The Biden administration is treading a thin line as it attempts to usher Venezuela’s dictator out of office without falling into the costly traps that vexed previous U.S. governments and angered Latin American allies.
After a July 28 presidential election riddled with fraud, both Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez claimed victory.
The U.S. sided with Gonzalez and declared him the winner — but stopped short of actually recognizing him as president-elect. U.S. diplomats cited surveys of election ballots conducted by both the opposition and independent observers that gave Gonzalez a 2-1 margin of victory.
Memories are fresh of the Trump administration’s efforts to oust Maduro, including harsh sanctions and arrest warrants. After an attempted coup in 2019, the Trump administration embraced an alternative president, Juan Guaido. who led what became a government-in-exile.
Nothing budged Maduro, a former bus driver and socialist who took office after the 2013 death of Latin American leftist icon Hugo Chavez.
Now U.S. officials hope to try an untested tack while relying on the negotiating acumen of three Latin powerhouses that are friendly to both Caracas and Washington: Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. But they and other regional leaders have so far proven timid in their willingness to apply pressure to Maduro.
Presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, all left–leaning politicians, have urged Maduro to release a complete ballot count — something the Venezuelan government has still refused to do two weeks after voting ended. None of the other leaders, however, has publicly declared him the loser.
The Organization of American States, the region’s largest multilateral organization, failed to muster majority approval of a mildly worded call for transparency.
“We would hope to see all parties take the steps that we have done,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said, referring to the U.S. declaration that Maduro lost. However, he added, fuller recognition of Gonzalez “is not a step that we are taking” now.
At stake as Maduro clings on to power is further political and economic chaos and international isolation. He has launched a deadly crackdown on protesters, with more than two dozen killed and at least 2,000 arrested, including opposition politicians and journalists.
Once South America’s wealthiest country, Venezuela saw around 6 million of its citizens flee as refugees, with another wave possible in the coming months. Many have reached the U.S., fueling an intense and divisive debate here over immigration.
“It was extremely important for us to come out on the record: The most critical thing is for the results to be respected, and we are working with allies to make sure that is the case,” a senior Biden administration official who works on the Venezuela issue said in an interview. The official was granted anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations.
“The decision [to not accept a Maduro victory] is already a major form of diplomatic pressure,” the official said.
Maduro had agreed to hold the July election after months of negotiations involving regional officials and, unusually, the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, an OPEC partner of oil-rich Venezuela. U.S. officials were offering Maduro numerous benefits if he lost the election and agreed to step down, according to sources in the U.S. and Venezuela. Qatar has continued to participate in efforts to get Maduro to release election results, the White House said Monday.
The incentives included lifting criminal indictments and offering Maduro safe passage to a third country. (A State Department spokesman said Monday that such offers of amnesty have not been repeated since the election.)
The Venezuelan strongman was apparently worried that while Washington could drop its charges against him, the U.S. government was in no position to stop an investigation by the International Criminal Court into widespread human rights abuses attributed to the Maduro government.
Maduro apparently thought he could use the election to cement his legitimacy, the senior administration official said, after a decade of ruling with an iron fist, crushing dissent and stacking the courts, legislature and other major institutions with loyalists.
Ahead of the election, he frequently warned crowds that if he did not emerge the winner, Venezuelans faced a “bloodbath” and civil war.
The ways in which the Biden administration approach to Maduro departed from that of the Trump era include emphasizing incentives over punishment — more carrots than sticks, as several diplomats put it.
Following a flawed election in 2019, the Trump administration swiftly recognized Juan Guaido, a little-known opposition politician who declared himself “interim president.” Guaido was seen as legitimate enough because he headed the National Assembly, at the time one of Venezuela’s last remaining democratic institutions.
It was never clear how much domestic support he had, however, and many of the people who made up his shadow government resided in Washington. By the end of 2022, the Venezuelan opposition removed Guaido, who today is believed to be residing in exile in Florida.
In addition to indicting Maduro on drug-trafficking and other charges, former President Trump imposed harsh sanctions that targeted the Venezuelan economy, including its once-robust petroleum industry, in what was called a “maximum pressure campaign.’’
Diplomatic ties between the two countries were essentially severed in 2019.
But, starting in 2022, Biden began to thaw the diplomatic freeze by secretly dispatching a team of emissaries to Caracas, where they launched talks that eventually led to prisoner swaps that freed more than a dozen Americans detained by Venezuela, including several executives from Houston-based Citgo Petroleum Corp.
Last year, Biden eased a number of sanctions on Venezuela’s oil, gas and gold sectors in exchange for Maduro’s commitment to negotiate with the Venezuelan opposition to hold fair elections.
That set the stage for the July vote, with an opposition more unified than ever, fighting an electoral battle at home rather than in Washington, and, according to polls, with a hefty lead over Maduro.
But now U.S. officials are forced to reassess their strategy, and they will have to maneuver carefully. Restoring the tougher sanctions could backfire, by driving Maduro further from any negotiations while alienating the Latin American countries who are attempting to pressure him but also don’t want to be seen as doing Washington’s bidding.
The administration “has to keep the allies on board,” said Ryan Berg, who heads the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington.
“They have to avoid giving [the presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico] reason to care more about what the U.S. government is doing to Maduro than what Maduro did in stealing this election in such a brazen manner,” he said.
On Friday, the president of Panama, Jose Raul Mulino, stepped in to offer a solution, saying he would facilitate Maduro’s safe passage through Panama to a third country so that he could leave office peacefully.
Maduro responded with disdain and a derogatory term for the U.S. officials he suspected were behind the offer. After warning those who “mess with Venezuela,’’ Maduro said the president of Panama was “getting carried away by the gringos.”