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- [00:00]
A
Dan I'm Dan Kurtz Phelan and this is the Foreign affairs interview.
- [00:06]
B
There really is no long term political solution on the table. What we're looking at is a possible, much diminished Chavista regime hanging on, struggling on, but staying in power while the US Essentially turns Venezuela into a colony in all but name.
- [00:26]
C
Latin America is heading in a very negative direction and the military, US Military is not going to solve that. The US has to come in with more than just trade, but have a very ambitious approach to economic policy, especially if he wants to compete with China in the Western Hemisphere.
- [00:40]
A
It was just a few days ago that after months of saber rattling by the Trump administration, US Forces raided Venezuela and captured its leader, Nicolas Maduro. Already, Trump has suggested that the United States could run the country and has demanded a huge stake in Venezuela's vast oil resources. Maduro, meanwhile, sits in a New York jail awaiting trial. But much remains unclear about what happens in Venezuela. With Maduro gone but his regime largely still in place, how his ouster affects the wider region, and what's next as the Trump administration flexes its muscles in Latin America. In this special two part episode, I spoke on the morning of Wednesday, January 7th, with two experts on Venezuela seeking to make sense of the situation. First, Phil Gunson, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group who is based in Caracas, explores the dynamics within Venezuela and the prospects for the country's new president. Delsey Rodriguez. Then Juan Gonzalez, a longtime U.S. policymaker, including a recent stretch overseeing Latin America on the National Security Council, charts the history and near future of US Policy towards Venezuela. Both make clear how difficult and dangerous the path ahead will be for Venezuela and for the United States. Phil, thank you so much for doing this in a complicated and stressful week for you in Caracas.
- [02:03]
B
It has been rather. Yes, thanks, Dan. Nice to be with you.
- [02:06]
A
I want to start on a perhaps somewhat more personal note than we normally would. How has it felt to be in Caracas over the last week? Were people expecting dramatic action? What has it felt like in the aftermath of Maduro's capture on Saturday?
- [02:19]
B
Well, it's been very quiet on the streets for the most part, and, and it's very hard to talk, you know, authoritatively about public opinion, how people overall are taking it. I mean, all we have really is personal, personal anecdotes, personal impressions, people that we've been able to speak to. From my point of view, of course, it's been extremely busy because the, the international media attention on this has, has been huge. As, as you might imagine. It's a really extraordinary event. But as I say, the streets have been pretty quiet except for government people. I mean, they've called one or two demonstrations, you know, to demand Maduro's release and to express support for the government and so on, the security forces in particular, military intelligence and, and also the collectivos, you know, these armed civilians have been doing the rounds and, and harassing people and getting people to show them their phones. And there were some journalists picked up, quite a few journalists picked up a couple of days ago, most if not all of them since released, fortunately. But it's been tense. I mean, it started out obviously, the shock, the initial shock, then, then it were extremely quiet, eerily quiet. And, and I think that it's fair to say that right now the prevailing mood is tension. People are not going out for their own amusement or, or you know, to do anything non essential, trying to get on with their lives. But there's definitely an air of, of, of nervousness, of apprehension.
- [03:42]
A
As you've watched other power centers, other actors within the Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan elite more broadly in the days since Maduro was flown out of Venezuela to that U.S. navy ship. Has anything surprised you about that reaction? What have you made of the behavior of Dulcie Rodriguez, now the interim president, and others around her?
- [04:03]
B
Well, of course, these are unprecedented times and we don't know of course, what they say to each other behind the scenes. All we have is their, their public statements and the way they look when they appear in public. I suppose the most surprising thing has not really been the reaction. I mean, the reactions here have been, as you would expect, a mixture of shock and rejection, obviously anger that this would happen. I mean, it's kind of ironic in a way because of course this is a government that ever since the days of Hugo Chavez has been talking about US imperialism and the threat and CIA attacks and at any moment we were going to be invaded. And most of the time it's been nonsense to be frank. I mean, it's been a sort of a way of rallying the troops and so on. And now they're faced with the real thing and they don't seem to know how to deal with it really. I mean, they didn't know how to deal with it. On Saturday morning in the early hours when the much vaunted air defenses fail completely, the US forces seem to have, given the circumstances, had relatively little trouble seizing the head of state and taking him out of the country. So that has to be a real wake up call for, for the people in government here. They must feel defenseless right now. And so, of course, they're in this situation where they're really faced with an existential dilemma. I mean, what do they do? They accede to Donald Trump's demands, which almost amount to turning Venezuela into kind of neo colony, or they resist and face what they've already seen the US Forces are capable of, in a military sense, or worse, and economic strangulation. And it's not an abstract threat. The US Is continuing to seize oil tankers, for example. Apparently they've seized a couple just today. And so how do you deal with that? Because at the same time, they have to somehow preserve this revolutionary rhetoric. They're standing up to imperialism because they can't be seen to be just capitulating.
- [06:01]
A
The challenge for Delsey Rodriguez, as it appears from the outside, is whether she can balance her control over elites and decision makers and other power centers within Venezuela with these demands from the Trump administration, which, as you say, are these kind of neocolonial demands for control over oil and other resources. Presumably they're kind of payoffs to various people around Trump and the US Government as well. The preliminary question to me is how does power work in Venezuela right now? If you look at the kind of key actors that, that Delsey needs to pay attention to and cultivate and keep on side, who are those actors, and what are the prospects of her doing so?
- [06:45]
B
Yeah, she is in an extremely difficult position, personally. I mean, she has to perform this balancing act between outrageous, unreasonable demands from the US and the people here, as you say, that she needs to keep on side. And of course, she and her principal ally, who's her own brother, Jorge, the head of the National Assembly Department, they're the civilians. They don't have any real control or influence over the armed forces. They're up against within the upper echelons in the ruling circle, at the very top, they are up against the Defense Minister, Padrino Lopez, and the Interior Minister, the EST Cabello, who between them control all the means, all the guns, basically, the guns on the tanks, on the planes. I mean, you know, Padrino controls the. The armed forces. Cabello also has some influence in the armed forces, but he controls the police, he controls most of the intelligence services. He can call on these, they call it divorce, these, these civilian gunmen, potentially even on Colombian guerrillas. And against that, what are Jorge and what, what do they have to offer? I mean, Jorge and Dely, how are they going to kind of manage this? I mean, I suppose the, the principal thing that they have, apart from their own native Wit, because neither of them is stupid. I mean, they've been at the top of the greasy pole for some time and they're very clever operators. But I think what they really have going for them is that they are the ones who are in a position to negotiate with the outside world, led by the US of course, but other countries as well, which is something that really Cabello and Padrino can't do. So I think it would be premature to think that there's going to be any kind of open power struggle at the top, because they all, they're all very well aware. Even, you know, the people who could, who could depose Delsey in half an hour if they, if they chose to, they're not likely to do that because. Because they know what the consequences of that would be. They need to hang together and they need to come up with a collective response to what's going on, which is going to mix defiance with collaboration, cooperation with the US And I don't know. I don't really know how they're going to do that.
- [08:53]
A
Do you have any sense of what the guns want? If you look at the colectivos or the intelligence forces, the military, what are their interests? And to what extent is that compatible with the kinds of demands that are likely to come from the US or have come from the US So far and are likely to continue coming from.
