Before millions of Venezuelans lined up to vote in the most pivotal presidential election in Venezuela’s modern history, Edmundo González, the opposition’s 74-year-old candidate, told journalists that he was optimistic about victory. “We are confident that our margin of victory will be so overwhelming that it will open a new political reality in the country and that will open spaces for negotiation,” González, a former diplomat, told The Washington Post. “Maybe it’s wishful thinking.”
Indeed, it was. After nearly 10 million Venezuelans dropped their ballots, Nicolás Maduro, the strongman president who has ruled the oil-rich South American country for 11 years, declared himself the winner. According to the government-controlled National Electoral Council, Maduro received 51.2% of the vote to González 44.2%, a result opposition leader Maria Corina Machado quickly denounced as fraudulent. She wasn’t the only one. Chilean President Gabriel Boric tweeted that Chile would not recognize the tally. Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, said the same thing. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed concerns that the vote didn’t reflect the will of the Venezuelan people.
Maduro’s administration did everything it could to tilt the election in its favor, using the machinery of government to prevent the opposition movement from traveling the country unhindered. Campaign workers were jailed. Venezuelans who left the country years earlier due to Maduro’s economic mismanagement, a key opposition voting bloc, found it extremely difficult to participate. Some polling places were relocated at the last minute, causing confusion. Machado, dubbed Venezuela’s “Iron Lady” for her indefatigable campaigning against Maduro’s dictatorship, was banned from running herself. (González was Machado’s hand-picked replacement.) And election monitors from the European Union were blocked from entering Venezuela.
This is a tough pill to swallow for President Joe Biden’s administration. Last year, there was a sense of cautious hope that perhaps Venezuela was turning a corner after more than a decade of political repression and economic contraction. After months of back channel negotiations with Maduro’s representatives, Washington and Caracas arrived at an arrangement. In exchange for Maduro opening up the political system, allowing the opposition to compete in a free and fair election and permitting international election monitors into the country, the Biden administration agreed to the partial lifting of sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry. Maduro and the opposition signed their own agreement to update the voter rolls and give all candidates access to the media.
U.S. officials, however, stressed that the economic restrictions would snap back into place if Maduro reneged on the terms. It didn’t take long for that to happen. Machado was still not permitted to run. The airwaves remained dominated by the government narrative, which blasted the opposition as a bunch of fascists seeking to bring war and misery to the Venezuelan people. Venezuelans overseas found it all but impossible to cast ballots. This April, the U.S. reinstated the oil sanctions, arguing that Maduro was never intent on implementing the accord in the first place. The election results announced Monday morning were the final nail in the coffin.
For Maduro, this weekend was bittersweet. A former bus driver and union leader who rose to power on the back of his mentor, Hugo Chávez, Maduro has a knack for political survival even if he is arguably the world’s worst chief executive. Venezuela used to be one of South America’s wealthiest nations; now, it’s one of the poorest. The country’s economy has lost 80% of its value during Maduro’s 11-year reign, a consequence of his ideologically tinged economic policies, the Venezuelan oil industry’s dilapidation and a U.S. sanctions regime that has only exacerbated Venezuela’s outmigration.
And yet, despite his stellar lack of accomplishments, Maduro has managed not only to extend his power but also consolidate it. After every near miss — whether it was an attempted assassination via drone in 2018, a coup attempt by then-opposition leader Juan Guaido in 2019 or another coup attempt in 2020 at the hands of rogue Americans — Maduro has been quick to clamp down on any perceived threats to his rule. Venezuela’s army, one of the country’s key power centers, is firmly in Maduro’s hands, not out of love for the dictator but rather because the arrangement is good for the top brass. Up until this year’s vote, the opposition was notoriously divided against itself. Maduro fed off those divisions and exploited them to his personal benefit.
How will the U.S. respond to all this?
Unfortunately for U.S. policymakers, there aren’t any good options on the table. A return to the maximum pressure campaign of Donald Trump’s administration, which Biden continued up until the last year’s temporary loosening, is unlikely to achieve anything more than it did in the past. And let’s be honest: As righteous as the policy was from a moral standpoint, the practical benefits were virtually nonexistent. The whole purpose of the pressure was to compel Maduro to resign the presidency or, short of that, negotiate earnestly with broad segments of Venezuelan society to bring the country back on a democratic track. In reality, the only thing the sanctions did was further crush an already-crushed Venezuelan economy.
On the other side of the ledger, the U.S. could theoretically come to the depressing conclusion that Maduro is likely to be Venezuela’s leader at least until 2030 — and likely longer — and normalize relations in the hope that full U.S. engagement will temper the man’s instincts. But that’s highly unlikely — it wouldn’t fly on Capitol Hill and Maduro is inherently suspicious of Washington’s intentions. The U.S. policy response will have to be somewhere in the middle.
This weekend’s election won’t be doing U.S.-Venezuela relations any favors.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
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