US policies have failed to nudge Venezuelan military away from Maduro

“[The] illegitimate Maduro regime is fully entrenched, and Cuba security forces, Russia and Iranian and China all are supporting his entrenched reign of power,” he added. “The right diplomatic and economic pressure’s been applied. It hasn’t resulted in the desired outcome.”

VENEZUELAN AMERICANS IN SOUTH FLORIDA FEAR BIDEN’S ‘SOCIALIST’ TENDENCIES

Johan Obdola, a Venezuelan security expert and former Navy intelligence adviser, told the Washington Examiner Friday that Maduro, and before him Hugo Chavez, awarded the military control of criminal enterprises to keep their loyalty.

Now, the only way to break their support for the regime is to disrupt the military’s flow of illicit revenue.

“Disruption is possible,” said Obdola, who was forced to flee the country when Chavez took power. “At this point, right now, it would be exactly to disrupt the money flow and money laundering from the military forces and to expose [them] in a more public way.”

Obdola is in regular contact with former and current Venezuelan military officers in exile and in Venezuela. He also recently returned from Dubai, where he studied the flows of Venezuelan money gained through drug trafficking and illegal gold, diamond, and uranium mining.

“Once you expose them, through sanctions or whatever, to those people, then you work at disrupting some of the money or a lot of the operation,” he said. “Then you can reach a breaking point for them. … They have to negotiate then.”

Faller has long tracked the rays of drug and human trafficking from Venezuela to the Caribbean en route to the United States.

Following his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week, Faller’s team handed reporters unclassified maps showing the illegal flows that are enriching Venezuela’s political and military elite as Venezuelans flee from oppressive economic and political conditions, lack of basic food and medicine, and the harrowing effects of the coronavirus.

“The Venezuelan tragedy continues, and migration has increased over 5 million now on the worst migration crisis in this hemisphere,” Faller said.

Fueling criminal enterprises

Obdola said that because of the criminal patronage system, where geographically disparate commanders control the criminal enterprise in their region, the military leadership has in its best interest to maintain the status quo in Venezuela.

Miami-based U.S. Southern Command detailed how transnational criminal organizations in Latin America use Chinese money laundering organizations to funnel profits out of the country.

Faller also points to the lack of ethical leaders after two decades of corrupt, socialist rule in the South American country.

“Part of that is that just the challenge associated with finding people that will do the right things within a country that’s corrupted and has become a haven for transnational criminal organizations, narcoterrorist if you will,” he said.

In his testimony to Congress, Faller told senators the Venezuela problem requires a strong, interagency approach, whereby Southcom can support the role of agencies such as the Treasury Department, which tracks and works to stop money laundering globally.

Obdola described China, Russia, and Iran as the main beneficiaries of the illegal money flows, while also investing heavily in the region.

Russia has sold more than $9 billion worth of military equipment since 2008 and conducted security training in 17 countries across the hemisphere. It’s wielding its own version of vaccine diplomacy, signing agreements to provide its COVID-19 vaccine to 13 countries, according to Southcom.

Faller described how China also creates economic pressure on Venezuela through burdensome loans.

“China, too, is globally engaged and engaged in this hemisphere to further their interests in economic dominance,” he said, noting a China-Russia diplomatic alignment. “Venezuela is the most notable example, where, at the diplomatic level, they were certainly and continue to be engaged to block any effort at U.N. solutions or global solutions.”

China has sold $615 million worth of weapons to Venezuela since 2010 and has a major port project and information technology footprint in the country.

Iran, too, continues to engage with Venezuela’s oil sector, flouting sanctions.

“It’s a travesty to Venezuela, with one of the largest oil reserves, has only used that reserve to benefit the illegitimate Maduro regime,” Faller said. “There are international sanctions and international pressure, and then there are nation-states that have assisted Venezuela in skirting those, and Iran is at the top of that list.”

‘The day after’

The Washington Examiner asked Faller to describe planning for one day reengaging the Venezuelan military in what was Latin America’s first democracy.

“Going forward, we’ve done a lot of planning,” he said. “We’ve done multinational planning effort with many nations in the region to look at the day after.”

Planning includes helping to build professional security forces, as Southcom already does across the hemisphere, and keeping the military role in the country “appropriate and small.”

“It would be significant in scale, but it’s got to be multinational and internationally led,” Faller said of the effort.

Until then, the Southcom commander said the heavy lifting will be up to diplomats to call out bad behavior and share intelligence with allies.

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With less than 1% of DOD’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, Southcom has developed regional partnerships, such as those with Brazil and Colombia, to share intelligence and make progress toward U.S. security and diplomatic goals with Venezuela.

“That’s been our role in this,” Faller explained. “To understand and share and then provide that information and allow our diplomats to call it out — call Iran out on that and to use that for further leverage in the, what must be, a diplomatic solution to the Venezuelan crisis.”