Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s attempt to stay in power could ultimately drive half the country’s population to seek refuge abroad, according to a key U.S. diplomat.
“Very, very, possible 15 million people leave,” Carlos Trujillo, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, told the Washington Examiner. “Right now, only four [million] have left, and four million has overwhelmed Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and Peru … Imagine what eight [million] does. Imagine what 10 [million] does. Imagine what 12 [million] does.”
That dire portrait, Trujillo suggested, guarantees that Maduro will not be able to withstand regional pressure to relinquish power. The regime has retained control of the military in the three months since President Trump and other major Western democracies recognized top opposition lawmaker Juan Guaidó as the legitimate interim president. Trujillo dismissed the idea that the momentum to oust Maduro is slowing, even if U.S. officials don’t have a quick-fix plan in place.
“Military action is not happening right now, so diplomatic pressure and sanctions take time,” Trujillo said. “It takes time. You don’t feel the economic pinch day one or day two or month one or month two, but month six and seven and eight, when you’ve had a lot of poor spending decisions, those start racking up.”
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Trump imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PdVSA, in January. The administration also blacklisted four companies with vessels that ferry oil from Venezuela to the island regime. The imposition of those sanctions, released last week, is designed to put a crimp in Maduro’s ability to barter oil in exchange for support from the Cuban security services.
Those are indirect moves against Maduro, but a series of power outages, including two nationwide blackouts in March, have brought the political crisis home for millions of people who find themselves without electricity, sometimes for days at a time.
“Here’s what my days have been like lately. I get up to see if there’s any power in town,” José Antonio Ocanto, a Venezuelan radio host, explained in a Los Angeles Times column published Sunday. “If there isn’t, not only does it mean I can’t work; it also means my family doesn’t have water to drink or shower with. It means our refrigerator doesn’t work, so any perishable food has to get cooked right away.”
U.S. officials tried to deliver humanitarian aid in February, in coordination with Guaidó, but the effort was thwarted by colectivos, armed gangs loyal to the Maduro regime. Trump’s team has used the threat of military intervention to deter any violence against Guaidó, but the rhetoric intensified in March after regime forces seized the opposition leader’s top aide. U.S. officials now refer to the gangs as “illegal terrorist groups,” while Sen. Marco Rubio is urging Trump to brand the Maduro regime a foreign terrorist organization. Sen. Rick Scott, Florida’s other Republican senator, is calling openly for the use of military assets to deliver humanitarian aid to Venezuela.
Those proposals came on the heels of OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro arguing that regional powers have a “responsibility to protect” the Venezuelan people from the regime. That term refers to a United Nations doctrine developed in the wake of the Rwandan genocide and invoked to justify the overthrow of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
“R2P is not synonymous with military intervention,” Almagro said in March, using the acronym for the United Nations doctrine. “In particular, the option of other peaceful means should be kept open, but all options involving the integral application of the R2P process should be kept open.”
[Also read: US military intervention on the table for Venezuela]
Latin American nations, historically, are allergic to the prospect of U.S. military intervention in the region. Trujillo is careful not to call for force against Maduro, but he agrees with Almagro that the “responsibility to protect” doctrine applies to Venezuela.
“There is a duty to protect, and whether it’s military action or another action, that’s up to everybody’s commander in chief; and whether those commanders in chief want to delegate that to a multilateral institution, that’s their [issue],” he said. “When you have the largest humanitarian crisis and the largest refugee crisis in the history of the Western Hemisphere, if this doesn’t raise the levels to that responsibility to protect, what does?”
Whether militarily or not, Trujillo thinks that the OAS will play a key role in organizing the coalition against Maduro. The OAS voted to recognize Guaidó’s designated ambassador to the regional body and displace Maduro’s envoy, but a vote of 18 to nine, with six abstentions. El Salvador’s incoming president is also a critic of Maduro, so the regime will have to contend soon with 20 adversarial neighbors.
U.S. officials have to tread lightly when talking about anything that could smack of American intervention in Latin America, but Trujillo thinks such developments foreshadow a growing consensus against Maduro.
“At what point is that crisis so overwhelming that it overtakes some of your own sovereign institutions?” Trujillo said. “I really think the region needs to reflect on how seriously they take that responsibility to protect, and, what are they willing to do? I don’t think that’s a question that the U.S. will answer unilaterally but I think it’s a question that multilaterally the entire region needs to sit down and reflect on.”
