US must act to isolate Venezuela’s regime

Andres Oppenheimer

More than a month has passed since Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro stole the July 28 elections, and the U.S. and Latin American democracies’ demands that Maduro show evidence of his self-proclaimed victory are sounding increasingly useless. It’s time to move forward with collective diplomatic and economic sanctions.

That’s the conclusion I reached after interviewing Panama’s President Jose Raúl Mulino and other Latin American and U.S. officials in recent days. Many democracies in the region have run out of patience with efforts by Brazil and Colombia’s leftist presidents to convince Maduro to show his voting records and allow a transition to democracy.

The Biden administration in April re-imposed some U.S. oil sanctions on Venezuela that it had previously lifted in exchange for Maduro’s promises to allow a competitive election. In addition, it is reportedly considering reinstating the remaining U.S. oil sanctions, and slapping new personal visa restrictions on about 60 Venezuelan election officials, Supreme Court justices and military who helped perpetrate Maduro’s electoral fraud.

But there are growing fears that unless there is a stronger collective international effort to isolate Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator will cling to power indefinitely. That could result in a new exodus of millions of Venezuelans, in addition to the nearly 8 million who have fled the country since Maduro took power in 2013.

Panama’s president Mulino told me that Brazil and Colombia’s talks with the Venezuelan dictatorship are not going anywhere. He added that Brazil’s proposal that Maduro hold a new election would only help Maduro buy time, and give him “a giant (political) oxygen tank.”

Panama, which on Jan. 1 will take over the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, has already broken diplomatic ties with the Maduro regime, suspended air traffic with Venezuela, and has recognized opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as that country’s president elect.

According to exit polls and copies of voting tallies made public by the Venezuelan opposition, Gonzalez Urrutia won the election by a landslide with nearly 70% of the vote.

Mulino told me that the time has come for democratic countries to implement a “real material isolation” of Venezuela. When I asked him whether other countries should follow Panama’s example and suspend air traffic with Venezuela, he responded, “I think so.”

There is a big debate within U.S. diplomatic circles on whether broader economic sanctions on Venezuela would help the cause of democracy, or only accelerate the country’s economic decline and trigger a new wave of migration.

Venezuelan opposition leaders say that, at the very least, the Biden Administration and other countries should impose visa restrictions on more Venezuelan officials and their cronies in the business world.

The Biden Administration has already revoked the visas of many top Maduro regime officials and their close relatives, but Venezuelan opposition leaders tell me that they gave U.S. officials a list of 1,560 Venezuelan officials and business people who they consider should be targeted as well.

Juan Guaidó, the former head of Venezuela’s National Assembly who was recognized by about 50 countries as interim president after the 2018 elections, confirmed to me that such a list was delivered to the U.S. State Department earlier this year. The people on that list should be made responsible for their crimes, he said.

“A month has passed since the elections, and Maduro has already been offered all possible carrots to allow a peaceful transition to democracy,” Guaidó told me. “Now, it’s time to step up the pressure and apply sanctions to those responsible for stealing the elections.”

Maduro is in a much weaker position today than after the 2018 elections, and may be more likely to seek a negotiated solution to the current crisis. Former leftist allies like Brazil and Colombia have taken distance from him, and he has less money to pay his security forces following the reinstatement of some U.S. oil sanctions. He has also lost the support of many of Venezuela’s poor: Many of the anti-Maduro street protests in the aftermath of the July 28 elections took place in formerly Chavista neighborhoods.

“Will he be able to count on the Bolivarian National Guard foot soldier, or on the lower officer ranks of the army if it is called to the streets, who each earn around $10 a day?,” asked Ryan Berg, a Latin America expert with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

As I’m finishing writing this column, the U.S. State Department has issued a statement on occasion of the first month of Maduro’s election steal, in which it tacitly boasts about the U.S. diplomatic success in winning Organization of American States votes to demand “transparency, impartial review, and protection of electoral integrity” in Venezuela.

That’s all very nice, but it’s just words. It’s time for the Biden Administration and Latin American countries to take collective economic and diplomatic sanctions against Maduro to speed up his demise, restore democracy and avoid a new massive exodus of Venezuelans.