KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
As the Venezuelan crisis grinds on into what is expected to be another frustrating year of dashed hopes and empty bellies, the question of whether there is another approach that would be more effective looms. The country has been stuck for 20 years as the Chavez and subsequent Maduro regimes struggled to hold on to power against an opposition that has sought to displace them, largely — but not always — through peaceful means.
A more effective approach than the total displacement of one side requires a lengthier process of coexistent power sharing that would enable both sides to engage in a process whereby the political system is shifted to one of drawn-out cooperation. The U.S. could assist by putting in play its considerable incentives — including restoring diplomatic relations with the Maduro regime — to shore up such a process.
For two decades, the Venezuelan government and opposition have been locked in an all-or-nothing death match, a winner-take-all contest for power. As early as 2003, Carter Center negotiator Francisco Diez noted of one process: “the opposition seeks the recall referendum as a means by which to take power and then be in a position to ‘eliminate’ Chavismo … Chavez is after the failure of the opposition in the referendum as a way to eliminate every challenge to his ‘revolutionary’ project and to consolidate power. Neither side is thinking about coexistence ... .” Primacy rather than co-existence was the goal the two sides had adopted, something the political system came to be structured around.
More recently analyst Francisco Rodriguez noted in a forthcoming book that the country’s political structure became one where “scorched earth” politics prevails, in a system that is unable to “manage the conflicts inherent in a polarized society.” At a fundamental level,” Rodriquez continues, “Venezuela is trapped in a catastrophic stalemate between forces that are not powerful enough to prevail over each other but are powerful enough to impede one from governing effectively.”
This all-or-nothing structure was what doomed the 2024 presidential election to failure and left the democratic opposition and the majority of Venezuelans reeling in frustration. In fact, the result should have been easily predictable, and any outcome other than the one that transpired — the Maduro regime stealing an election the opposition legitimately and verifiably won — would have been highly unusual.
The closest anyone got during the election cycle to changing the nature of the contest was a civil society-promoted effort to secure a coexistence pact that would have given incentives and guarantees to the loser. These were not, however, incentives about structural coexistence or power sharing, but survival. And it didn’t help that the most popular opposition candidate — who was eventually barred by the regime from running — had a long history of seeking the total demise of her opponents in the regime and was not trusted by the regime and its supporters. The incentives for ceding power were simply not there.
What would it take to change the rules of the game in Venezuela in such a way that a new outcome could emerge?
The opposition would need to move past its legitimate win in the 2024 elections and accept the reality that there is simply little hope of recovering a full win.
Rodriguez offers the 1989 elections in Poland as one possible model to consider. After losing by a two-to-one margin in parliamentary elections, General Wojciech Jaruzelski’s ruling party entered into a power-sharing agreement with the opposition Solidarity movement in which Jaruzelski would continue as president with control of the interior and defense ministries, while Solidarity was given the prime ministry and the rest of the cabinet.
Rodriguez sees merit in returning to the “Democratic Transition Framework for Venezuela” that was developed by the Office of the Special Envoy for Venezuela in the first Trump administration in March 2020. The proposal intended to break the deadlock in the negotiations by allowing for a power-sharing agreement through a Council of State that would consist of representatives of the main parties. The council would serve as the country’s executive branch on an interim, but possibly long-term basis.
On the opposition side it should include a more balanced and representative core group of negotiators than currently exists, and pull in civil society, the minor opposition parties who have been deliberately excluded from talks, and other major sectors such as business and education. On the government side, it should include labor, government workers, others from the business community and its own civil organizations.
As things currently stand, the opposition is involved in a spirited debate about whether to participate or not, but the only real outcome from participating is preserving what little democratic space remains and securing some seats in the assembly and municipal and state governments. They should set their sights higher. Moving on from the stolen election of 2024 will be hard, but less hard than another six years of economic and political decline.
The U.S. has the only real leverage that could move all the parties to assemble around a new framework. To date, the U.S. has used its leverage primarily to get the parties to the negotiating table and from there to a free and fair election. But the limitations of its leverage were evident as the results of the election were simply ignored. A more effective approach would be for Washington to use its considerable leverage backed by concerted diplomatic effort to support a policy of regime-opposition coexistence through power sharing.
One consideration for the United States could be some kind of grand bargain between the U.S., Maduro and the opposition. This would require sustained talks between the three parties, not channeling U.S. leverage through the opposition as has generally been done to date.
As a part of the bargain, the U.S. would benefit from restoring relations with Venezuela, which would give it a much better sense for the country and its social and political dynamic and increase its influence considerably. The rationale for breaking relations with Venezuela and support for the alternative government of Juan Guaidó has long passed. From migration, to oil, to the day-to-day work that embassies do in the competition with our adversaries, the U.S. would be better off with a relationship than without. This would also pull in friends from across the hemisphere and around the world.
Currently none of this is on the table as all sides remain stuck in models that have little chance of success and no means of changing the current brutal political dynamic. Decisions are being made from a purely tactical perspective, transactionally and for short term gains, not from a perspective of the long-term changes that are needed to return Venezuela to functionality and modernity.
As it is now, America’s adversaries — Russia, China and even a weakened Iran — have a wide berth to build an alliance with a geographically important country in the hemisphere. A bold move to get the parties to a more productive place through a grand bargain would change Venezuela’s toxic dynamic and allow the country to move toward peace.