelan strategy hasn’t worked suggests the possibility of a distancing of a President Biden from Guaidó. Murphy’s stand has positive and negative implications. Positive because it comes from a party whose main leaders zealously applauded Guaidó’s presence at Trump’s State of the Union address in February. (Remember Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi standing up and clapping, in contrast to her reaction to almost everything else Trump said that evening.)

The decision to cease calling Guaidó “president” would be a tacit recognition that Washington had blundered in turning over billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets, including CITGO, to Guaidó’s parallel government. This is no small failure. The activist role of the Trump administration in trying to get other countries, organizations and corporations including Russia, China, Cuba and, believe it or not, Iran to comply with the sanctions against Venezuela has few parallels in history. 

Washington’s case for sanctions is underpinned by the argument that Guaidó and not Maduro is the rightful president of Venezuela. A distancing from Guaidó would detract from this campaign and undermine U.S. prestige, at least in the short run. 

Murphy, to his credit, recognized that the opposition in Venezuela is bitterly divided. The Trump administration dismisses the opposition’s anti-Guaidó bloc as consisting of rogue politicians, some of whom it has hit with sanctions. But recently, the Catholic Church hierarchy, which has vehemently opposed Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, sharply criticized the pro-Guaidó bloc for refusing to participate in parliamentary elections slated for December. 

On August 11, the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference issued a document which stated “abstentionismdeepens the social-political fissure in the nation and the lack of hope toward the future.” In another recent development, Enrique Mendoza of the social Christian COPEI party became the latest in a list of long-standing political leaders who are participating in the December elections. The U.S. media says little of news items like this one which discredit Guaidó and his allies.

The Real Lesson

But Murphy’s position is a far cry from addressing the real issues and the lessons that need to be learned from the Guaidó fiasco, namely the importance of respect for national sovereignty. Rather than facing the issue, Murphy rebuked Abrams and Trump for not being more intelligent in trying to achieve regime change. 

The senator told Abrams: “We could have used the prospect of U.S. recognition or sanctions as leverage” and could have done more to consult our European allies and to “talk to or neutralize China and Russia” at an early stage. In short, “all we did was play all our cards on day one, and it didn’t work.” 

Pulitzer prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald slammed Murphy’s line of reasoning in defense of U.S. hegemony, saying “Murphy was ‘furious’ that America under Trump lost is ‘natural right’ to control who governs Venezuela.” 

The issue of national sovereignty is manifesting itself in Venezuela in the debate between the pro and anti-Guaidó opposition factions, a development the U.S. media is also oblivious to. The anti-Guaidó faction has taken up the national sovereignty banner. Miguel Salazar, president of the conservative COPEI party, recently stated (in the words of El Universal) “the international community has exacerbated the [Venezuelan] conflict even though the resolution of problems has to be in Venezuelan (hands) and not subject to the guidelines of the United States.” 

The banner of national sovereignty is being raised by Washington’s two major adversaries on the world stage, China and Russia, in their pronouncements on Venezuela in a way that enhances their international reputation. Indeed, the United States is increasingly finding itself isolated on the world stage, as made evident in last Friday’s humiliating defeat at the UN Security Council where the U.S. counted only on the vote of the Dominican Republic for its proposed renewal of the boycott on arms sales to Iran. 

Although it is highly unlikely that a President Biden will do a complete turnaround on Venezuelan policy, a more hands-off approach would go a long way in easing tensions in that nation and achieving for Washington a degree of respect around the world.

Original article can be found (here).
URL:      https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/17/what-is-next-for-washington-after-its-failed-venezuela-strategy/

Political Report #1446

Trump’s Second Thoughts on Juan Guaido are Not Enough by Steve Ellner Consortium News

