CAMBRIDGE – Imagine you are driving down a road and reaching a junction. You’re not sure where to go, so turn right. After some time, the road becomes uneven, uneven and steep. The first thought that comes to mind is that you should have gone left. But, frankly, you don’t know if that would have led to an endless street. This is how much inside and outside Venezuela feels about the country today.
After all, former US President Donald Trump’s strategy of maximum dictatorship pressure, reflected in a number of sanctions imposed on the country, did not restore democracy or tackle a catastrophic economic and humanitarian crisis the country. According to the International Monetary Fund, Venezuela’s GDP in 2020 was over 75% below its level in 2013 – an unprecedented collapse of peace time (and worse than the impact of most wars). Small wonder that since 2015, over five million people, about 15% of the population, have left the country.
With Trump out, President Joe Biden’s administration has announced a foreign policy focused on defending democracy. How should he deal with Venezuela, given that previous attempts to restore democracy and prosperity have not materialized either?
Venezuela’s regime turned away from electoral democracy when it lost the ability to win elections. In 2010, the opposition gained control of local governments in the country’s major cities and states, only to see their power and budgets emptied, as parallel structures, controlled by the regime’s founder, President Hugo Chávez , be created in their place.
Following Chávez’s death in 2013, his successor, Nicolás Maduro, went further. In 2015, after the opposition won a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, the outgoing assembly used its lame duck session to overturn the Supreme Court, and the new assembly withdrew its powers . In 2016, the court also waived the constitutional right to a recall referendum, and in 2017 upheld the creation of a parallel assembly.
With the electoral trail closed, Venezuelans took to the streets, leading to violent clashes (which, according to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and the International Criminal Court, included crimes against humanity). Although this pressure forced the government to accept negotiations on three occasions – led by the Vatican in 2017, the Dominican Republic in 2018, and Norway in 2019 – none brought a return to democracy any closer. Instead, some negotiators were deported; one, Fernando Albán, died in police custody in October 2018.
Moreover, after losing so badly in the ballot box, the regime decided that it would never allow competitive elections again. The May 2018 presidential election and the December 2020 parliamentary election were so outrageously unfair that the opposition boycotted them, and most world leaders refused to acknowledge the results. When Maduro’s term came to an end, some 60 countries decided to recognize Juan Guaidó, President of the National Assembly elected in 2015, as acting president. Now that the term of that National Assembly is over and the new one is not recognized, the problem of legitimacy has weakened international support for Guaidó, especially in Europe.
In this context, a chorus of analysts has been arguing that the disastrous performance of the Venezuelan economy is due to international sanctions (we disagree): instead of pressure, they argue, what the country needs is negotiations.
This naive view gets the issues wrong. The fundamental problem in Venezuela is that the controlling clique has little to gain from negotiation: their “best alternative to a negotiated agreement” (BATNA) is better than they would get it from allowing free and fair elections. Promises of future benefits, such as power-sharing rules, never seem as attractive as a bird in the hand.
Experience from previous discussions shows that a lack of international recognition (which prevents Maduro from controlling Venezuela’s assets abroad) and sanctions are the only sources of leverage on the government. So the only way to negotiate is to make the status quo so unpleasant for the controlling clique that its unity stumbles. Only exacerbating their BATNA will give them a reason to negotiate. That is exactly the strategy pursued by the international community that led to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the end of South African apartheid.
Non-recognition and sanctions are fundamental elements of a strategy to re-establish democracy in Venezuela. The sanctions need to be strengthened by making them more multilateral and more onerous for the elite, and by ensuring they spare ordinary Venezuelans, some of whom have been hurt.
This can be fixed. But it is important to bear in mind two facts: first, the largest ever fall in food and medicine imports occurred in 2016, before the Trump administration sanctions. Second, the sanctions forced the regime to abandon its efforts to monopolize international trade. Liberalization of foreign exchange and prices increased the availability of imported food and medicines.
To strengthen society, the international community should help the Guaidó government transfer aid, as it did to frontline healthcare workers in September 2020, avoiding the Maduro blockade. The technology also exists for the Guaidó government to provide electronic identity documents to citizens, denying the regime a mechanism for extracting people from their rights. Finally, these technologies could also help address the problem of legality. In December 2020, the outgoing National Assembly organized cyber elections, where citizens could vote with a smartphone. This same technology could be used to elect the individual or body that would be Venezuela’s internationally recognized interim president, serving until negotiations to reestablish democracy can succeed.
Biden told the G7 recently: “Democracy does not happen by accident. We must defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it. ”In the case of Venezuela, this requires a clear strategy to afflict the comfortable and reassure the afflicted. The road can be uneven and steep, but, unlike the alternative route – negotiations without sanctions – it at least leads somewhere.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2021.
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