- [09:08]
B
The U.S. yeah, that's really the crucial question. It's pretty obvious that the demands from Trump center on material gains for the US Whether it's in the form of oil or other things, physical assets, whether it's in the form of denying drug traffickers the use of Venezuelan territory, you know, curbing the trend, or, or kicking out the Chinese, which may be one of the more, more difficult issues. Cutting off oil to Cuba, for example, which may. May not even be a choice that they have to make because it looks like the US can do that for them. I mean, the red line, I think, is very clear. The red line is, I mean, they don't want to lose power. Losing power for them is really, really existential. This is not a situation in which there's any form of free and fair election is not on the cards for the time being, because they know that they would lose one and that losing power for them means jail or exile or the very minimum losing assets, potential death in extreme circumstances. So that's a red line. And the good news for them is it doesn't look that. Look like Trump is particularly interested in that. So that's way down the list of U.S. demands. And so it does seem to me that potentially there's an area, what the mediation specialists like to call the zone of possible agreement between the government here and the government in the US because they're both focused on absolutely pragmatic considerations. And this sort of ethereal stuff about democracy and human rights doesn't seem to concern either of them. And of course, that really is to my mind, and for those of us in crisis group, this is the big issue. The big gap in this whole plan on the part of the US is the opposition doesn't have a seat at the table here. And what that means is that it seems to us that there really is no long term political solution on the table. What we're looking at is a possible, much diminished Chavista regime hanging on, struggling on, but staying in power, while the US essentially turns Venezuela into a colony in all but name the Venezuelan opposition. I'm not just talking about the opposition leadership, but those people, I mean, Marie Karim Machao, whatever you think of a strategy, and Edmundo Gonzalez, who won the election in 2024, and the rest of the opposition, it's not just them as individuals. They represent the will of Venezuelans that was expressed in that July 2024 election. And Trump has thrown them out the window, it seems. I mean, yes, there's some talk about a transition, there's some talk lip service given to the need for democracy, but it's clearly not one of their main considerations. And so the big question from our point of view is how do you bring the people of Venezuela who are the main stakeholders here, let's face it, 30 odd million Venezuelans, both here and in the diaspora, who have had a really bad time, particularly over the last 10 to 15 years, and are desperate for a political solution, how do you bring them back in? How do they and their interests, how do they get back on the table?
- [12:28]
A
It is striking reading, the reporting in the last few days, just how completely the Trump administration seems to have thrown off Maria Corinna Machado in the opposition and how much planning there was around this kind of almost seamless transition to Rodriguez and others around her. Is there a sense in Caracas, from what you can tell, that there was coordination here? There was a sort of almost an inside job that got rid of Maduro with an understanding that it would allow these other players to more or less continue on as they were before?
- [12:57]
B
I can see why that argument has a certain force. I can see why people would think that. My personal feeling, and of course somebody said to me the Other day. We don't really know until the Netflix series comes out. But my personal feeling is no, I mean, I don't think that this was a deal. In fact, the deal. And this is actually one of the reasons why people think it might have taken place because the deal does seem to have been on the table as an offer from, From. Not just from, from Del. I mean, not obviously not the deal involving, you know, Maduro and Celia Flores being taken off to jail, but the idea that Maduro would step down and leave Del in place. I mean, that does seem to have been offered at some stage before all this military buildup began and the US turned it down. So that was contemplated up to a point. But the idea that Delsey Rodriguez and the rest of them, because I think they would have to have done it collectively, it's very hard to imagine it could have been a betrayal that wouldn't have involved all the people at the top, because otherwise, you know, the consequences for those who did it, you know, might be very severe in terms would be very severe, I think undoubtedly. So they must have had to together. But why would Dulcie Rodriguez, or Jorge for that matter, sign up to that? Them in particular? I think because, I mean, you're asking about how power works here. The, the way it seemed to work when Maduro was in office is that Maduro was the guy that reconciled the conflicting interests within the government, the different factions, militian, civilian and their different interests and so on. And it was Maduro at the top of the tree whose great skill was preventing them from killing each other. Not necessarily literally, but I mean preventing them from being at each other's throats. Now, of course, Maduro's been taken out of the equation. Now I say that leaves Dely and Jorge very vulnerable to the guys with the guns as, as, as we were saying. So why would Dely want to go along with that when Maduro in a sense was their protector? He was the guy that, if you remember, I mean, you know, Dely under Ugo Chavez towards, you know, in the latter parts of Ugo Chavez's government, Dely was really kind of sidelined, had a falling out with her and it was Maduro who brought her back in. Maduro continued to give Jorge Rodriguez more and more control. Jorge Rodriguez became a vital part of Maduro's whole inner circle in all sorts of ways electorally, in terms of control of parliament, in terms of negotiations with the outside world. But their power depended on Maduro. And now that Maduro's gone, they are over and above what we were saying before about their ability to deal with the outside world. Since they don't have the guns, it seems to me very unlikely that they would ditch their protector.
- [15:56]
A
In talking about Machado and the opposition, both Trump and Marco Rubio, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, somewhat more surprisingly, have been quite pointed in describing her lack of power and lack of alleged lack of influence within the country, despite having won that, that election in 2024, as you noted. How much does, how much support does the opposition have? How do you assess their power and their strategies over the last few months? And where do you think that's likely to leave them as this unfolds?
- [16:23]
B
You know, Trump in his typically, how can I put it, understated and diplomatic fashion, I mean, it was brutal, wasn't it? I mean, it was a real. He threw her under the bus is the phrase on everybody's lips. But when he says she doesn't have support and respect within the country, of course he's not necessarily very well briefed on that particular issue. But I don't think he's referring really to support in the sense of what people think about her or their respect. I mean, really what he's talking about is the US Came to the conclusion that if they simply affected regime change and tried to install Marau and Edmundo Gonzalez in the presidential palace, that they were not going to be capable of controlling the situation because they didn't have the support of the armed forces primarily. It's not to do with popular support. It's not to do with who would vote for them or whatever. It's to do with the fact that they couldn't control internal security. They would be extremely vulnerable. And the likeliest outcome would be either that be immediately overthrown or there will be some kind of violent power struggle, power vacuum, leading to possibly protracted low intensity warfare even. And I mean, it's kind of ironic because we've been trying to tell the opposition leadership and the US Government and anybody else who would listen for some time that that was the case. Right. I mean, I think when, when, when I wrote for Foreign Affairs, I mean, we, we, we, we made this point, right? And it took the US Administration a while to come to the same conclusion. I'd like to think that they, they read Foreign affairs and took all that on board. But, but the question is not, as I say, not to do with grassroots popular support is to do with the fact that they couldn't control the military. They always said they could because Marika, whenever this was raised, Mary Karen Said, no, no, there's no problem. As soon as you get rid of the top guys, all the rest will fall into light. Because everybody in the military really wants to see the back of Maduro and they want to see the present day opposition in power. US Intelligence came to the conclusion that that was not the case.
- [18:41]
A
In some ways a brutal and unsentimental but perhaps not crazy implementation of the lessons of Iraq. It's the opposite of de Ba' athification and the kind of neoconservative hopes of bringing in a whole new leadership.
- [18:54]
B
That's right. I mean, somebody said to me yesterday, in a way they deserve congratulations for having realized that in time. And I do think it's worth saying that they did avoid so far, so far they have avoided the worst possible outcome, which was indeed violent chaos. And it was a real possibility. If they had just come in like a bull in a china shop and just wrecked everything in the hope that know they could then bring their people in and install them. Because the fact is, I mean, as we always knew, and I think it's even clearer now, I mean, Trump had no interest at all in getting involved in guaranteeing Venezuela's internal security, not even on day one, I mean, let alone in the months and years to come. So there wasn't any other way of doing. I mean, you had to rely on the Venezuelan armed forces. And once they realized they couldn't rely on, on the Venezuelan armed forces, they pulled back. And that is to their credit. They realized late, but at least they did realize. But, and here's an important caveat, I'm really worried the way that Trump is handling this at the moment, because it seems to me that he just has the idea that he has to snap his fingers and the Venezuelan government will now do whatever the US Says because they have them under their thumb. And of course, the government here is in a really difficult position, position, and it's hard to see what room for maneuver they have. But if Trump pushes this too far, he's going to have on his hands precisely the kind of violent chaos that they stepped back from on Saturday, if you like, when they did finally intervene militarily. So I think that's something we really need to watch closely when he makes these statements about now they're going to give me 30 or 50 million barrels of oil. They're continuing to seize the oil tackers. They're, they're treating, I mean, just even at the level of the discourse, you know, they're treating the Venezuelan government like vassals. And that's not. I mean, these people do have pride, you know, I mean, it's not just a question of, you know, fear and concern over, you know, losing powers on. They're also proud and they also do think that they are mistaken as they may be. I mean, they do think they're carrying out socialist revolution. It's the idea that this, this guy in Washington is going to tell them what to do and they'll just salute and carry out the orders. I can't see that working.
