A Dangerous Moment for Venezuela – and the Region 

EXPERT INTERVIEW — Nicolas Maduro is set to be inaugurated for his third term as president of Venezuela on Friday. He will be sworn in after a disputed presidential election in July, which opposition challenger Edmundo Gonzalez asserts he won. The opposition has released vote tallies that they say prove Gonzalez is the rightful victor, an assessment backed by the United Nations, the United States, and many of the democratic powers in the region have likewise contested Maduro’s claimed win.

Gonzalez has been in effective exile in Spain since September, but he says he is returning to Caracas to take what he considers his rightful office, even under threat of arrest by Venezuelan authorities. Former leaders from across Latin America have said they will accompany Gonzalez to the Venezuelan capital. A showdown may be in store for an important country in the hemisphere.

The Cipher Brief turned to Ambassador Patrick Duddy, former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, to discuss these developments, assess what we may see in Venezuela in the coming days, and understand what the U.S. can do by way of response. “It’s not clear yet what’s going to happen,” he said. “A certain level of violence probably can’t be ruled out.”

Ambassador Duddy spoke with Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski. Their conversation below has been edited for length and clarity. You can also watch their full discussion on The Cipher Brief YouTube channel.

Nagorski: How have we gotten to this moment in Caracas?

Ambassador Duddy: Hugo Chavez was originally elected back in 1998. He died in 2013. He was succeeded by his then-vice president and foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro. Maduro has since stage-managed several electoral processes, and the most recent was last summer on July 28. That election has been widely denounced by the United Nations and by most of the democratic countries of the world as fraudulent. The democratic opposition in Venezuela was able to prove it by producing and posting the voting records, called the “actas,” from more than 80% of all the voting stations in the country. That material suggested that the opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, had won about two-thirds of the vote.

The Maduro team refused to recognize that outcome and eventually, effectively drove Edmundo Gonzalez into exile. He left in a sense voluntarily, but only because he was almost certainly about to be detained. And then the non-elected but widely acclaimed leader of the opposition, María Corina Machado, went into hiding.

This Friday, the Maduro regime is scheduled to choreograph yet another inauguration. Nicolas Maduro really retains virtually no democratic legitimacy. He has become a real pariah, both in much of the world, but also very specifically in Latin America. Edmundo Gonzalez, who the United States recognizes as the President-elect of Venezuela, has vowed to return this week. Maduro, for his part, has said that if he does, he will be arrested.

Nagorski: Is this likely to be a violent showdown? What do we think we need to be prepared for here?

Ambassador Duddy: It is worth noting that María Corina Machado has called on her supporters, the supporters of Edmundo Gonzalez, all of those who voted for Gonzalez or against Maduro, to demonstrate in protest for Maduro’s determination to simply ignore the election and have himself installed again as president.

Might there be clashes? Well, there’s been a certain level of violence at several points in recent years, and I think it’s too early to say how violent this week will get. That will, to some degree, depend on Maduro’s reaction to Gonzalez’s return. And it may also be affected by who is accompanying the president-elect when he returns, because there are some rumors that he will be accompanied by one or more former presidents from the region. I don’t know that that is true, but I understand that Mr. Gonzalez has met with a number of ex-presidents in Panama and elsewhere.

The Maduro regime is sensitive to how things look to others in the region. And they are also aware that much of the region, including many other leaders who define themselves as being, as Maduro does, on the left, have refused to recognize the legitimacy of his claims to having been reelected. So it’s not clear yet what’s going to happen. A certain level of violence probably can’t be ruled out. But we haven’t seen wholesale, near civil war-like conditions in Venezuela that have occurred in some other countries.

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Nagorski: Beyond the obvious interest that the United States has in promoting democratic elections in the region, what other United States interests are at play here? Why does Venezuela matter?

Ambassador Duddy: On the economic front, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world — larger than Saudi Arabia. Their oil sector is dysfunctional. It’s dilapidated and has long suffered from a lack of adequate capital investment, and that sector requires substantial capital investment.

Beyond that, Venezuela has actively courted Iran, Russia, and others in an effort to forge a united front to limit and roll back any influence that the United States has within the region. And they’ve become a source of support to some of the other very repressive governments we see in Latin America, the Cubans and the Nicaraguans coming most immediately to mind.

Nagorski: What can the United States do about any of this?

Ambassador Duddy: Hard question. Do I think we should invade? No. Theoretically, the elections that took place last year happened after an agreement that was, to some degree, choreographed — there was an agreement between the opposition and the regime. But it happened under, to some degree, a chapeau of U.S. support for the democratic process. And the regime made very specific commitments from which they almost immediately began to walk away, and from which they walked away definitively by later in the spring.

As a consequence of the initial agreement, the U.S. lifted some sanctions. As the regime walked away, we reimposed them, but we did not reimpose them all. And there are still measures that the U.S. could take which would be punitive for the Venezuelan regime. I think we should be ready to reimpose those measures if things get out of hand. At the same time, I think we should be continuing to work with the United Nations, other countries within the region, the Organization of American States, to do what we can to foster a return to democracy and protection of human rights.

Nagorski: Do you believe Maduro will finish this term?Ambassador Duddy: I would only say that the regime there has survived longer than many people thought likely. And to some degree, that is possible if A, you don’t care about world opinion, and B, you have the resources necessary to sustain yourself in power. The oil and gas sector in Venezuela is dilapidated, but it still generates just enough income to support the regime.

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