A (3:34)

Now, there's been talk of late that perhaps President Trump is interested in issuing an ultimatum, a diplomatic ultimatum, if you think that's possible. What would he be demanding?

C (3:48)

Well, it's possible, it's not necessarily probable that an ultimatum would lead to Maduro departing the country. The fact of the matter is he is surrounded by Cuban intelligence operatives. And the Cuban government itself has basically colonized Venezuela because they depend on, on free oil and hydrocarbons from Venezuela just to keep going. So for the Cubans, this is an existential problem, right? And Maduro, he's a Cuban product, let's be very clear. So for them, they're going to ensure that he doesn't get weak in the knees and leaves just because there happens to be 10% of the US Navy off his doorstep. Now, having said that, the President probably has the opportunity. Definitely has the opportunity. He has choices to make of every escalating kinetic activity, for instance, that could result in additional pressure that would compel Maduro to leave.

A (4:46)

Now, I mean, I fully accept the fact that when you've got an aircraft carrier strike group and thousands of Marines and F35s and all the rest, I mean, not only are you sending a message, but they're expensive to keep in place. So, I mean, clearly the intent here is not blowing up a bunch of fishing vessels, running drugs or what have you. But what do you think the plan is? I mean, is it just get rid of Maduro and. Well, whatever the outcome is, that's gotta be better than what you have not because, I mean, we've learned from Libya, Iraq, other places that chaos isn't necessarily better than the devil that, you know.

C (5:33)

Well, I certainly think you have to ask the question, what comes next? Right. And then, and then. And as a, as a former diplomat, a retired diplomat, I always made my money pretty far down the Alphabet. A to B, B to C, C to D. I was thinking about fourth and fifth order effects, and I'm hopeful that the administration is doing the same. I think the easy part would be getting rid of Maduro. And I don't say that cavalierly. I say that understanding the military in Venezuela, understanding the lack of support that Maduro has, understanding our capabilities, the hard work happens after that. For 25 years, the institutions in that country have been systematically destroyed. And how do you trust any part of a government whose sole purpose was keeping a criminal organization functioning? So let's say that Maria Corino Machado has an interim government. Can she even trust the tax collector at the low level, at the post office, the person that gives out passports? And crucially, in a country that's basically a failed state, you don't have dominion over the entire territory. You have dissident fart groups, the eln, these are both Marxist revolutionary groups from Colombia living inside of Venezuela now, in addition to Hezbollah, the Trend Aragua and the Cartel de los Ole. So you have all these illegal criminal groups. You're going to need the military to help you secure a peace while you rebuild institutions, faith in government, and have a free and fair election.

A (7:10)

And that is the same military that has been, you know, basically keeping Maduro in power. That has been, you know, being used for repression at his, the dictator's behest.

C (7:24)

Well, you know, you raised an interesting point. Like we've seen this before in Libya or Iraq or Haiti or what have you. And let's take a lesson from Iraq. De Ba' athification was a disaster, was a disaster. And in the case of Panama, they disbanded the military, but quickly built a new civilian led National Defense, Homeland Defense Force rather than the military. There are plenty of good people within the government. Even this government, as terrible as it is in Venezuela, who either lived by the lead or silver plomo or plata. What Pablo Escobar used to say, you're either if you're with me, you get enriched. If you're against me, I'll kill you. They're either living through that or, or they join the military out of a sense of greater duty. They may not themselves be enriching themselves. The generals involved in crimes against humanity, the kidnapping of American citizens, narcotics trafficking, human rights abuses, murder, they probably can't be rehabilitated. But aren't there some others that potentially can help revitalize, reform, revamp and fix this institution that is necessary in a country that large? I hope so.

A (8:37)

And who's making that decision? I mean, is that some American commandant that's on the ground? Is it like, you know, Jerry Bremer's, you know, sort of second cousin again? He was the guy that was imposed on Iraq, didn't exactly work. I mean, you know, essentially, I mean, if the Americans take out Maduro, are the Americans necessarily leading what a regime change policy is going to be in Venezuela, not a small country.

C (9:04)

Well, I mean Secretary Colin Powell has said it pretty well. The Pottery Barn. If you break it, fix it. All right.

A (9:09)

Yeah.

