U.S. Institute of Peace experts discuss the latest foreign policy issues from around the world in On Peace, a brief weekly collaboration with SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124.

Transcript

Laura Coates: There is an inauguration a little bit sooner than ours here in the United States. Keith Mines is the USIP Latin America program, vice president, and there is an inauguration on the 10th of Venezuela's president. Welcome back to the show. Keith, how are you?

Keith Mines: I'm great. Good to be here, Laura, thanks.

Laura Coates: Now there is a connection. People were following what was going on in Venezuela and their elections, not only because of the controversies I know you'll explain to us, but also because of the relationship between these two nations. Give us a little bit of the lay of the land as to why Americans should be looking to this inauguration as well.

Keith Mines: Well, there's two, I think, two really big interests that the United States has in Venezuela, one of course, is migration. This is a country that, over the past 10 years, has seen as many as seven or eight million Venezuelans leave the country. Many of them went into the rest of the hemisphere, but they now kind of channel directly up to the United States. And barring something getting better in the country, there's probably another two to three to four million that could be packing up and leaving in the coming year or two. So, there's a big migration issue here, but it's also the country with the largest proven reserves of petroleum, of oil. So it's a country that is a major player in the oil, global oil market and is a place that that has always been a major oil producer up until the demise of the oil sector some years ago under the Chavista regime, but it's something that could also get back into the market, and that oil is not only important for global oil supplies, it's also important, of course, for Venezuelans who've been suffering a humanitarian crisis for the last 10 to 15 years that just really sees no end. So, a number of things in play that are really important, I think, for the United States.

Laura Coates: And the questions about election denialism that we were grappling with here in this country, I mean, the unbelievable outcome and denialism that happened there was so stunning. Remind us what happened?

Keith Mines: Yeah, they kind of went even beyond just denying the election. The election was clearly won by the opposition. The front runner was María Corina Machado, a really dynamic democratic leader of the Venezuelan people. She was barred from running because she was so popular, so she went to another person as her kind of stand in, and that person was also barred. And then they ended up with Edmundo González, who is a 75-year-old diplomat and has come to be the guy that actually ran in the election, kind of again uniting the opposition in a way that hasn't happened for quite some time. So he ran and won. There was no question that, given the vote count, that the opposition was able to do precinct by precinct. There was no question that he won the election. The regime simply overturned the election by having its own vote count, which was clearly falsified, and so has put Maduro in the place of the winners and is ready now to inaugurate him on the 10th this coming Friday. So that's the state of play. González went into temporary exile in Spain, but he was very public about his intention to return and take up the presidency as its rightful victor. But the regime has credibly threatened to arrest him if he does so, he's now doing a kind of a tour of the hemisphere in advance of Friday's inauguration. He's actually here now.

Laura Coates: Yeah

Keith Mines: He arrived Saturday night. Yeah, arrived in Washington.

Laura Coates: He’s meeting with Biden?

Keith Mines: Right. He'll meet with President Biden this morning, and then he'll meet with Secretary General of the OAS Luis Almagro, a real champion of democracy in Venezuela, in the afternoon. From there, it gets a little bit sketchy. He had planned to go to Uruguay, Panama and the Dominican Republic during the rest of the week. He had a very successful visit to Argentina, but it's not entirely clear then what he does. Does he try to get back into Venezuelan territory as he promised? He said, at one point, I'll be back to Venezuela by land, sea or air. Here. It's not entirely clear whether he actually does that, or whether he'll try to do something else, but he's staying with the cause and trying to make the point that he is the rightfully elected president and has every right to take up the presidential sash on Friday.

Laura Coates: Given that tension and the reality of what actually happened and now how it's playing out, is there any consideration of some sort of negotiated, blended government of any kind that seems unlikely?

Keith Mines: Well, there's, it's something that would have to happen, I think, afterwards. But this is what I think everyone's looking at now, is, what are the options going forward? If we get to Friday and Maduro is simply inaugurated as the president again, then what are the other options? The opposition is still trying. They're kind of still hoping for a bit of a miracle. On Friday itself, they have been putting out there's two things that really will determine what happens. One is whether there's mass demonstrations, and then the other is the role of the security forces. And they're really kind of related, because if there's demonstrations on a massive level, the security forces really don't want to fire on demonstrators. And there's a certain tipping point where, if they are so large and so sustained, the security forces would probably stand down. That's what I think the opposition is still kind of hoping for. This week, there's videos of María Corina Machado and also of Edmundo González, calling on the security forces to do the right thing. But the counter videos are also kind of chilling, and that is by the regime doing these kind of passing reviews of their security forces and saying, hey, these guys are ready. They will be in the streets, and they will oppose anything.

So from there it gets interesting. Does González remain in exile? Does he continue to fight for the opposition from Spain or from somewhere else in the hemisphere? Does he establish a parallel government in exile of the kind that the country had with Juan Guaidó in 2019, for five years? But there's this other option that's been thrown out there by people like Francisco Rodríguez that is a really interesting option, to have a kind of a negotiated blended government, where there would be a kind of a grand bargain between the opposition, the regime, and the United States. And the United States is really the only player that has significant leverage to do something like this, or to do anything, frankly, that's really different than just watching this slow boil of Venezuela continue. The U.S. of course, needs a deal with Venezuela to help with migration, to help with oil and other interests. But if there was something like it would be a very ugly deal for all sides, nobody would be satisfied. But if there was a deal, for example, that included restoring relations between the U.S. and Venezuela a kind of a conditional end to national level sanctions, there'd still be individual sanctions and lifting the bounty on the on Maduro head and his colleagues, in exchange for the release of all political prisoners, international supervision of some sort of the security forces, and then a power sharing agreement that established a blended government that could oversee a long period of transition. And that is what many people feel like, is the only thing that could really work. Until now, it's been an all or nothing. If we win you lose, kind of an arrangement. And it just terrifies the Maduro government to think that an opposition would come in with full power to do to them what they've been doing to the opposition. So some kind of a long transition period, a blended government, is the one thing that may be something that could work.

Laura Coates: I'll be very curious to see how this all unfolds. Their inauguration, just four days away, ours, 14. Thank you for joining us and helping us understand this important dynamic. Thank you.

Keith Mines: Thank you, Laura. Good to be here.