A series of failed attempts to catalyze an uprising against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has both the opposition and the United States out on a limb. Within hours of interim President Juan Guaidó announcing a rebellion on April 30, defection by key regime insiders failed to materialize. In the aftermath of a failed uprising and Guaidó’s endorsement of negotiations with the Maduro regime, it has become painfully obvious that both the opposition and Washington policymakers do not understand what motivates the Venezuelan military.
So far, the opposition and the U.S. have been unable to convince the Venezuelan officer corps to defect, even as the broader strategy of international pressure and the U.S. commitment to sanctions has succeeded in rattling the Maduro regime. Yet, repeated attempts at ill-conceived and poorly executed plots sap critical energy from the opposition and make it look desperate. Worse, it has convinced the Maduro regime that it can outlast the opposition, possibly by using the negotiations starting in Norway to stall for time.
Stung by the public debacle, insiders spun the fizzled uprising as, “We almost succeeded, if only the Russians had not interfered.” One version of events placed Maduro on a plane on the tarmac, ready to flee had he not been convinced to stay by his Russian advisers. Another chimerical tale blamed the failure on Supreme Court Chief Justice Mikael Moreno, who supposedly didn’t stick to a secret arrangement, got cold feet, and refused to recognize Guaidó. The involvement of a shady Venezuelan billionaire, indicted by the U.S. for money laundering, laid bare the plan’s obvious shortcomings.
These fanciful excuses, as well as the negotiations between the opposition and the Maduro regime, demonstrate that both the U.S. and the opposition are ignoring what motivates the Venezuelan generals. The botched uprising did nothing to shift the allegiance of the Venezuelan officer corps or change the reality that several principal elements still could give rise to high-level military defections.
First, credible threats of military force with strategic offers of amnesty are critical to induce key insiders to abandon Maduro’s sinking ship. Defections occur in waves, but the officer corps remains highly uncomfortable with Guaidó as a political leader. For one, Guaidó appeared with recently released opposition figure Leopoldo López. A victim of brutal torture at the hands of the regime, López inspires suspicion in large segments of the military who believe he is interested only in seeking revenge.
Second, the officer corps must recognize Guaidó’s leadership — not in the narrow constitutional sense, but by acknowledging the attractiveness of his influence and message. While Guaidó’s calls for a restoration of democracy have succeeded in mobilizing the Venezuelan people, the idea of democracy is too amorphous, and the Venezuelan officer corps has yet to envision its future under a post-Maduro presidency. While the opposition speaks of a beautiful new government, members of the corrupt officer corps have more existential concerns: whether they will be imprisoned or targeted for assassination. For them, discarding Maduro is tantamount to a surrender of their freedom and their fortunes, given their involvement in highly lucrative activities such as narcotrafficking and illicit gold mining. Worse, the opposition’s sudden willingness to make deals with corrupt insiders muddies any principled distinction between them and the Maduro regime in the eyes of Venezuelan generals.
Third, Guaidó has failed to trigger a sense of inevitability about the restoration of democracy. Venezuelan generals should feel as though they must join the movement before it is too late. Guaidó’s use of social media has not affected hardened generals accustomed to implementing the orders of Cuban intelligence on a daily basis. Social media might even seem like a plaything to them. Because Guaidó is not getting this message through to them, and although it would be considerably more difficult, he must aim for a takeover of pro-Maduro media outlets to reach the regime’s trusted circle.
Despite this failure to communicate with the military, neither the opposition nor the U.S. should give up. Certainly, negotiation with Maduro should not be on the table when the conditions are still ripe for military defections. The bulk of the Venezuelan military — a depleted force increasingly estranged from the corrupt officer corps — has long understood why Maduro is the problem. He has presided over the worst peacetime economic collapse of any country in modern times, second only to war-torn Syria. While it is perhaps forgivable that the opposition and the U.S. did not study the dynamics of defection before embarking on a campaign of sanctions, the failure to learn from these mistakes is inexcusable, as is the inability to motivate and mobilize some of the few remaining honest officers.
Venezuela’s transition was never going to be an organized affair, but Guaidó and U.S. policymakers would do well to study the motivations of the Venezuelan military when reconsidering their flawed strategy to negotiate with the Maduro regime.
Ryan C. Berg is a research fellow in Latin America studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Thiago de Aragão is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and partner at Arko Advice, a top political risk consultancy based in Brazil.