After nearly a year and a half of all-out efforts at regime change in Venezuela which took a major toll on the Venezuelan people, Trump now tells the world he was never big on the strategy in the first place. On Friday, Trump appeared to shove the blame onto advisors, and added “I think that I wasn’t necessarily in favor” of the policy of recognizing Juan Guaidó as president, but “I was OK with it.” Trump’s statements made it seem as if Guaidó's only sin was that he did not manage to seize power. This might-makes-right mindset belies what is happening on the ground in Venezuela which is much more complicated than just one leader’s approval rating. It also ignores the horrendous suffering of the Venezuelan people due to crippling sanctions imposed in August 2019, the result of a foreign policy decision that Trump now brushes off as a simple mistake. A price is being paid even by those in Washington who are singularly concerned with U.S. prestige. The real story is that Washington placed all its faith in an untested leader of a radical, somewhat fringe, party, that strong resentment against the U.S. is now being expressed among Venezuelan leaders and voters who previously thought differently, and that with Trump’s recent statements, U.S. credibility sinks to an all-time low. The latest news on Trump’s change of heart requires an analysis of the sea of change that has occurred politically in Venezuela. Such an analysis is much needed because Trump's statement is unexplainable for those whose only source of information on Venezuela is the mainstream media. The analysis is also urgent because this week the White House is walking back Trump’s statement at the same time that Joe Biden is opposing any change in policy. In spite of these words in favor of staying the course, events have shown that our man in Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, has proved to be adept at (in the words of Bloomberg) “diplomatic grandstanding” but completely lacking in political realism.

Political Report # 1443 Will a Failed Plot in Venezuela Strengthen Maduro?

Political Report # 1443 Will a Failed Plot in Venezuela Strengthen Maduro? a Q&A, Latin America Advisor