C (9:10)

So I mean the question becomes then one of at what level would the US Be willing to engage? I'm not part of those conversations. Obviously I'm calling in from Charleston, South Carolina here in my hometown. But if they're having those conversations, certainly with Maria Corina Machado and her group, she has representatives in Washington. You know, for me, crucially, what does the first 24 hours look like then the first week, you know, we're getting micro focused here. And then over the course of how long before you can have either either Edmunda Gonzalez is going to be sworn in because he won the last election in July, or they're going to have to revamp the entire system and have a new set, a set of elections. And a lot of this is going to depend obviously on the Venezuelan people in the transition. You know, we put out a framework for democratic transition in March of 2020, laying out kind of what something could look like potentially. And we worked that pretty directly with the, with the leadership in the interim government and interim President Juan Guaido at that time. I am hopeful that the same conversations are happening right now with Maria Conina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez.

A (10:23)

Do you believe that there is broad popular support for, for not Maduro's removal? Again, we know what the people have, we know what the people want. But do you think there would be broad popular support for a United States led policy of regime change?

C (10:41)

MILITARY I think that the majority of people in Venezuela are so desperate for change because they've tried everything. They've negotiated, they've protested, they've won elections and yet nothing has changed. So I do believe that there's an overwhelming majority that would like to see him gone and are okay with the United States doing it. The question really becomes, well, how does the United States do it? And if we come in guns a blazing and destroy the military, which we could do in a couple of hours, but again, that's a military that you then need to secure a peace in a country that is just riddled with illegal armed groups, including Hezbollah and the FARC and the ELN and lots of other smaller groups that are seeking these kind of economic rents in the country. So it depends on how it's done, I believe. But I do believe that most Venezuelans would be, would, would support even inaction by the United States.

B (11:50)

You're Listening to the Gzero World with Ian Bremmer podcast, your weekly geopolitical deep dive into the world's biggest news stories, featuring in depth conversations with global leaders and newsmakers. To get more of Gzero's insights on global politics every morning, sign up for our free newsletter gzero daily@gzeromedia.com.

A (12:17)

Why do you think the Rick Grenell approach failed? I mean, he's in perfectly good stead with President Trump still, and he had made a bunch of trips. He really did seem to want to find a way to work with this administration and get the Chinese out, get the American energy companies doing more. It's not like the US doesn't credibly have a fist in its glove, especially under the Trump administration. What do you think? And it's not like Venezuela has changed its behavior that much. In other words, when Trump first came in this time around, he knew what he was dealing with. What changed?

C (12:56)

That's a fascinating question, right? I mean, I'll tell you, there was a point in time when I was the most handsome, most intelligent, most reasonable gringo on the planet and I was the interlocutor of choice for the regime until I recognized the games they were playing and obviously I started calling them out on it. I had the history because I had the job for so long. But many of the things that Rick Grinnell did were things that we did because I was also part of the Biden administration as ambassador. For instance, Chevron never stopped pumping oil, ever. And they got a license to actually sell that oil under President Biden. And when they did that, Maduro found out how much he was being ripped off by Tarek El Assami, the head of the oil industry and former vice president. And that guy disappeared, Right? So that was roundly criticized, negotiating with the regime. Roundly criticized. Even when I went back into Venezuela to secure the release of American hostages, I was criticized. Rick Grinnell went in to get out American hostages. They just reloaded the hostages they had, got a Chevron license and went a step further by allowing designated airline Conviasa to fly to the United States to pick up migrants. My guess here, and I'm guessing I'm speculating, of course, is there was something else Maduro was supposed to do and he yet again failed to do it. And that led to Secretary Rubio's approach of the guy's only going to listen to brute force.

A (14:31)

And let's remember, and that something else is about democratic transition, that something else is about bringing the cartels more under Heel. What is it?

C (14:42)

It's a great question. I would just be speculating, I would completely be speculating what that something else is. It could be something on migration. It could be a more muscular approach to getting the Venezuelans back.

A (14:53)

And indeed, I mean Stephen Miller has been saying, I mean he was initially one of the people that was more skeptical of the attack and was saying, hey, like we're actually working with these guys on getting migrants back, illegal migrants back. Do you really want to blow them up? He's clearly been convinced that this is the right strategy. But that was interesting.

