Let’s suppose, for a moment, that the Trump administration’s strategy for easing Nicolas Maduro out of power in Venezuela works according to plan.
The president could not be more explicit about his objective: “Let your people go!” he exclaimed at a rally in Miami last week. And the State Department is no doubt working on innumerable fronts to make things happen: “A new day is coming in Latin America,” Trump told his cheering audience of Venezuelan expatriates.
The outlines are not difficult to discern. American recognition of opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate president has caught on in Europe — and among Venezuela’s neighbors as well, no small accomplishment. American sanctions have already deepened the humanitarian crisis in that country: There are credible accounts of restlessness within the armed forces and the neighboring Colombian government estimates that as many as 3 million Venezuelan refugees have streamed across its border in the past few years.
At some point, the reasoning goes, even Maduro will recognize that his time is up — or perhaps, the army’s officer corps will give him a shove — and the “peaceful transition” from Maduro to Guaidó that America wants will be realized. There’s a problem, however, characteristic of all good plans: With success comes a new set of challenges, and the immediate problem will be what to do with Maduro, his wife, family, and hangers-on.
Since we live in an age that is more conscious of human rights than in the past, and statecraft is now complicated by a growing body of international law, there will inevitably be some diplomatic tug of war between those who demand that Maduro be held accountable for his crimes and flown immediately to The Hague for arraignment and those who would, in effect, be willing to give Maduro a pass in exchange for his willingness to go quietly.
From my perspective, the choice is obvious. While it is right and proper, in principle, that tyrants be judged for their tyranny, such moral scruples must always be weighed against practical consequences. The whole point of offering exile and immunity from prosecution is not to sanction the misrule of people like Maduro but to ensure they would be willing to give up power.
An offer of sanctuary and the prospect of dying in bed is a huge inducement to be cooperative. A guarantee that the dictator will be put on trial and imprisoned merely persuades him to dig in his heels. If the objective of American diplomacy is to avoid bloodshed, and facilitate a peaceful transition to democracy, I would guess that Elliott Abrams, President Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela, is busily sounding out possible host countries for the Maduro entourage.
To be sure, this would not be the first time that the United States, in similar circumstances, had weighed the difference between principle and pragmatism and chosen pragmatism. Twice, during the Reagan administration, the United States was willing to risk condemnation from human rights activists by offering soft landings to bad guys.
The first, President Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti, feckless son of the notorious dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, was refused asylum since the United States felt no particular obligation to the Duvalier regime, which it had always deplored. But the opportunity to rid Haiti of “Baby Doc” did prompt Ronald Reagan to offer to facilitate his departure. It was no easy task finding a receptive ally — Spain, Greece, Morocco, Gabon, and Switzerland all refused Baby Doc and his glamorous wife Michele — but when, in February 1986, the Duvaliers finally flew into exile in France, it was aboard a U.S. Air Force jet.
The situation that presented itself just two weeks later was more complicated. While the longtime President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines had descended into deep corruption and authoritarian rule, relations between Washington and Manila — a onetime American colony — were demonstrably closer and surely more strategically significant than with Haiti.
Nevertheless, once Reagan was persuaded that Marcos had to go, he dispatched a trusted political ally to advise Marcos to “cut and cut cleanly,” which, after brief equivocation, Marcos agreed to do. And once again, when he and his wife Imelda packed their two dozen crates of possessions and currency, it was onto a U.S. Air Force C-130 en route to Hawaiian exile.
Reagan, of course, was much reviled at home for his generous treatment of Marcos. But human rights, civil order, and democracy were swiftly restored in the Philippines, and they’re still in place.
Philip Terzian, a former writer and editor at the Weekly Standard, is the author of Architects of Power: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and the American Century.