Q: Venezuelan forces killed eight people and arrested several others—including two former U.S. Green Berets—in a failed attempt earlier this month to infiltrate the South American country by sea. Another former U.S. Green Beret purportedly masterminded the attack, which its organizers code named “Operation Gideon,” while Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó and U.S. President Donald Trump denied involvement. How will the incident affect support for Maduro and for Guaidó? How likely is the failed incursion to lead to Venezuelan government crackdowns on Maduro’s opponents? How does it affect the Venezuelan opposition’s efforts to unseat Maduro? A: Peter Hakim, member of the Advisor board and president emeritus of the Inter-American Dialogue: “Juan Guaidó and his allies have suffered another sharp blow in their struggle to wrest control of the Venezuelan government. But this, by no means, should be viewed as the opposition’s last battle. Although ‘Operation Gideon’ was quickly stopped in its tracks, the Maduro regime remains feeble and unpopular. Indeed, it hardly governs at all. Mostly, it is just cruelly holding on to power. With the economy already devastated and hunger and malnutrition widespread, Covid-19 has made life even more hellish for Venezuelans. But the opposition forces are badly fractured. Without a unified plan of action, a minimal strategy or a clear set of priorities, they appear simply to be pursuing whatever opportunities come their way. Sometimes they succeed, for example, when Guaidó was praised by Trump and applauded by the entire U.S. Congress during the State of the Union—a clear diplomatic victory but without consequential follow-up. Failures have been more frequent, each leaving Maduro a bit stronger, while the opposition appears weaker and more disorganized. After the Gideon episode, the countries that recognize Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader have reason to be concerned about his judgment and leadership. What comes next? Probably more of the same, unless the United States unexpectedly revises its Venezuela policy, which today is fixated on ousting Maduro, using tactics that have left an impoverished population worse off. The opposition too, needs to change course, to demonstrate greater realism and patience. It needs to develop its own strategy and not depend on the United States for direction and initiative. The United States has little interest in Venezuela, aside from showing off its power and winning votes in Florida. The opposition needs to shift focus from quickly getting rid of Maduro to building a more unified, more potent political movement.” A: Steve Ellner, associate managing editor of Latin American Perspectives and retired professor of the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela: “Every aspect of the recent attempt to topple the Maduro government points to Juan Guaidó’s lack of leadership capacity. The incident cuts into his support among both the radical opposition that backs the use of force and the majority of Venezuelans, who, according to polls, favor concrete proposals to solve pressing immediate problems over regime-change strategies. In the first place, Guaidó’s signature on the contract with the Florida-based Silvercorp USA disregards the history of operations of this sort, in which planners go to length to ensure the credibility of a Plan B consisting of denial of involvement in case of failure. In the second place, Guaidó’s commitment of $213 million to Silvercorp raises questions about the origins of such a large sum of money. In the third place, even those favoring a military solution are criticizing the use of foreign mercenaries. In the fourth place, the plan envisioned one of two scenarios, one naïve and the other questionable on ethical grounds. The choice of Macuto, with a strong navy presence nearby, for landing implied that the Venezuelan armed forces would spontaneously turn against Maduro, contrary to its behavior throughout 2019. The contract implied a possible drawn-out bloody confrontation with specified human targets including those close to Maduro and Diosdado Cabello. The Los Angeles Times reported that the incident has ‘buoyed’ Maduro. During his rule, Chávez counted on the backing of a sizable majority of voters. It is unlikely that most of them would support an opposition that incident after incident becomes branded ’Made in the USA.’ Some of this sentiment gets translated into support for Maduro, even among Venezuelans who fervently oppose his policies.” A: Charles Shapiro, president of the World Affairs Council of Atlanta and former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela: “In Season 2 of ‘Jack Ryan,’ six Americans on a boat set in motion events that bring down the ruthless Venezuelan dictator. While entertaining, ‘Jack Ryan’ is fiction. Nonetheless, the perpetrators of this incident appear to have used a TV script as their plan to depose Maduro. The reality is that Venezuela is a huge country, the military is thus far loyal to Maduro and Cuban intelligence is very good. The 2002 ‘coup’ against Chávez weakened the opposition for a decade while Chávez entrenched a system that destroyed the nation’s economy and the remaining vestiges of its democratic institutions. It should not surprise anyone that Maduro, who proclaimed himself Chávez’s ‘hijo político’ is trying to use this goofy incident to maintain himself in Miraflores while the country is ravaged by Covid-19, the economy requires last rites, oil production at 622,000 barrels per day has dropped to 1944 levels and oil prices have cratered. Maduro should be panicking. Instead, this incident has given him a lifeline while increasing the centrifugal force pulling at the fractious opposition coalition. What is bad for Guaidó is good for Maduro. Net result: this incident was an own goal. As for the fictional Venezuela of ‘Jack Ryan,’ President Nicolás Reyes is not nearly as ruthless or as corrupt as Maduro, the fictional economy is not nearly as bad as the real Venezuelan economy and the fictional military hesitates to shoot Venezuelan citizens while the real security forces have no compunction about repressing their countrymen.” A: David Smilde, senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America and professor of sociology at Tulane University: “It is important to remember that in the past three years since the Maduro government moved from electoral authoritarianism to hegemonic authoritarianism, the opposition has tried street mobilization, going to elections, international pressure and negotiations, all without results. Thus, this type of desperate measure should not surprise. Most damaging is Juan Guaidó’s failure to assume responsibility and clearly pivot to trace out a new strategy. This has produced a malaise within Venezuela and cast a shadow on his leadership among international allies. The opposition is hopelessly divided between those who think a strategy based on political mobilization and negotiation is the way forward and those who think that is naïve and just postpones foreign military intervention. Behind this, of course, is the Trump administration’s frequent statements that ‘all options are on the table.’ Few people close to the U.S. government think there actually is a military option, but it has captured the imagination of wide swaths of Venezuelans in the country and in the diaspora. Combined with a population being ground down by a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by U.S. sanctions, there is little chance the opposition will be able to mount a real political challenge to the Maduro government. At this point, the only way the current tragic equilibrium could be altered would be a change in the geopolitical interests and pressures at play. A negotiation between the United States and Russia, designation of a special representative by the United Nations or robust engagement by the European Union could reorganize the conflict.” A: Maria Velez de Berliner, managing director of RTG-Red Team Group, Inc.: “Covert actions to execute regime change are the task and responsibility of professional operatives, not of civilian amateurs such as the incompetent mercenaries of ‘Operation Gideon.’ As Sean McFate’s work demonstrates, ‘mercenaries are the future of war.’ But those mercenaries require training, reliable equipment, tactical support and must have proven ability to carry out their mission; and whoever sponsors them must have credible, plausible deniability. None of these conditions existed in ‘Operation Gideon.’ Few believe the United States and Guaidó had no previous knowledge of the action. Its failure resulted in a risible fiasco that narrowed the range of options of the United States and gave Maduro a public relations coup. With its support of ‘Operation Gideon,’ Venezuela’s opposition, led by Guaidó, demonstrated it is ill advised, naïve and woefully ignorant of the deleterious repercussions that failed actions such as ‘Operation Gideon’ have. It also shows the miscalculation of the United States regarding Maduro’s support. To execute regime change in Venezuela, the United States will need to: 1.) negotiate with Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, because deposing Maduro must have the army’s support; 2.) know what to do with Venezuela’s colectivos, militias, guerrillas and sundry nonstate criminal actors; 3.) know the pros and cons of whoever takes power, from the Venezuelans’ perspective; and 4.) do all this professionally and, hopefully legally, not through amateurish, wishful actions such as ‘Operation Gideon.’ ” Original article can be found (here). URL:      https://venezuelablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/LAA200519.pdf