C (15:12)

Right, right. And one of the points I think here we got to remember how many failed negotiations have there been? The Vatican's been involved, the Norwegians have been involved, the Bayesians and Barbados have been involved. We were involved at some point loosing the football. I mean Charlie Brown figures out that he's not going to get that field goal, right. And now we're hearing yet again just recently from Maduro saying just peace, not war. I want dialogue. Well, dialogue to him is monologue to any other human. What he really wants is just to tell us how it's going to be. And how it's going to be is he's going to remain in power until the day he goes to meet his maker. So the idea of a dialogue, if the President decides to. And as a diplomat, as a former diplomat, I believe in dialogue, don't get me wrong. But that dialogue needs to be framed into, okay, how exactly are you packing your bags to leave? How exactly are we reinstitutionalizing the country? How exactly are we going to get that democracy up and running again? Because that's how you deal with the human rights problem, the crimes against humanity problem, the kidnapping of Americans problem, the migration problem. And people don't talk enough about the fact that this is the largest migration in the history of the hemisphere happening right now. It's as if 75 or 80 million Americans got up and walked out. Tomorrow we'd be talking about that. And yet 9 million Venezuelans and it's. Well, the train that I would this and people coming through the Darien gap that it is ultimately destabilizing to the region. Not to mention the other.

A (16:48)

Yeah, they're mostly not making it to the US But I mean in Colombia, for example, it's a very serious problem. You hear about it all the time.

C (16:54)

Right, right. Three million. Three million in Colombia. Colombia coming out of a 52 year civil war with the FARC is. And they're trying to provide education, health Care, housing, food, opportunity for their populace, trying to rebuild so that people don't go back into criminality. And then you add on to them the desperately poor who managed to flee Venezuela by walking across the border. It's a tough situation.

A (17:18)

When you bring up the refugees in Colombia and Brazil, you have to also, even Chile, you have to recognize that the governments of those countries have not supported the United States approach to Venezuela explicitly. So even though they need the help and it's an issue, the politics haven't aligned with it. Now, related to that, I do wanna. I mean, how do you respond to the charges, both from governments in the region, even Mexico, otherwise, a quite close friend and partner of the United States, not to mention the international community, that what this amounts to so far are extrajudicial executions of people that have not been certainly convicted in any court of law, have not faced rule of law. The United Kingdom, even again, one of America's top allies, good relationship with Trump and Starmer together, and yet has suspended some intelligence cooperation because they claim what the US Is doing is illegal. How do you respond to that?

C (18:21)

Well, I've got a few different responses here. Let me start by saying that Congress has a role to play in the authorized use of military force. So I think this is a question for Congress to take up. And certainly a good senator from Kentucky who's a Republican has even raised this issue. The other thing I'd say is I've been warning about the fact that transnational criminal organizations are transnational, meaning that they don't respect borders. How we go after those organizations is that we work in cooperation across borders, transnationally, and at the Joint Interagency Task Force south and Key west, we have 20 liaison officers that do this work, because while going after a drug load is important, and I believe we should be judicializing these cases, taking down that case and working the case to find out who's got an apartment building in Brickell in Miami and who's also building something in Medellin. I want to go after the money, they want to go after the organizations. Right. So I think that we normally get more intel than we give in the region. And this is a case where these criminal organizations will change their methodologies. Right. And we will look like we have gotten some success when now we're going to be blind because we're no longer going to have regional support and the intelligence to figure out how the drugs are now going north. So I think that's, that's something we have to take a look at, and we have to be very careful about. And that's something I'm very concerned that we're losing that intelligence about what's really happening in the region.

A (19:55)

We haven't talked much so far. You've brought her up, of course, about Maria Machado, who has been the leader of the opposition, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize, who has been pretty outspoken in her support for President Trump. But of course, there's always the danger that as the United States is involved in direct military activity, there's going to be backlash against the US what does she have to do? Has she been playing her cards well so far and how do you think she needs to behave if you and I are right and military intervention is indeed imminent and forthcoming?

C (20:29)

I mean, what I can say is I don't know Maria Corino Machado. Well, we work together and in the lead up, the primaries leading into this historic election where her chosen person, Edmundo Gonzalez, won the election overwhelmingly, you know, we were very much aligned on working through democratic means. And I think one of the things that I would suggest, I've made this suggestion publicly in the past is if the theory of change here that the administration has is that somebody close to Maduro will either extradite him to the United States, exile him to another country, or send him to meet his maker. All right, that person needs to understand that the future for them is better than the present. Meaning that I would want to know that Maria Corinna Machado and the opposition, when they come into power, have a plan that would include me not going to jail as an example. And that's something I haven't seen publicly. I think I would be very, very public in my plans on how we're going to put together a government for all Venezuelans in the future. And listen, there's going to be room for change.

