On November 21, somewhat at odds with the weeks of swordplay, black threats, and U.S. military buildup that followed the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in Latin America, a telephone call came when Donald Trump called the man he had chosen as his arch rival, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela.
By Trump’s own account, this was less an attempt to start negotiations on the way to a mutually beneficial agreement, but rather an attempt to move forward by giving an ultimatum.
Trump is said to have told a leader, “You can save yourself and the people close to you, but you have to leave the country now.” Trump has called that leader a narco-terrorist and baselessly accused him of emptying his country’s jails to send the most violent criminals to America.
The revelation this week about that threat dispels the idea that Trump is backing away from decisive action to topple Maduro’s regime.
Yet conflict with Venezuela does not always seem inevitable.
Just a few months earlier, Trump’s special mission envoy, Richard Grenell, had paved the way for a deal with Caracas – convincing Maduro to accept return flights of migrants deported from the US, while also agreeing to free 10 US citizens and legal residents held in captivity in the US.
Maduro has also raised the possibility of further agreement by offering the US access to Venezuela’s abundant supplies of oil and mineral resources.
Yet instead of more compromises, a president whose electoral appeal was based partly on a pledge to end America’s alleged addiction to distant foreign wars appears to be on the verge of provoking conflict in his own hemisphere.
Grenell, who had argued for pragmatism, found himself displaced by the more hardline advocacy of Secretary of State and acting national security adviser Marco Rubio, who had long taken a hardline stance toward Maduro and his late predecessor Hugo Chávez.
A widely offered explanation for this change is that Trump is a victim of the influence of the last person to whom he was briefed – in this instance the increasingly influential Rubio likely played a role.
But some close observers of Trump’s Venezuela policy argue that the administration’s chief anti-Maduro opponent is Trump himself.
Ryan Berg, head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, “I don’t deny that Rubio’s posture is currently very much in line with the president, who thinks he’s doing a good job. But Trump has long been a fairly staunch opponent of Maduro. He has very different and more mixed feelings about other dictators and other parts of the world, but he has been more consistent on Maduro.”
“In many ways, Venezuela is unfinished business for Trump from his first presidency. (And) Venezuela really touches on all the issues that are priority issues for Trump – drugs in the hemisphere, migration in the hemisphere, and China in the hemisphere.”
Berg said Trump’s ultimatum increased the possibility that the administration could launch an “assassination attack” aimed at killing Maduro. Despite the inevitable condemnation that would follow from the assassination of a national leader, the administration believes it would be justified because it does not consider Maduro to be the legitimate head of state – pointing to two presidential elections, in 2018 and 2024, that he is widely believed to have stolen.
“Maduro and those around him are betting that Trump is going to back down, and on this one, I think they may be very wrong,” Berg said. “I truly believe Trump is serious about this, and we could see attacks in Venezuela before Christmas.”
But he added: “There is an effort within the administration to make it an easier way, which is to give Maduro an opportunity to leave on his own terms through some kind of negotiation. He can make safe passage to another location.”
Yet even if Trump is offering Maduro safe passage to leave power – Qatar, Cuba and even Turkey are being viewed as possible deportation locations – there is still little guarantee that Venezuelan leaders will accept it.
“Not everyone is motivated by a few hundred million dollars and a plane trip,” said an American businessman with long-standing ties to Venezuela and experience working with Maduro. “There aren’t examples of people leaving the country with that kind of money staying for very long, so it’s not a very attractive prospect for Maduro.”
Steve Ellner, a former professor at Venezuela’s Universidad de Oriente and a veteran commentator on the country’s politics, argued that Trump’s resort to threatening phone calls may itself be a reaction to the Venezuelan armed forces’ refusal to bow to the overwhelming US military presence.
“One of the things that Maduro has demonstrated is that there is going to be resistance,” Ellner said. “If the Venezuelan military was going to overthrow Maduro out of fear of a US invasion, it would have happened by now.”
He added: “If Maduro had not responded the way he did with this (military) mobilization, if there had not been a push from Latin American leaders like (Colombian President Gustavo) Petro and (Brazilian President) Lula and (Mexico President Claudia (Sheinbaum)) … perhaps Venezuela would have had boots on the ground or some kind of military action.”
Ellner argued that Trump was using intimidation to extract the largest possible concessions from Maduro “by ear” before deciding on military action.
“The way it happened was not the best situation for the falcons, and that’s why, until now, they have not done anything in Venezuelan territory,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. It very well could.”
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