President Trump invited Juan Guaido to his State of the Union address. The surprise appearance of Venezuela’s legitimate president reaffirmed Trump’s steadfast support for a Venezuela free from Nicolas Maduro’s socialist tyranny. On Wednesday afternoon, Trump met with Guaido at the White House, where they discussed ways to end Maduro’s regime. Hopefully, this means Trump will take more decisive action to end Maduro’s oppression of my people, among them my family and friends.
Take Maduro down, and Cuba and Nicaragua’s dictatorships will likely fall as well, and, with them, America would take down an international network of criminals, drug dealers, and terrorists that also threaten America.
Trump showed that Venezuela continues to be a priority. Instead of seeing the State of the Union as an obstacle to meeting with Venezuela’s interim president, Trump used it as an opportunity to inject the element of surprise that characterizes him. By bringing Guaido and recognizing him as “Mr. President,” Trump gave him unprecedented recognition that very few foreign leaders have gotten.
This is just one of many actions Trump has taken to free the Venezuelan people. Unlike the Obama administration, which supported failed-and-tried dialogue with Maduro and implemented timid sanctions, Trump has sanctioned over 100 Maduro crooks, banned trade with the regime, frozen its assets, and ended its access to the international financial system. Additionally, it was Trump and Vice President Mike Pence who led the world in recognizing Guaido earlier last year.
But it doesn’t stop there. Trump also stepped up efforts to free the Cuban and Nicaraguan peoples with increased sanctions. This recognizes not just the need to help bring freedom to these oppressed peoples but also that all three dictatorships, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, are interdependent, and a strike to one is a strike to all of them. This is a very different approach from President Barack Obama’s friendly handshakes with brutal dictator Raul Castro and the “unfreezing” of Cuban relations. If Congress let him, Obama would have surely repealed the embargo completely in exchange for nothing.
But, despite all these efforts to free Venezuelans and others in the hemisphere, the reality is the dictators are still in power. In Venezuela, Maduro is even dropping some of his socialist policies to revive the economy and increase his own cash flow. The Venezuelan military and police forces have and will continue to side with Maduro because they aren’t regular citizens. They are either actively involved in narcotrafficking or were brainwashed by 21 years of Hugo Chavez-Maduro control of the military. The few members of the Venezuelan military who would be ready to rebel against Maduro have left Venezuela and are stranded in Colombia and other countries with no support. If there are any left inside the country, they are unable to act due to Cuban espionage and interference in all communication systems.
Trump has a historic opportunity to take stronger measures to bring freedom to Venezuela that might never present itself in the coming years. His sanctions have starved the regime of revenue, but they will never be enough to cut off the drug money flow. Instead of a strategy that solely relies on sanctions, the Trump administration should also pursue intelligence-sharing with Venezuelan military groups loyal to democracy stationed in Colombia, targeted military operations to capture cartel and Maduro regime leaders, cyberwarfare attacks, and credible threats. Trump’s goal is a free Venezuela, and these are the kind of measures that could force Maduro to exit power without representing any sort of all-out war.
The ripple effect in the region would be huge. Cuba and Nicaragua would lose the free oil they receive from Venezuela, terrorist groups FARC and ELN would lose their safe haven in South America, and Iran, Russia, and China would see their operatives expelled. All in all, America and the world would be a safer and more prosperous place.
Regardless of what happens, one thing is sure: Whether it is from Nicaragua to Venezuela or from Cuba to Bolivia, Trump has proven that he is the biggest champion for freedom America could have elected into office. Let’s hope he follows through on his words in the State of the Union and that “Maduro’s grip on tyranny will be smashed and broken.”
Daniel Di Martino (@DanielDiMartino) is a Venezuelan freedom activist, a research associate at the Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise at the University of Kentucky, and a contributor for Dissident.com.