- [21:16]
A
If you imagine that worrying scenario, how do we get from this moment of relative quiet compared to what we might have expected a few days ago to that much more dangerous situation that you fear?
- [21:30]
B
Well, I think it starts with the US Incapacity to understand, let's face it, this is, you know, the U.S. has had no, no embassy since 2019. And of course, yeah, the CIA is here. And so, I mean, there's some human intelligence on the ground, but in Washington, the ability to grasp the intricacies and, you know, the exact, you know, how the levers of power work and what the relations are between one another. How. What. Well, how far they can push Delsey without her having to either deny their requests openly or confront the military, which is going to go very badly for her. I mean, I just don't think the US understands that. So what might happen? We might get into a confrontation and they might just say they might call the U.S. bluff again. They tried to before and it turned out not to be such a bluff. This is a naked power struggle. Obviously, what the US has is the world's biggest military and the ability to come in and smash everything if they decide to. What does Venezuela, what does the Venezuelan government have to counter that? Essentially, what they've had is what they've had all along, which is the threat of chaos. Precisely. So it isn't just something that we might stumble into. It's part of Venezuela's military doctrine. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that they know that in conventional terms, they can't stand up to the E.U. u.S. So for years now, going back to Uz, I mean, having realized that, they adopted a very different military stance and they've been attempting to, to adapt the whole military setup here to that. And, and that involves asymmetrical warfare. That what they say is, okay, yes, you can come in and you can, you can destroy all the infrastructure and you can smash the barracks and you can, but we will still be here. And we have, you know, guns and explosives and stuff hidden and that we have our people, and not just the military, but the civilians. And we have other people who will help out. I mean, 3,000 or so, whatever it is, Colombian gurus, armed gangs, you know, violent criminal gangs, they call it divorce. It doesn't take very many of those people to create chaos. And so that they really, the threat, the absolutely explicit threat is you kick us out and you have to deal with the consequences. And the consequences are going to be. Girdal said it very explicitly a couple of months back. He said, we think the time has come to pass over to a phase of revolutionary warfare. And he said, sure, you can overthrow us. But he said that won't be a war of one day or two days or three days or four days or five days, be a war of 100 years. And he explicitly invoked Vietnam. Now, of course, he's exaggerating and of course the number of people who would actually sign up for that in Venezuela is probably rather small. But as I say, it doesn't take very many. If what you're going to do is overthrow the present lot, you're back into the same, into the same dilemma, you know, that they faced and that they eventually resolved in favor of keeping these guys in power. So there is still, you know, a powerful incentive on the part of the US not to destabilize. But right now we're in the phase where they're testing it out, you know, how far can we go? And of course, as I say, I mean, you know, Trump is not subtle and I think subtlety, subtlety is required. So. And of course, I mean, the other thing is, know, I don't know if this is official or whether it was just, you know, anonymous sources from within the government. But this idea that he's going to put Stephen Miller in charge, you know, it doesn't really enhance the, how can I say, the soft power aspect.
- [25:34]
A
The deputy White House chief of staff who's leading the charge on. Correct. On immigration here, of course, it seems that the attacks on alleged drug boats, presumably many of them, in fact, drug boats, we don't know how many of them will continue. Does that have any effect on the income streams or power of major armed actors within Venezuela, either Colombian guerrillas or parts of the government that have been involved in the drug trade, I think.
- [26:01]
B
It'S interesting to look at. There was a story, I think yesterday in the New York Times about how the indictment against Medulla is stepping back from this idea that the, the Cartel de Los, the so called narco terrorist cartel that, that appears to be exactly the same Thing as the Venezuelan government, if you listen to, you know, US rhetoric, that, that idea in the actual indictment, when they have to kind of present that in court, they're not going to be able to stand up this idea that, that the government is a drug cartel and that therefore this is a narco state and the, that the primary source of income for the government is drugs because it never has been. I think, you know, if it's any kind of state, it's a petro state really. I mean, oil continues to be the prime source and yes, of course, drugs have been trafficked through Venezuela and continue to be trafficked through Venezuela and that's, I mean the interruption, the disruption to the drugs trade is going to make a dent in the income of sub generals. I mean, I think we can say that with a fair degree of certainty. But it's always been something that, you know, that rather than going into government coffers, certainly my impression is that the way the drugs trade works is that, you know, individual military officers and probably civilian officials as well are being paid off and so that money's going direct into their pockets. It's not, it's not funding the government and it may make, you know, the disruption, may make some generals unhappy, but it's not central to whether government can survive or not. Oil is a different matter. I mean that really is existential. Venezuela's coming to the point now where it's got no more storage capacity and therefore because it is unable to export the volumes that it was, it's having to close down some operations, having to shut in wells, which is not just a case of turning off a tap and then turning it back on later. It's much more complicated, particularly in the case of the Venezuelan oil industry. And this is an economy which is in extremely bad shape. The parallel exchange rate, to give you one measure, the parallel rate of the bolivar, the local currency against the dollar, is now twice the official rate. And that of course is making life for ordinary people really, I mean, even more difficult than it was this country already with a long standing humanitarian emergency going back more than a decade. People, people don't have enough to eat. And the inflation rates probably around 300% now and will be probably double that at least by the middle of next year the way things are going. And so this is very, very painful for the Venezuelan population. But it also means the government just doesn't have the dollars to keep the lights on or very, very soon won't. So that's the kind of thing that.
- [28:52]
A
We'Re looking at I haven't been to Caracas for 15 or 20 years. The economic situation seemed unsustainably grim back then, and it's gotten much worse. Is there a risk of a kind of precipitous economic collapse that could itself bring the kind of chaos and instability that you were warning of?
- [29:10]
B
Yeah, well, we had a precipitous economic collapse, of course. I mean, around the time that you were here, that was getting underway. The first 10 years of the Maduro government saw what economists tell us is the biggest ever economic collapse in peacetime, in the modern era. I mean, the economy shrank by more than three quarters. And what happened? Eight million people left the country out of a population of around 30 million. And here's the problem now. I mean, what then happened after 2019, when Trump began the first round of maximum pressure? The government, and in particular Delsey Rodriguez, actually began this sort of economic reform, which wasn't really reform, it was just a kind of. They were stopgap measures to try to bring some life, breathe some life back into the economy. So they partially dollarized, they stopped enforcing price and exchange controls, and they freed things up enough that the private sector could kind of get things going. So there was a largely sort of commercially driven. It wasn't a boom, but certainly it meant that instead of shrinking, the economy began to grow again. And that helped some people. I mean, it didn't resolve the underlying crisis, but it helped some people. And now we're going back into recession. The difference now is, of course, everybody's a lot leaner in the literal as well as metaphorical sense. The reserves are minimal to deal with this. There's no cushion to absorb them, the collapse. But in addition to that, people often talk very loosely about the risk of another massive exodus. Right. The Venezuelans and I mean, certainly, I think if we go to war, if chaos and violent chaos really breaks out, then people are going to start leaving. But the fact is that it's not the same to leave Venezuela in 2026 as it was back in, say, 2016. Ten years ago, the world was a lot more welcoming place. The region was able to absorb Most of these 8 million migrants. Colombia alone took about 2 1/2 million. All that has changed. I mean, the economic situation of all these countries is tougher. The jobs aren't there. The rules against immigrants are a lot tougher. Countries have had to for a variety of reasons, both economic and. But also social. I mean, the xenophobia is a problem in a number of countries up and down, particularly up and down the Western side of South America, the Andean countries, the volume of Venezuelans that they've had to absorb has obviously been a strain. And particularly sort of socially, it's tough to absorb that many people in such a short time. And so they've tightened the rules and it's not so easy anymore. And, and of course, the US has closed the door. And in fact, the migration has been the other way around, the net migration, even since Maduro stole the election in 2024. And everybody said, particularly Maria Kurimachal said, if Maduro stays in power, there'll be another massive exodus. And we said, no, there won't, because people won't be able to. And it's not just because the outside world is less welcoming. It's also because people have less money. Because contrary to popular belief, if you're going to be, if you're going to be an economic refugee, you need money. I mean, you can't just set off and walk if you don't have anything at all. And the people left behind, you know, a whole generation left. And it's the generation, you know, the productive, not just the middle class, but right across the social spectrum, productive people in their, in the prime of life left the country because see no prospect of being able to survive here. And who's left behind? The kids and the old folk. And yes, some of those kids have grown up and some of them will leave and some of them maybe can afford to get on a plane and go to Spain, for example. But really the mass exodus that we saw before is not that. So that safety valve doesn't exist. And that's another serious issue to take into consideration.
