Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro’s blockade of the National Assembly will provoke additional sanctions from the United States and western allies, according to President Trump’s point-man for the crisis.
“We are not out of sanctions and other ways to pressure the regime,” Elliott Abrams, the State Department’s special representative for Venezuela, told the Washington Examiner.
That warning will be tested in the wake of Maduro’s decision to bar Juan Guiado, the opposition leader whom President Trump has recognized as the legitimate interim president of Venezuela, from entering the parliamentary building in Caracas. Maduro sought to undermine Guaido’s claim to authority by preventing his re-election as the nation’s top lawmaker, but Abrams believes that the display amounted to an admission of weakness.
“The regime — which has the total control with the ability to intimidate, to jail, to exile, to bribe — failed,” Abrams told reporters Monday at the State Department. “It failed to be able to change the votes of 100 members of the national assembly who wanted to support Juan Guaido — every one of them knowing that he or she could be arrested tomorrow. And, it didn’t work.”
Maduro has been offering as much as $500,000 to bribe opposition lawmakers into voting against Guaido, Abrams told reporters last month. That effort met with limited success, setting the stage for Sunday’s dramatic confrontation, in which Venezuelan security forces surrounded the parliamentary building and prevented Guaido’s allies from entering. Guaido himself was filmed trying to climb the fence around the building, only to be repelled by armed Maduro loyalists.
“There were no fewer than four checkpoints today from the different repressive bodies of the dictatorship,” Guaido said after the opposition lawmakers held a vote at a local newspaper headquarters. ”This isn’t about left or right. It’s about a dictatorship.” Maduro’s tactics weren’t a total surprise.
Abrams said that the regime would consider “surrounding the national assembly chamber with soldiers so the deputies cannot enter and vote” during an interview last week. “This is a test of how far the regime will go to prevent a return to democracy,” Abrams told the Washington Examiner. “This will be a sign that the regime is not really willing to contemplate free elections as an exit from the crisis. And, it’s hard to see what there is to negotiate at that point.”
It’s also a test of what western powers are willing and able to do to shift the balance of power in Venezuela. Trump hailed Guaido as interim president last year, but Maduro has retained control of the military and security services. The socialist strongman withstood a dramatic call for an uprising in April, although U.S. officials believe that only the support of Russian advisers and Cuban security services kept him in place.
“Did we make a mistake in overstating our expectations? Maybe. I’ll admit it,” Guaido said Sunday. “We’d all love a second chance in life. Now we have it, as a country… I’m certain that Venezuela is in our hands.”
Abrams, 71, first came to prominence as one of Ronald Reagan’s top lieutenants for Latin America, including the Iran Contra scandal. He also worked on human rights and Middle East policy under George W. Bush and was considered as a potential deputy secretary of state under Trump. He was passed over for that post in a case of mistaken identity, after the president confused him with Eliot Cohen, another Bush administration alumnus who is a harsh critic of the current administration.
Abrams promised Monday that the United States would put “more pressure on those who are continuing to support the regime,” a comment that could foreshadow additional sanctions targeting Russia or Cuba. “All of our pressure in 2019 was to force the regime into negotiating a free election,” he told the Washington Examiner. “And the pressure will increase.”
