Downward Spiral
The situation inside Venezuela has gone from desperate to dystopian. More than 2 million Venezuelans have fled the country since the “socialist revolution,” approaching 10 percent of the country’s total population of 31 million.Hyperinflation became a reality months ago. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted that inflation would reach 1 million percent by the end of 2018, putting Venezuela in a tiny group that includes 1923 Germany, as well as Zimbabwe at the beginning of the last decade. Money is worthless, contracts are abrogated. The IMF forecasts that the economy will contract by 18 percent, the third year it has shrunk by double-digits. The regime has pauperized Venezuelans, with a few lucky exceptions.
Medicine and food are imported, and military-run networks are in charge of distributing them. Hospitals are closed or offer limited services, and public transportation is sporadic and unpredictable. Food in supermarkets is available only after waiting in line for hours each day. Schools are closed because the government isn’t paying teachers and there are no supplies for the students.
At the same time, oil exports, which provide the state with revenue to pay for the imports, are declining. Just last month, Venezuela’s oil output fell below 1 million barrels per day, a level not seen for more than 30 years.
When the ruling party last lost an election, in December 2015 for control of the National Assembly, Maduro simply created another legislative body. That was the Constituent Assembly, a move that left the opposition-controlled National Assembly impotent. He won the last two elections because the opposition refused to participate and because the regime manipulated the electoral process by jailing opposition politicians, barring unfriendly parties, and using the government’s control over the food supply to make sure that people went to the polls to vote for him.
Rising Authoritarianism
The Venezuelan case is of interest to students of geopolitics because it fits into a growing discussion of how so-called hybrid regimes use the trappings of democratic systems to disguise their authoritarian character, and how elected officials can undermine democracies. The United States is seen as the country prompting the most speculation, while the European Union is also under intense scrutiny. The minimum definition of democracy is that electoral results must not be predetermined. That is no longer the case in Venezuela.The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has indicated that her office is opening an investigation into the Venezuelan crisis. Will Maduro end up like former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic? Again, that requires some form of community consensus.
If we look at the rise of nationalist populism and threats to democracy in Europe over the past few years, we can see that the success of authoritarian movements often depends on the weakness of the regional community. Who or what group will help push Maduro from power, and how can outside pressure succeed without a coherent domestic alternative?
Roles for Cuba and Mexico
The road to a peaceful solution goes through Havana and might include Mexico City. Can Cuba offer a safe haven for Maduro, perhaps as a bargaining chip for a broader settlement with the United States? Venezuela continues to supply Cuba with cheap oil, even going so far as to buy crude on the open market to supply Cuban refineries. Cuba’s military and intelligence forces help the Maduro regime control its own population, so to play the role of peacemaker, Cuba must agree to remove all military and intelligence operatives.The new Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), is a wild card. He wants to revert to the so-called Estrada Doctrine of nonintervention. If so, Mexico would not join the rest of the Lima Group—an alliance of 17 countries established in August 2017 to find a peaceful resolution in Venezuela—in pressuring Maduro to leave quietly. However, AMLO might ask his new foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, an extraordinarily talented policymaker, to offer Mexico’s services as a mediator and put forward the country as a safe haven for those most threatened by legal proceedings under a new government.
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