A (21:43)

So a broad amnesty needs to be part of early statements if anything happens.

C (21:47)

Well, there needs to at least be a plan on how they intend to go about governing. And I think amnesty may or may not be part of it. I wouldn't necessarily say a broad amnesty. There's some people who probably cannot be rehabilitated, crimes against humanity and murder, and I'm sorry, these types of things. But there needs to be a plan in place that says when we change, not everybody is going to be out. And I think that's important. Hugo Chavez won an election democratically, he won them all democratically because of the vast difference in wealth disparity, the wealth disparity in that country. And if they're going to rebuild democracy in Venezuela. They have to take into consideration that all Venezuelans need to be part of it. So that's a conversation that I think would be better served being put out there publicly right now rather than just quietly with the United States.

A (22:43)

Final question for you, Jimmy. This has been a president who talks about peace an awful lot, talks about a lot of wars that he has ended or played a part in ending his desires to end, have a peace deal in Gaza, Russia, Ukraine. He hasn't been able to, but he's certainly wanted to over the past year. What we're talking about in Venezuela is very different. We're talking about potentially regime change. Maybe we're even talking about some level of American boots on the ground. I want to ask you, before this happens, is this a good idea or a really bad idea?

C (23:21)

Well, history will prove me right or wrong on this one. I'd like to say that depending on how you go about it, I think it would be a bad idea. I think it's a good idea for regime change to happen in Venezuela because the Venezuelan people have already spoken on this issue. It would be good for the region, it would be good for Venezuelans, and there's very little popular support to this criminal organization operating at the top.

A (23:50)

Yeah, but what you said is it'd be good for regime change to happen magically. I'm asking, is it a good idea for the United States to actually bring about that regime change? Very, very different question.

C (24:01)

Well, it depends on how you do it. It depends on how you do it. So would we exchange the life of one person for freedom in that country? It's a question, right? If you think about how small the group is around Maduro, and this is something I've struggled with, and I think it's important. I'd like to know, for instance, what's the process by which the targets are currently being vetted, these drug boats, and what's the decision making? I know during the Obama administration, for instance, and other administrations that it was very tortured and the final decision making was by the president. Is that the same thing? And then when we look at who is there, there's a Soleimani type character that exists in Venezuela, and his name is Diazdara Cabello. He's the head of the military intelligence. He's inherited head of intelligence. He's definitely part of Cartel de los Olles. He's responsible for the kidnapping of American citizens. Here's a bad actor who if taken out, and I'm not trying to get a hit put out on me, I'M just saying. I'm just giving you the example. If he's taken out and then Maduro and company are given an offer to leave the country within a couple of hours, I think they would take him up on that offer. Maduro does not have a lot of support in the country at all. He never served in the military. Diaz d' Alcabello is his way into the military. So you have a couple of actors like this that are in the country. It's a very small group, and they have been able to stay in power with the help of the Cubans and also the help of largesse for those who work most heartily for them, and also fear. And that's why you'll find people such as General Baduel, who was put in jail and then died there, or Captain Acosta Arevalo, who, who was tortured and died soon after a public hearing in a judicial hearing, begging for help, and he soon died thereafter. That's the kind of. Those are the messages they're sending to keep people on side. I think it's a house of cards. Now, having said that, afterwards, how do you rebuild institutions that have been completely gutted for 25 years in a country that doesn't control its territory? That's going to be a lot of hard work. So I'm not suggesting it'll be easy at all. I am suggesting that in much the same way as in Panama. I think arguably with Manuel Noriega gone, and I believe Nicolas Maduro is much worse than Noriega vis a vis Noriega. Much worse. But arguably Panama is much better off today with a stronger democracy and a growing economy and a big middle class than it would have been had stuck around. But they're important moral questions that we have to struggle with, have to think through.

A (26:43)

Yeah, well, certainly not easy. Potential for a lot of backlash. Lots of questions that have not yet been answered. Transparency that you'd like to see. So, I mean, those are things that I think we want to certainly make sure our viewers are aware of as they're about to see probably very different headlines from what they've seen so far. Jimmy Storey, thanks so much for being a part of this. Appreciate you helping us out today.

C (27:07)

Thanks for having me on today. I really appreciate it.

A (27:13)

That's it for today's edition of the Gzero World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZero World? 5 stars, only 5 stars. Otherwise, don't do it on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

C (27:27)

Tell your friends Sam.