- [33:24]
A
I've thought back often to what you wrote in Foreign Affairs a month or six weeks ago, especially the law. I'm quoting you here. The assumption that forcefully overthrowing the current government will lead to a smooth transition to democracy is dangerous without a viable strategy for what comes after the government falls. Ousting Maduro could lead to even greater repression and hardship for Venezuelans. You've, of course, talked a lot about how we may end up in that kind of scenario. If you're trying to be optimistic and coming up with a reasonably plausible scenario that would leave Venezuela in a better place, what might that look like? What's an optimistic path here?
- [33:59]
B
Yeah, should say, first of all, that when we wrote that, of course I said it and wrote it in other places too, we were accused of being government collaborators. We were told that we were echoing government talking points and that we were in the pay of Maduro and It's interesting that now the US has come to the same conclusion. But what's an optimistic scenario? I mean, I'm glad you asked the question because I'm often accused of being a pessimist, to which I usually respond. The old definition of a pessimist is a well informed optimist. The biggest flaw in what the US Is doing right now is that they've completely ignored the role of the opposition. And by the opposition I mean not just the leadership, as I said before, but, but, you know, the bulk of Venezuelans who, who, you know, whose interest really ought to be taken into account when the fate of their country is being decided.
- [34:50]
C
Right.
- [34:50]
B
One would, one would imagine what they would do is they would use this immense leverage that the United States now has unprecedented leverage to say to the Venezuelan government, look, you know, we'd like the oil and all that, and that's very nice and thank you for, you know, tying it up with a nice little bow and sending it to, to the U.S. but that's not good enough. You have to come up with a plan for resolving the underlying political conflict. And what that means is you have to start talking to the opposition. And you can't just talk to the people you decide of the opposition, your tame opposition. You've got to talk to the people who really represent most Venezuelans and they're going to say, yeah, don't like that idea very much. And the US is going to have to say, well, that's tough because if you don't like that, then you're out. And that bet that we just made, that you're a better guarantee of a stable transition, we can forget that and we'll bring somebody else in. I don't think it's particularly realistic that the US is likely to do that, but here's where I think it should go. But because it's, I mean, at the moment the US is not paying attention to this kind of thing. I think that there's an immense burden on the opposition itself and the different factions of the opposition, because remember, I mean, Maria Corina took this ball and ran with it like she was the only show in town because, you know, she won the primary in 2023, she should have been the candidate. She was banned and her substitute candidate won the election by a mile. And so she says, I'm the leader, I get to decide what the strategy is. And a lot of other people in the opposition whose voice is not really being heard right now said that's a really bad idea. And I think in the Light of what's happened the last few days, we can say that they were actually probably closer to the truth. It wasn't a very good idea to put all your eggs in the basket of a US military intervention, because guess what's happened. They don't really care about you. They'll ditch you as soon as it becomes expedient, which they did. So I think it's now time to reassess that. It's time for Mari Karina, in all humility, with her Nobel Peace Prize under her arm, to try to make peace initially within the opposition, to bring the different factions of the opposition together around a minimum set of demands, not just for the people in government here, but for Washington, too, to say, this is what we as the representatives of the Venezuelan people need and this is what you need to do. Because nobody else has the authority to say that. And I think Maria Corinna no longer has the authority to say I am the opposition. I mean, I think, as I say, she needs to. Politicians don't generally apologize. I wouldn't ask for an apology, but I mean, but certainly say I'm not the only show in town anymore. I mean, we've gone down this road and it hasn't worked out. And we obviously need a revolution. We need to rethink. And I think that that process needs to be supported by other governments, especially in the region, but also elsewhere. The eu, multilateral organizations, to the extent that they have any say at all, they need to get together around that and say a very simple set of demands, like five demands. And it's very obvious. I mean, you need to release political prisoners. You need to start opening up the pool political system. You need to allow exiles to come back in without being prosecuted, and you need to start talking to them. And if that process needs, I don't know, it's not going to be UN blue helmets, because the UN Security Council is never going to come to an agreement on what to do about Venezuela. But if it needs some sort of, you know, guarantee on the part of foreign governments, then the US should accede to that and they shouldn't treat. I mean, this idea. Well, we now have to call it the Donro Doctrine, you know, where, where the US now owns the Western Hemisphere, or at least that part of it around the Caribbean Basin and all that. You know, everybody else needs to stay out and no government here is going to tell them what to do. That's not. This is the 2020 first century and, and that's not good. We're not, you know, we can't go back to big stick diplomacy and gumbo diplomacy and the idea that you send in the Marines if, if somebody expropriates your company, we can't go back to that. We shouldn't go back to that. And, you know, if the US Is reluctant to accept that, the rest of the world's got to try and get together and tell them that they have to.
- [39:17]
A
That was Phil Gunson speaking from Caracas. After the break, you'll hear from Juan Gonzalez, a longtime State Department and NSC official.
- [39:35]
C
What if you could explore places in the news like a reporter does? I'm Nicholas Wood, a former journalist with the New York Times and BBC. And 15 years ago, I created the travel company Political Tours. Our small group trips led by top.
- [39:50]
B
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C
Taiwan, Turkey, NATO's front line with Russia, and just some of the issues we're exploring. Next year, we'd like you to come and join us.
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- [40:51]
A
Now to my conversation with Juan Gonzalez. Juan, thank you so much for doing this and for the great piece you wrote in the hours after Maduro was seized on Saturday. That piece was called the End of the Beginning in Venezuela.
- [41:03]
C
Thank you for having me.
- [41:05]
A
There's a lot to talk about when it comes to news of the last few days, but I want to look backwards. You have served in the US government for much of the last 20 years or so. You were in the State Department. We were colleagues in the State Department. You were the senior director for Latin America and the White House during much of the Biden administration. The challenge of the Chavista government, first under Hugo Chavez, then under Nicolas Maduro, has been a thorn in the side of American policymakers for a long time. As you look at the failures and challenges of that policy over that period, how do you assess them? If you would kind of go back and do something differently, whether in the George W. Bush years, the Obama years, the Biden years, what might have been done to get us to a different place than we're at now?
