THE WEST IS IN A HOPELESS BIND OVER MADURO / THE FINANCIAL TIMES OP EDITORIAL

The west is in a hopeless bind over Maduro

Venezuela’s autocratic leader has jailed his opponents and left America and Europe facing an awkward dilemma

Michael Stott

Nicolás Maduro speaks during a demonstration in August to defend his claimed victory in the presidential election in Venezuela © Pedro Rances Mattey/Anadolu via Getty Images

How do you deal with an autocrat who steals an election, jails his opponents and turns his back on the international community? 

Particularly when his country sits on the world’s biggest oil reserves and has triggered one of the worst international refugee crises?

This is the unenviable dilemma facing the US and the EU after Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro at the weekend forced the man widely recognised as the winner of July’s presidential election, Edmundo González, into exile in Spain.

The move was a serious blow to the opposition, which vowed to keep campaigning for González to be inaugurated in January as Venezuela’s elected president. 

This is on the basis of more than 80 per cent of the tally sheets collected from voting stations, which showed González beat Maduro by more than two to one.

Despite the brave words from the opposition, the ferocity of Maduro’s repression means González is likely to stay in exile for the foreseeable future, along with scores of other opposition politicians.

The immediate reaction from Washington and Brussels amounted to little more than hand-wringing. 

Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, condemned Maduro’s moves and called on him to cease repression while the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said the bloc would “continue to support the Venezuelan people in their democratic aspirations” — hardly a phrase calculated to strike fear into Maduro. 

A National Security Council spokesperson said the US “was considering a range of options to demonstrate to Maduro and his representatives that their misgovernance in Venezuela has consequences”.

Yet there are no easy solutions. 

A Trump-era campaign of “maximum pressure” sanctions failed to dislodge Maduro, as did an effort to recognise opposition leader Juan Guaidó in 2019 as Venezuela’s legitimate president on the basis that Maduro had stolen the 2018 election.

These failures informed the focus this year on elections and diplomacy. 

But Christopher Sabatini, at the Chatham House think-tank, said the Americans and Europeans were too optimistic about the chances of an opposition election victory pressuring Maduro into agreeing a handover of power.

“There was an overestimation of the appetite for change among some elements of the Maduro government,” he said. 

“In fact, the government was more united and better prepared for a crackdown than most people had expected.”

Brazil and Colombia, with US support, have been attempting to engage Maduro in talks about political change, in return for guarantees of protection for him and his inner circle.

The problem, one senior Latin American diplomat said, was that Maduro had not picked up the phone since the election. 

“There have been various attempts to schedule Zoom calls but they didn’t happen,” he said.

Diplomats believe the US may announce additional sanctions in the coming days against Venezuelan officials responsible for bogus voting results and the post-election crackdown, in which more than 2,000 people have been imprisoned. 

But with the US election looming in November, few see Washington taking bolder action. 

Although the Biden administration reimposed broad oil sanctions against Caracas in April after Maduro failed to keep promises on free and fair elections, exemptions granted to individual oil companies — in particular Chevron — have helped Venezuelan oil production increase significantly.

This policy, which injected fresh dollars into the economy, is unlikely to be reversed anytime soon. 

“The US doesn’t want to do anything that might lead to an increase in fuel prices before the November election,” noted a second Latin American diplomat in Washington.

But some experts want a tougher line.

“The Biden administration are going to have to act,” said Ryan Berg, head of the Americas programme at the Washington think-tank CSIS. 

“If we don’t step up, the Venezuelan opposition will feel we have completely abandoned them.”

Maduro’s other trump card is refugees. 

Nearly 8mn people have fled Venezuela since the revolutionary socialist leader took power in 2013. 

The last thing the White House wants is a fresh wave of Venezuelan migrants at the US southern border just before November’s election.

For now, Latin American diplomats refuse to give up on mediation efforts, despite Maduro’s manifest lack of interest. 

So what happens next?

Tom Shannon, a former top state department official, sees two scenarios: consolidation of a repressive dictatorship along the lines of Nicaragua or a popular uprising to oust Maduro, similar to the one which toppled Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1989.

“The most likely scenario is the status quo,” he concluded.