Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s reliance on U.S. adversaries to defy President Trump’s call for his ouster is drawing comparisons to the Syrian civil war.
“The Syrian effect is also a good parallel because of the foreign presence in this country,” Gonzalo Koncke, an official at the Organization of American States, said through a translator during a discussion of foreign interference in the crisis. “We know that China, Iran, and others are trying very hard to extend their presence in the regime. They are exploiting the vast natural resources of Venezuela and are, in fact, having a field day thousands, millions of kilometers from their own countries.”
Koncke’s comments came at the end of a meeting that featured extensive rebukes of foreign support for Maduro. Many of the assembled diplomats echoed U.S. complaints about Russian and Cuban support for the regime Thursday, two days after top opposition lawmaker Juan Guaidó’s unsuccessful call for a military uprising to overthrow the heir to the late President Hugo Chávez. The effort left U.S. officials and regional allies scrambling to keep pressure on Maduro, reviving criticism of Trump’s national security team in Washington circles.
“Some people in the U.S. government have some egg on their face, some explaining to do,” a former senior U.S. diplomat close to the administration told the Washington Examiner. “This is the best we could do after three months … four hours of rabble rousing?”
Trump’s team received gentler treatment from retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, a former NATO commander who was in contention to run for vice president on Hillary Clinton’s Democratic ticket in 2016.
“I wouldn’t categorize it as a failure at this point. I’d categorize it as a near miss on a success,” Stavridis told Foreign Policy. “I think the Trump administration has handled this one reasonably well using diplomatic and economic pressure, political alliance structures, and regional support. I think on this one they are playing a reasonable long game and I think their chances of success over time are still quite credible.”
On the other hand, Russian President Vladimir Putin intensified his efforts to protect his Latin American client. A contingent of Russian troops was sent to Venezuela in March to repair Maduro’s S-300 anti-aircraft missile system. U.S. officials blamed Russia for convincing Maduro to remain in the country rather than flee Tuesday morning. And Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov plans to “mobilize a group of states” to provide diplomatic support for Maduro at the United Nations, per state-run media, while coordinating with the regime to propose negotiations designed to weaken opposition calls for Maduro’s departure.
Those efforts have raised concerns in Washington that Putin might be as successful with Maduro as he was in helping Syrian dictator Bashar Assad defy then-President Barack Obama in 2013.
“Are we facing a situation where what Syria was to Obama and Russia, Venezuela is becoming to Trump and Russia?” Atlantic Council CEO Frederick Kempe asked a top State Department official at an event on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington. “Are we in danger of losing Venezuela, and thus having this be one of the moments that really defines the Trump administration?”
“That’s a really hard question,” Kiron Skinner, the State Department’s director of policy planning, replied. “And I think it’s actually too early to make that assessment, but do know we’re thinking about the Russian presence very seriously, and it’s ramping up, and the growing complicated nature of Venezuela — this is not an easy off-ramp for Maduro, as some would have hoped.”
Maduro’s top opponents rallied Wednesday, exhorting regional leaders not to let him off the hook after he withstood the attempted overthrow. “The democratic process that is now underway, [that] is being led by the interim president, Juan Guaidó, cannot and will not be derailed — certainly not by us,” Fernando Simas, the Brazilian ambassador to the Organization of American States, said Wednesday afternoon.
Simas’ comments seemed designed to preempt any opponents of the regime from concluding that they will have to cut a deal with Maduro. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House National Security Advisor John Bolton minimized the potential for such political damage by revealing that Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López and other top regime officials were in talks to abandon Maduro.
“My sense is they see Maduro wounded by the perception that Padrino López and others close to him were negotiating to give him up,” the former senior U.S. diplomat said. “It was clearly a disappointment that Padrino backed away or double-crossed them. They shouldn’t have trusted any of these criminals. That said, on the ground, the most damage was done to Maduro, because people in his inner circle were ready to sell him out.”
The failure of the uprising could reveal a more fundamental problem, some analysts worry. “Frankly, I’m not sure there is a unified policy on what to do,” a second former senior U.S. official close to the administration said. “I don’t know of a master plan that says, in the event that Guaidó is arrested — or, worse yet, killed — X, Y, and Z happens.”
The crisis doesn’t have any easy solutions. A political and economic collapse of the country in recent years caused four million Venezuelans to leave the nation at a pace that matched the outflow of refugees fleeing the violence of the Syrian civil war in the early years of that conflict. Trump’s team has been hoping that diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions would fracture the unity of the regime, by inducing top generals to betray Maduro in order to preserve their own wealth.
Guaidó’s latest setback demonstrates the difficulty of carrying out that strategy when Cuban security services are on the ground to guide Maduro and watch for any signs that military officials might try to betray him.
“The resistance to a political transition that we are seeing from Maduro is a clear sign that there is not much room for diplomacy left,” Carlos Alberto Patiño, a professor at the National University of Colombia who was invited to testify Thursday morning, said through an OAS translator. “And what is left is collective violence or direct action from major states in a clear challenge to the support provided by Russia.”