- [41:48]
C
That's an excellent question. And I'll start with a brief anecdote after the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013, which really marked my involvement in Venezuela. I was the Andes director at the time at the nsc. We had a meeting in the Sit Room with the President and we were talking about what is going to happen after Hugo Chavez. Ricardo Zunigo was the senior director at the time. And the president asked me, he asked everybody, but at the very end, I was the note taker. He asked me a question. I almost passed out from nervousness. But I remember saying there are basically two paths. There's one path where the opposition and Chavismo find some sort of third way because Chavismo is a social ideology or as a social project with something that was very compelling. Chavez was vested a lot in social programs is that's a sustainable way for Venezuela where there's some sort of compromise between both sides. And then the other one is if both sides basically dig in, then I said, every political science book I ever read suggests that this is not going to end well. And our focus at that time, and I'll say that I agreed with that focus, was not to really escalate the problem or to become distracted by Venezuela, but really think about how we message it and how we manage it, as opposed to becoming a political actor inside the country. We wanted to kind of create a space for Venezuelans to really rise up and force that debate also in the region. I think at that time, at the time when Maduro was the weakest, it wasn't clear that he was going to come in. He was very unpopular. Maybe that was the time for us to really ramp up sanctions pressure at the individual level and really at the weakest point, press the opposition to try to enter into some side dialogue. So bottom line is I think we could have been much more hands on early on. But I think a lot of the failures of Venezuela, and I'll stop here, I don't want to filibuster is I think this is also a failure, frankly, of the region because Latin America and the Caribbean is very good at ignoring problems until they get really bad. And often the region can't cooperate regionally without the United States as a superstructure. That sounds really paternalistic, but it's the reality. And it was a space for, I think primarily Brazil, but I think Colombia and others to really put pressure on Venezuela in a way that we could not. And I think they kind of ignored the problems. And now that it's too late and the US is involved now, everybody wants to kind of be a mediator. So I think it's two parts. We could have engaged very early on, been a little bit more aggressive and pressed for dialogue early on. And the second is maybe diplomatically, we should have been pressuring more governments to really look for a solution, but certainly on their own, they weren't doing.
- [44:23]
A
In 2013, you were the junior guy, the note taker in the room. By the Biden years, you were the senior Western hemisphere official in the National Security Council in the White House. I imagine you had those kinds of conversations with your counterparts in Brazil and Colombia and Mexico and other regional governments. What were those conversations like? What was their response to that message?
- [44:40]
C
Yeah, I think particularly on Brazil, they put consensus and multilateralism above everything. And I think also Venezuela, to a certain extent, for Brazil, was part of a foreign policy project to really develop, I would say, hegemony in South America. Their political project was building a united UNASUR to counterbalance the United States. The conversations we had were really frustrating because they felt like they could work with Marudo. They thought that they could handle him at the same time. And I remember this, we traveled to then Vice President Biden to the Chilean presidential inauguration for Bachelet. And I remember distinctly something that Bachelet told us. She said that they weren't sure which opposition they were dealing with because at that time, the Unity Roundtable, which was an opposition kind of unity group, was engaging international diplomacy. But you'd have one wave of engagement by the Unity Roundtable talking about democratic outcomes, and then you would have a whole different part of the opposition coming down, pressing for pressure and a much more confrontational approach. And I believe, I think that Chilean style said that the opposition undermined itself by kind of being at tensions with each other on the way forward on Venezuela. And that's something that Hugo Chavez and even Maduro has been able to do successfully, which is to polarize and divide the opposition. Has been their strategy, part of their strategy to stay in power, and they've been very, very good at it.
- [46:02]
A
In the Biden years, you were one of the people who spent time negotiating with members of the Maduro government. Some of that was about American prisoners in Venezuela and about access to oil. Some of it was about the 2024 election, which Marina Corinna Machado, the opposition leader, was not allowed to run in, but her candidate won fairly decisively. From everything we know, when you look back at those negotiations, was there ever a chance of something working there or things that you would, if you could go back to The Biden years, that you would have done that again might have gotten us to a different place.
- [46:33]
C
I think both. One clarification is we never negotiated over access to oil. I mean, at that point, we were, you know, US production was increasing significantly. And there was an allegation that when I traveled there in March 2022, where we secured the releases to Americans, that we negotiated oil over that. But really, the. The incentive that I gave, and I met with Maduro, I met with Delsey Rodriguez, I met with Jorge Rodriguez, I sat down with the two Rodriguez brothers for several hours to really talk about the way forward. And the bottom line was this. This is what the instructions for the President and from Jake Sullivan were. I said, Look, a U.S. official has not been to Venezuela since the inauguration of Hugo Chavez in 1998. We are taking huge political risks by being here. We are opening a line of dialogue. And my message was, if prisoners are not released within 24 to 48 hours of my departure, the channel is closed permanently. And that's what prompted them, with Roger Carsons, to actually release those two Americans.
- [47:34]
A
Was the hostage negotiator correct?
- [47:36]
C
Yeah, yeah, Roger Carstens. But then in terms of the negotiations, to. Your question is, look, the negotiations worked in that they created the democratic moment that allowed Maria Crill Machado to initially become the primary candidate in Edo Gonzalez to be the opposition candidate that won the election in July 2024, where the opposition others criticized the Barbados agreement that we signed at the end of the 2023. But without Barbados, you do not have Edmundo Gonzalez as the elected president of Venezuela. Certainly we did not expect Maluto to allow an election where he did not control the outcome, particularly when Maria Corina won the primary. We saw that becoming an uphill battle as soon as she was elected, because the regime hates her with a deep passion. So I think parts of it worked, right? But in any sort of democratic engagement or process, these things take time, and they are imperfect, they are slow, they are fragile, but they are the sustainable approach based on. We task the intelligence community, talk to academics to help derive lessons from negotiations around the world to try to inform our approach. What could we have done better? I think maybe we could have pressed the opposition to provide political guarantees earlier on. That was very difficult for them to do when we would deal with their lead negotiator. The perception we got was that political guarantees would have broken up the unity in the opposition, because there were some that did not want those political guarantees. The other, I think, is, I'll say that a lesson that I've derived from Donald Trump is that the United States often needs to be a ruthless international actor. I think the president is taking that to a very destructive and negative level. But maybe we should have posted a destroyer off of the coast of Maracaibo around the time of the election. Maybe there's something we should have done to really ramp up the pressure to ensure that they respected the results. But we at the same time thought, look, we don't think that Maduro is going to accept the outcome. We were taking a longer view. It was difficult for us to say that publicly because if you're in the White House, you can't say, well, if Maduro doesn't accept the outcome, we'll think about what comes next. We were very focused on the outcome of the July 2024 election, but we were also thinking, well, the municipal elections are in 2025, and traditionally the Chavistas, which is the kind of the coalition around Maduro, they will allow regional members of the opposition to win elections. So there are pockets of democracy inside of Venezuela. It's Miraflores, the presidential palace, that has been really the focus of the opposition. It's been the main kind of power center that's been fought over since Chavez arrived in power in the late 90s.
- [50:16]
A
It's fascinating that you sat down with Maduro and also with Delsey and Jorge Rodriguez. What's your sense of the them? What was it like?
- [50:23]
C
Well, it's, you know, you know, the whole term, the banality of evil. And I wouldn't call them evil, but they're very charismatic people. They're. I think Nicolas Maduro is somebody who has a very thin skin and a very brittle ego and will never take a decision, even if it's in his interest, if he is seen as being forced into that decision. At the same time, he is a believer in the Chavista ideological project of socialism and believes that the problems of Venezuela are not because of the mismanagement under Chavismo, but rather because of sanctions. I think they fundamentally believe that and they wanted to enter into this status quo ante that existed under Obama, where we still work together in some areas and kind of agreed to disagree, but maintained a civil or at least a diplomatic relationship. Delsey and Jorge are. Are very different animals. You know, they by really, by briefly, by way of background, their father was detained and tortured to death, detained by the government that was in power at the time.
- [51:27]
A
All pre Chavez.
- [51:28]
C
All pre Chavez was detained and tortured to death. And they, I think, secretly blame the imperialist powers for that. So I think they have a deep animosity against the Western powers and I think the United States for what they believe is what happened to their father. But also, again, they're preventing the blossoming of this kind of ideological vision that began under Hugo Chavez. But they're also fundamentally pragmatist. Jorge Rodriguez is a very good negotiator. He's a psychiatrist. He's actually a very charismatic person to talk to, but he's there to win the negotiation. Whereas Delsey is very, very serious. I believe, ideologically, she's also very aligned with the Chavez worldview. But she's, I think, considered. I consider to be, and I think others do, to be probably the. The best manager and bureaucrat of the bunch, but she doesn't have the political power that. That Maduro and that Chavez had. And so I think right now we're in this position where Vladimir Padrino, who's the Minister of Defense, Yozdalo Cabello, the Minister of Interior, who controls the intelligence apparatus and has been behind the crackdown post election, and now they hate her. But I think there's this understanding that Del C is keeping the Americans at bay. And so I think right now, the stability, relative stability, even though there's violence in the streets, is very, very brittle.
