A question about these days when Washington pauses to celebrate the great Acción de Gracias and tense Caracas before the United States potentially complies with its threat to intervene militarily in Venezuela: Will Presidents Donald Trump and Nicolás Maduro speak publicly, and how did that come about for the first time in their statements to the press? While this doubt ends, another question arises: What can Maduro offer the tenant of Casablanca to change his mind?
“I think there is only one thing that can achieve this goal: saying that the movement will go. That is the problem? That is the one thing that Maduro will not deliver,” says Briton Phil Gunson, a Crisis Group expert who has lived in Venezuela for 26 years. “I put a lot of things on the negotiating table, in terms of energy and other natural resources and in the workplace,” Johnson recalled, referring to the communications rounds before Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the lead in negotiations. “We know how to plant Rubio, who has a very ideological focus on this topic: Maduro, for the United States, is the supposed leader of this Sun Cartel. He has to go. He is non-negotiable. Anything else will be interpreted as a failure for him, and who knows if he will meet his end in front of the State Department.”
However, there are more options for the President of Venezuela. Regarding immigration for example. It could also commit to doing more to stop drug trafficking, despite the fact that Washington is using this in its campaign of extrajudicial executions in international waters in the Caribbean, although Venezuela’s role in fentanyl trafficking has been shown to be non-existent and insignificant in the case of cocaine.
“Given that the Trump presidency is a coup at a distance, it is not unlikely that Maduro will convince Trump that he will accept deportations of Venezuelan migrants that are more public and more numerous than they are today,” warns Christopher Sabatini, senior Latin America researcher at Chatham House.
The expert recalls that the candidate then came to Venezuela during the election campaign that led to the return to Casablanca “as a case of national interest, arguing that (the criminal gang with origins in the South American country) Tren de Aragua had seized Aurora in Colorado – which is not confirmed – and that Maduro had emptied his prisons to fill the United States with criminals.” He added: “Trump needs something that allows him to decide that he has solved these problems, illegal immigration and drug trafficking, so that he can achieve victory.”
Sabatini does not rule out a third option: for the Venezuelan president, if not his president, to present “some of the bosses” who are considered by the American authorities to be in front of the de los Soles Cartel, “such as Diosdado Cabello or his two brothers (Jorge and Delcy) Rodriguez.”
Economist Victor Alvarez, who was Minister of Basic Industries and Mining between 2004 and 2006, believes that the Venezuelan president is reaching this point without a real possibility of showing strength: after years of sanctions, isolation, and arrests, his survival has depended more on political cunning than on military force. What then falls? “The oil industry offered to American companies to ensure stable supplies of crude oil and limit the scope of Venezuela’s agreements with Russia, China, Iran and other geopolitical rivals of the United States,” said Alvarez, who has been a critic of Maduro’s government for years.
Ask for more, accept less
“The plan was always to increase the military presence in the Caribbean and thus force Maduro to escape from an unbearable prison,” he said in a phone conversation from New Orleans, where Tulane University professor David Smiled is based. What adventure could the Venezuelan president and access to natural resources offer in order to “stay in power, maybe a few years longer and call early elections.” “Until the Biden administration makes good on these broken promises.”
So far, Plan A has not worked, Smilda insists, so Trump can now accept concessions that have not been granted for months. The analyst says: “This is Trump’s negotiating style. As for Venezuela, it is an outstanding issue, and I was not able to solve it during his first administration: making extreme demands to accept a much lower amount, the sooner I can achieve victory.” “Lo ha hecho, sin ir más lejos, con China y los aranceles.”
What seems clear is that military intervention in Venezuela may cause problems at home. The latest opinion polls show that 70% in the United States oppose a military adventure with these characteristics, and based on its supporter base, the MAGA movement, it does not want to talk about anything that does not focus on the problems of Americans. “This is why Trump wants to talk to Maduro,” Sabatini adds, “because he has nothing clear about the appropriateness of his military plans, and given the fact that the attacks on speedboats and the unprecedented military deployment have not worked. For this reason, and because he likes to think that he can talk to anyone capable of convincing any criminal tyrant.”
These days, Washington has revived the memory of the scenario that the US President followed with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his first term. After months of causing a conflict with unexpected consequences, they both ended the crisis with a face-to-face meeting in Singapore, the first between an American president and the leader of the Pyongyang regime. Besides my theatrical appeasement in front of the world, it was soon over.
But if Trump, then and now, likes to promote himself as a natural negotiator, “an expert in presenting failure as success,” as Gunson explains, Maduro arrives at the call with a slim margin of maneuver, according to Venezuelan political scientist Benigno Alarcón, a professor and specialist in conflict analysis and negotiation. Andres Bello Catholic University of Caracas.
The reputation that the Chavez regime gained in previous negotiations has been severely damaged, after several incomplete agreements, I warn you. He asserts that “Washington knows that any benefit that Maduro promises can be obtained with more guarantees and better conditions under a democratic government.” “There is a problem that the United States does not recognize Maduro and always prefers to negotiate with a legitimate government,” Alarcón says. “Venezuela will only turn the wheel when it realizes that a collision is imminent. Until then, it will be possible for the United States to fall back like other times, and it will continue to resist.”
If that patience finally runs out, Maduro will always find a way out of the country, knowing it won’t be easy in a world where autocrats live in golden exile, their money protected in secret bank accounts in Switzerland. “I don’t think going to Cuba is a good idea,” warns Sabatini, who agrees, with other experts consulted for this report, that his best option is Russia. Under the protection of its president, Vladimir Putin, Aliyevna could join Bashar al-Assad, the delegated dictator in Syria.