- [52:48]
A
I want to come back to Delsey and this incredibly complicated balancing act she's trying to pull off, but sticking with the Washington side of this for a bit. You, of course, are not in the US Government right now, but you have deep connections with the government you served for a long time. What is your understanding of how we got here? What was the policy process? Who was driving it? How much of the planning for this kind of operation kind of on the shelf in the Pentagon versus stuff that was spun up relatively recently.
- [53:17]
C
It's interesting because at the beginning of the Trump administration, both Rick Grenell and Secretary Marco Rubio rushed to try to get a hold of the Venezuela. Rick Renell went down, met with Maduro. There's a photo of them, got the release of a bunch of Americans and started developing a plan that would allow the United States to have access to Venezuela's resources, would help them drive a wedge between Venezuela and external actors China, Iran and Russia, but would preserve Maduro in power. And Rubio rushed to recognize the legitimacy of Edmundo Gonzalez, who I mentioned is the, you know, the person who won the election in July of 2024. And since then, there's been a tension between the two. My takeaway is Rubio won because he commanded the entire State Department bureaucracy and was the international security advisor. And I think Rick Cornell made the mistake of thinking that when the president says something, it becomes the law. Right. And, you know, because you've served in government, too, is that sometimes presidential ideas die at the bureaucratic level. If there isn't this kind of wherewithal within the bureaucracy to really drive. Often if, particularly if there's change involved, the bureaucracy resists change. And Ruby was just a better bureaucratic knife fighter than Rick Cornell. I also think Ruby has been preparing for this project since he was in the Senate. Right. Trump only played a very key role in Venezuela and Cuba policy, Latin America policy in general. He, I think, pressed for the indictment. And then as Secretary of State, the designation of Trendaragua, which is this vulcanized and diffused criminal group, the creation or the designation of Cartel de los Oles, which is not really a cartel in the vertically integrated sense, but rather a label used to describe officials in the military and the government that are getting money from helping traffic drugs that I think bureaucratically started putting Grinnell in a corner. Now, how do we get from there to a natural intervention the way that happened? I think that in any scenario like this, and you've seen these two, when the president wants options, you put together all the options, even the worst options, and you try to weight those, but you say, look, we can invade, but we don't think this is a good idea because of this and this and this and this. They presented those options to the president. I think Rubio won the argument that they eventually had to get to this point where they were going to pull him out. And I think the scenario we're in right now is where Rubio wants to have his cake and eat it, too, where he's not going to actually put boots on the ground. They got Maduro, so they checked the box as a law enforcement operation. They're going to get the resources from Venezuela. He's going to try to pull the strings from the outside by continuing the oil embargo and using sanctions, leverage, and the threat of a future invasion to try to actually manage an eventual transition in Venezuela. I do believe we're eventually going to get to elections, but not before the United States has basically taken over the entire oil and gas sector of Venezuela. So, you know, and I'll say on the, on the operation, I coincidentally, like, the morning of the invasion, I was up at 1:30 in the morning going down this rabbit hole on, on the Internet of whether a special Forces op inside of Venezuela was viable. Of all things And I concluded, you know, based on what I know, you know, decades of working on this issue, that's just a very difficult undertaking. The risk was too high. It was a very high denial environment, an urban area. And so when I saw this go down, I was blown away. It goes to show that the capabilities of the United States, when it comes to doing something like this, I think, are second to none. I was amazed that they were able to pull this off.
- [56:54]
A
Is that about a level of penetration of circles around Maduro that kind of allowed that relative ease of operation, or is that just a reflection of American capabilities?
- [57:04]
C
I think it's both. I think it got to this point, and I think this is where I think Rubio's approach succeeded, because I never thought that the circles around Maduro, there's regime cohesion insofar as they need each other. And I think over time and with the support of the opposition on the ground, they were able to identify players inside the inner circle of. Of Maduro that were eventually able to pinpoint the location and help them stage this operation. Because you're not able to do that if you're only getting human resources and the CIA is on the outside. That's way too risky, because human sources are notoriously untrustworthy. And so they had to actually develop some sort of infrastructure inside of the country, which is very difficult to do, and they were able to pull it off. So as an operation, this was something that I've never seen it. Right. I've never worked in the Middle east, so I've never seen the stuff that we do there. But in Latin America, I've never seen something this complex be executed.
- [58:02]
A
I'm interested in your relatively optimistic view of the path to a transition. But first, lingering on the current administration. How do you understand their objectives? If we're applying the Dunro Doctrine to Venezuela now, what is the policy path ahead and what you do expect the consequences of that to be? For some of that's about oil, but also about their ability to keep relative stability in that very complicated power structure within Venezuela.
- [58:27]
C
Yeah, well, in the United States, I mean, obviously, the Dunro Doctrine, it's the revival of that very old idea that we're familiar with, and it's unilateral enforcement. And it treats, as I wrote in the piece, engagement is a choice rather than a requirement. And it aligns closely with, with, I think, Rubio's worldview on Latin America, where I think he believed that US Policy in the region has been, like, too hesitant, too multilateral, too constrained by process. And so a more muscular approach. They're seeing it as a return to, not the Monroe Doctrine, more like the Roosevelt corollary, where if these countries aren't doing what's in their own interest, the US Will come in and do it for them. That is an approach that is going to fundamentally change how U.S. latin American relations work from this point forward, in the sense that we are now in the very transactional environment, but also one where countries in Latin America and the Caribbean do not have agency because the United States decides and they are bystanders when it comes to these sorts of decisions. And I think that you could only point guns in your friends so long before they start pointing him back. So I don't think this approach is, I think, sustainable over time. Now, what, what does the administration want to get out of this? I think, number one, is this whole kind of peace through strength brand that the administration has in the national security strategy. Exercising control over what we call our hemisphere is a return to 1950s to 1970s US policy. And it's going to be one where even the threat of intervention is going to allow the United States to shape political dynamics, at least in the short term, inside of Latin America. In the Caribbean. The other is, you know, my wife actually says this. She says that we are right now in World War Three. Not a conventional war, I agree with this. But rather this competition for resources at a time when the world is going through transformation, revolutionary changes, where China's really on the ascendant, Russia is going after Ukraine and really pushing Europe around. I think Donald Trump has really latched onto that idea, as that's the way of the world. We saw Stephen Miller do that on Jake Tapper. That might makes right at this point is really what they want. And then lastly, it's the oil. But the oil is. I don't think it's going to be the panacea that I think this administration is promising it to be. And I think over time, this approach is not going to age well necessarily. And the idea that they're going to sell it to the American people when it's actually not going to yield concrete results, I think people are going to start asking questions just as a, let's.
- [60:58]
A
Say, a thought experiment. It does seem possible that the Rubio approach or the Trump approach will work on its own terms, that the US has such extraordinary leverage and capabilities at this point that you could see both the kind of resource extraction parts of it and the political control, at least for some period of time, shape the region. Is that plausible?
- [61:19]
C
Yeah. I mean, the flip side is that is by, quote, running the country. Ruby and the administration hear everything that goes wrong right now. The violence that's taking place, the 800 political prisoners, the repression, the corruption, any economic failure, it all becomes a political albatross for this initiative. But what I've been telling people have been very clear and I mentioned this a piece. There's a chance Rubio pulls this off. This is not the Middle East. Certainly 26 years of Chavismo have complicated the criminal networks that are basically embedded inside of Venezuela, are going to make it very difficult for the United States, even if we have troops on the ground. But there's a chance that with Delsey Rodriguez, if she's able to basically consolidate control, is able to find an arrangement with the United States where she's making Trump happy, but she's also able to stabilize the Venezuelan economy, generate jobs, get sanctions lifted, that this becomes not a regime change, but an autocrat change. And it becomes a scenario that is that in six months to a year you have an election. Right. Even though there was already an election in 2024, this administration is talking about having a new election. In that election, there's definitely a scenario where, where Dele Rodriguez becomes a competitive candidate because people see the benefit and they don't want this shift to the opposition. So I think people game it as a 5%. I don't think it's that low. I think, you know, I would give Rubio good odds. I would say there's like a 30% chance that Rubio pulls us off. But there are so many other ways that this goes horribly sideways. You have this as well as I do. You have the Natural Liberation army in the west of the country. You have in Colombia hardened non state actors that have been fighting very well trained military for about 50 years. You could see a scenario where there are people forget what Colombia looked like in the late 90s when there were car bombs going off everywhere, where there were assassinations going on all the time. And these are groups that are, that are experts in urban warfare and that'll become, I think, very difficult with or without US Troops on the ground.
- [63:20]
A
Let's stick with that relatively benign scenario. First, if you were in your old job in the White House or you were at the State Department, what would you be doing in terms of US Policy to get us to that kind of outcome?
- [63:32]
C
Yeah, so we are. Let's say I was in the administration now. I think they're doing the right thing by opening up the US Embassy. The second thing is you know, is that we can't. We can't take all of the resources. We have to make sure that we are bolstering Delsey Rodriguez. The third, which the administration has already started hinting at, is you. You find a way to arrest Diosdado Cabello. I think he's probably the. The biggest veto player for, for Delsey at this point. You know, they and him both, Larry Repadrino, Josdalo Cabello, are heavily implicated in drug trafficking. If there's a cartel de los odes, they are the Cartel de los Olis at the highest levels of the government. And you need to find a way to really control the military apparatus. But I think Yozdela Caballo has to go. You make sure that you empower Delsey to a certain extent. And if things start going sideways, I think this president at some point is going to have to have some sort of presence inside the country, especially as oil companies go in. You've been seeing the reports that the administration has offered to subsidize the investments by oil and gas industry. Because what I've been hearing is in some of the meetings that the president or the White House has had with the oil majors, they're not rushing to get into the country because they want some legal certainty. The United States is going to Donald Trump. You have an election in 2028. The Democrats may win by a small or large margin. The House of Representatives and the oversight mechanisms will start. There's a concern because if you, you need, you grant licenses for these companies to go in. If you do a general license, those are public, right? That's what we did. We did a general license, lifting temporarily sanctions on the oil and gas sector, individual license to specific companies. Those are private, and that's a huge space for graft. And I imagine Democrats are going to want to be all over that. So I think it's, you know, it's something where it's going to be very complicated for this administration to execute. But if oil and gas companies go in, you know, maybe they get Eric Prince to go in there with a private army, I don't know. But, like, I don't think it's going to be as easy as, you know, I think there's going to be violence, there's going to be instability. There are these pseudo paramilitary groups that are already roving the streets. I don't think it's going to be as easy as people think. And I think there's a very real danger that despite the resources that Venezuela has, that we start seeing Venezuela become almost like a Haiti where gangs start developing around the country because today the Venezuelan military does not have full control over the state. And there are times where they will engage in battles in firefights along the Colombia, Venezuela border where they will lose these battles and their entire parts of the country. Their ELN basically serves as a way for the government to maintain control of areas where they have no presence. Farther in the east, there are cartels and other criminal actors that are going to be really hard to control. It's not going to be easy by any stretch.
- [66:30]
A
Given your experience sitting down with Delsier guys, how do you rate her chances of managing this very, very complicated process, this balancing act?
- [66:41]
C
She's a very effective manager and some people have spent a lot more time with her. But every conversation I've had with her, she's the, you know, the type, you meet somebody in government that they're very straightforward. When they say they're going to do something, they do it right away. They're very effective. She's not somebody who wastes time. And when I, you know, I sat down with her and Jorge with, with Jimmy and had like long conversations about kind of what comes next. When we did that visit in 2022, she is, she is like, I don't say she's the boss, but she is formidable bureaucratically. I think the challenge for her is going to be political and I give it a good chance. Her brother Jorge is, I think he was a key advisor to Hugo Chavez, has been essentially the right hand man of Nicolas Maduro and is a brilliant negotiator and has been really good at basically mobilizing and kind of moving around inside of the Chavista coalition. So the two of them are pretty formidable group, but sometimes all it takes is an assassination to throw the country into a tailspin. So they're going to have to be very careful as they try to consolidate power.
- [67:50]
A
One of the sharpest warnings in your piece, and I'm not sure I fully appreciated the importance of this when we were first talking about the piece over the weekend, was the effects on the Venezuelan economy and the prospects for some kind of better path if the US is extracting such extreme concessions on oil. And from what we've seen so far, that seems to be the main focus of White House policy at this point. How do you see this playing out and what kinds of consequences will that have for the prospects of Venezuela going forward?
- [68:21]
C
What I would say first is it's unclear whether Venezuela has the highest oil reserves. That's something that you self report that in OPEC and Hugo Chavez began that trend because of a pride issue. I don't think anybody really knows because most of the oil companies have been out of there. So people need to go in and see what's been contracted uncontracted, what are the wells like, what are the reserves like? Nobody really knows. But I think also Venezuela has the highest reserves of gold in Latin America and the Caribbean. They have critical minerals, a lot of rare earth minerals inside the country. So they have the resources. They also. But the country's infrastructure is completely dilapidated. The electricity grid is collapsed, There are bridges that are falling down. So there are investment opportunities, certainly, but there's a lot of risk. And I think on the oil and gas side particularly, the US Is already producing at historic highs. Venezuela, by contrast, is, as I mentioned, a restoration story. And heavy crude trades at a much lower price than light sweet crude. And so at current prices, the economics are tough for this. And I think that's why the oil majors are cautious and that's why the administration may end up needing to subsidize or guarantee the investment. So I think oil can shape the trajectory, but it's definitely not a silver bullet. And again, I worry that those that are going to be first in line to go into Venezuela are those that are have membership in Mar a Lago. I think if the administration wants to reassure other companies and I think the broader public, there should be some transparency around who gets those licenses to be able to actually go in. But Venezuela can be a success story. It's just going to take, by Some estimates, over $110 billion worth of investment and a whole lot of time. And the idea that they're going to have production online, I think they could have production online faster than people think. Because when I talk to, to folks in the oil and gas space that are there now, what they say is that, look, it's not that we need 100 miles of pipeline, it's often that people just, we just need six miles. So often Chevron was able to ramp up production much faster than people thought, so it will be able to be produced. But is that going to be something that's going to be seen as a benefit? I think the balance here is going to be can the President deliver on benefits at the pump, at the gas pump in the United States, ensure that the United States is deriving benefit on Venezuela before the security situation begins to deteriorate? In Iraq, it took six months. Here in Venezuela, we're already starting to see that security situation deteriorate. Because the United States is not on the ground.
- [71:10]
A
In the piece, you have three scenarios. One is that relatively optimistic managed transition. The other is what you call criminalized continuity. The third is escalation, as you put it. And this is what you're hinting at. Power struggles escalating, different kind of armed groups causing chaos and violence in the streets in the US Being kind of pressured to get more deeply involved. What's the path there? What worries you when you look at that prospect?
- [71:34]
C
So I think that the managed transition, I think that's basically where you have an election that ends up with illegitimacy. And I think the escalation one, I think is the one that I worry about the most. If you end up having fragmentation of this coalition that Delsey needs to maintain, you're going to see different actors, similar to Haiti, where you had political actors that are aligned with gangs and different groups are going to start battling out in the streets. And I think that is something that is incredibly dangerous, and then that leads into a direction of creeping US Entanglement. But obviously, I think the scenario we're in right now is the one that matters most, which is the one of criminalized continuity. And I think that we need to understand that the guns are still in the same hands, the networks are all still intact, and we're basically in this handoff. And I think that's why the crackdown right now matters analytically, because the criminalized.
- [72:37]
A
This is the Venezuelan leadership's crackdown on opposition within Venezuela, you mean?
- [72:43]
C
Correct. They're going after anybody who is suspected of having aided the US operation. Over 14 journalists now have been detained. I think opposition leaders are in hiding. And so I think criminalized continuity can impose order for a while, but it does so through coercion. So I think what is happening right now is that Delsey is buying time, not legitimacy. And I think we're in a very dangerous period right now. And I believe that Rubio understands that, which is why they are waiving the threat. You're seeing in reports yesterday and today that Diosdado Cabello might be next. So he's going to avoid going fishing in international waters, if you know what I mean, because he may get picked up by American military if he does something like that. And I think you're going to see that a lot of these guys that are very close, kind of on the higher level of the regime, they're not going to be leaving Venezuela for anytime soon, because I think they're going to be afraid that anywhere they go they can get grabbed.
- [73:41]
A
There's been lots of discussion of the presence of Cuban intelligence. But in geopolitical terms, what probably matters more is the Chinese role and Russian role role and perhaps Iranian role in those connections. How deeply embedded are those actors in power structures and the oil sector and other parts of Venezuela? And do you see any prospect for reducing that influence? I imagine that will be another administration priority going forward.
- [74:07]
C
Yeah, I think Cuba's role is overstated. They help Maduro consolidate power within the party in 2013 because that's what they do. They're experts at the in house management of that. They provided advice and security to Maduro, but they didn't call the shots. Often when I would talk to the Cubans in the context of some of the negotiations we had during the Biden administration, they would complain about the Venezuelans as being obstreperous. And so when you hear that from the Cubans who are the most obstreperous to negotiate with, it should tell you something. I'd say the Iranian role is also overstated. Iran. Iran has tried to get a foothold inside of Latin America for a really long time, but they're just not good at it. And I think fundamentally a region that is primarily Christian is very averse to that influence. So even though you'll see mosques that are popping up, that does not signify Iranian influence. And there are examples of some actors inside of Venezuela that are Iranian that are trying to expand Iranian influence, but they really haven't been able to get traction. I think the Iranians have been able to sell drones and some military equipment, but they're not in there. And in terms of the oil and gas sector, they provide diluent. I think that's the main thing. And then for the longest time Venezuelan oil was getting pulled out on sanctioned uranium tankers. So the Iranians were basically giving us the middle finger as we were opposing these sanctions. They would go to Malaysia again, transship, and then they'd end up with China. China. You know, people think that China owns the oil and gas sector. They have some presence in the upstream, but they're primarily a consumer of Venezuelan oil. So I think Russia is probably the one that has the largest presence. But even they are not, are not, they're not in control any because the Venezuelan constitution says that the natural resources of the country belong to the country. And so anything that the Russians are doing are in a joint venture with Ben Vesa, which is the national oil company. And those terms can be renegotiated. I think Maduro was like this, and I think Delsey is like this. She would rather be able to deliver oil in a day as opposed to the four days it takes to actually get something across the Atlantic. And American companies are much more effective. They are much more transparent. Whereas with the Russians, I think there's some coercion involved. Where I'm more concerned about Russia and China has been on the military side. Russia provides intelligence support to Venezuela. They provide security. They have Russian techs that keep the planes flying and do training. And the Chinese right now, what was known of the air defense systems? There's a lot that they had from China that is not known, if you know what I mean. And that was concerning to me when I was thinking about a potential aerosol. But obviously, the F35s made very short work of Venezuela's air defenses, as we thought they would, because the way the F35s work is any sort of radar. Even the Chinese radars had no idea the F35s were there until they were right on top of them. But I was still surprised. I expected that maybe there'd be one plane shot down or there'd be some kind of pushback. And I think what this showed me here, and it should be a message to everybody who's buying Russian and Chinese equipment, is that they don't stand a chance against the United States.
- [77:48]
A
Rubio clearly hopes that the end of Venezuelan oil flows and support for the Cuban government will cause the Cuban regime to crack. That's been hope for a long time among, among many parts of the. Certainly people around Rubio, but also other parts of the foreign policy world. Do you foresee any. Any risk of. Of the Cuban regime falling?
- [78:10]
C
I think that's always that. I think that's been the top goal. Rubio, I think Venezuela has been a means to Cuba fundamentally. And you've seen. I've seen some commentary and I've talked to some Venezuelans in South Florida who are dismayed that the Cubans don't care about what's going on inside the country because they want. They want to redo. They want a repeat of that in, in Cuba. Everything I know about Cuba, and you know our common friend Dan Erickson, who wrote Cuba wars, and it knows this much better than I do. You know, when I talk to him, you know, he would agree and I agree with him that, that the, the Cubans are not going to go willingly. The idea that you're going to negotiate their departure is just not what they do. The. Their approach is crack down when they're on their back foot, circle the wagons and try to wait out an administration. Often they do it for too long. Under Obama they were obstreperous until the very end. And then when they saw that Obama was leaving, they kind of freaked out and tried to rush to actually come to an agreement. So I think what we will see is a further deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the country. Of course, course Cubans are already suffering significantly. I think that's going to get worse. I worry that, you know, so far we have not seen people getting on boats in, off the, off the coast of Cuba. But the, you know, in April is when the, the Florida Straits get calm. So I think I would keep an eye out for that. If the situation gets really bad, people are going to get on boats. You know, we saw a lot of Cuban migration during the Biden administration that was of people that could afford, afford to go to Guyana or could afford to go to Mexico and then go up. You have the people that are suffering the most are going to put together makeshift rafts and just jump in the water and risk it. And that worries me a lot because that means that we are pricing in the cost of Cuban lives in the name of actually changing the regime. And that's a theory of change that I fundamentally do not agree with. I think it not only not effective, it is morally wrong that you promote regime change by crushing a country. I think there's a better way. It's slower, it's more painstaking, but it is more sustainable I think in the long term.
- [80:23]
A
What have you made of the broader regional reaction within Latin America thus far and what do you expect the long term repercussions to be?
- [80:30]
C
Not surprised at all. It's been a left right divide. So Brazil came out against Colombia, Mexico all came out against this and that's what I expected. A lot of countries are, you know, everybody, I think around the world has celebrated the departure of Maduro. But you're seeing others that are basically reserving judgment until they see what happens. And if Rubio pulls this off, then you know, people will maybe applaud the ends, if not the means. But I think a lot of people are waiting to see if Rubio falls on a space. I think including Republicans on the Hill are seeing this way. But I think, I think a lot of Latin American countries, even those of the center and of the right are concerned because again there's, this is a situation where it doesn't matter if you're democratic country, the US can come in and impose its will on you. Is something that is incredibly concerning and takes us back to, you know, takes us back to a time when, when we did that. And I think if we, if we do a look back, hindsight's 20 20, hopefully we should have learned from that experience is that we did not do ourselves any favors through containment during the Cold War. And I think the approach now is to actually use economic tools. As I mentioned, the argument today, the military is not the best tool of the Monroe Doctrine or the Don Road Doctrine. It is economic tools to actually help Latin America and the Caribbean take advantage of these revolutionary changes that are happening in technology and healthcare in other sectors. Because Latin America today is a region that remains very dependent on fossil fuels. Productivity is low. Their adoption of technology is behind its peers. And so Latin America is heading in a very negative direction and the US Military is not going to solve that. The US has to come in with more than just trade, but be a have a very ambitious approach to economic policy, especially if he wants to compete with China in the Western Hemisphere.
- [82:30]
A
Juan, thank you so much for joining me today. And thanks for the great piece you did over the weekend. It's called the End of the Beginning in Venezuela, one of the sharpest early analyses out there. And we will obviously have a lot more to talk about and for you to write about in the coming stretch.
- [82:47]
C
Dan, thanks for having me. It's a great conversation.
- [82:54]
A
Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show@foreign affairs.com this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Ben Metzner, Mary Kate Godfrey and Kanish Tharoor. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager with audio help from Marcus Zachariah. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show where you listen to podcasts and if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.