COMMENTARY President Trump's "law enforcement" capture of Venezuela's dictator will be regarded a failure if it doesn't mean democracy restoration — which may require more U.S. military force.
From a visceral standpoint, at least, I was delighted last weekend to see Venezuela’s thug-creep-dictator Nicolás Maduro being perp-flown out of the country in U.S. handcuffs.
But, at that same gut level, I was dismayed to see Venezuela’s people still locked in their own shackles.
I’m certainly aware of the criticisms about the U.S. military’s Maduro-extraction operation: that it was an unlawful act of yanqui neo-imperialism; that its success now emboldens President Donald Trump to double down on his “Donroe Doctrine” delusion that the western hemisphere is a U.S. subsidiary, where he can arrest leaders he hates and annex turf he covets, like Greenland.
That worries me, too. It should worry anyone who wants to see the Americas move into the 21st century, not backslide into the 19th.
But what distresses me most for the moment is that while Trump may have removed Venezuela’s brutal dictator, he’s left Venezuela’s brutal dictatorship intact.
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The socialist regime’s top goons, led by acting President Delcy Rodríguez, remain entrenched in power. And how Trump and his administration plan to rectify that reality looks less thoughtfully planned than Saturday morning’s impeccable special forces strike.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio insists Maduro’s capture was a “law enforcement” move, since Maduro was wanted in the U.S. on drug-trafficking charges, and not a regime change action.
But when you arrest a despotic head of state inside his own country, you automatically — and astronomically — raise regime change expectations.
In this case, fairly or not, if law enforcement doesn’t also mean democracy restoration: mission not accomplished, Mr. President.
On Wednesday, Rubio presented a three-point Venezuela strategy rich with specifics about U.S. control of the country's oil reserves, the world's largest. It then takes up the release of political prisoners and transition to democratic governance — but offers no details.
So it’s still anybody’s guess whether Trump recognizes that the most important commodity he needs to secure in Venezuela isn’t its oil wealth but its commonwealth.
It’s still unclear if Trump understands that the most important commodity he needs to secure in Venezuela isn’t its oil wealth but its commonwealth.
His obsession with Venezuelan crude matters less than Venezuelans’ freedom from, say, being rounded up by regime agents looking for evidence on people’s cell phones that they supported Maduro’s ouster.
Which is exactly what’s happening on the streets of Caracas and other Venezuelan cities this week.
I agree with Trump that in a chaotic situation like Maduro’s removal, stability matters if you want to set a transition path.
Letting regime holdovers like Rodríguez hold the reins for a period can smooth the way better than immediately installing the democratic opposition can — especially since opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado isn’t exactly the darling of Venezuela’s most important pro-regime institution, the military.
Juvenile resentment
Still, there’s a big difference between prudently pausing Machado’s ascent and petulantly stabbing her back.
That’s what Trump did last weekend when he erroneously asserted that Machado “doesn’t have enough support or respect” inside Venezuela to lead it. His slight was likely born from his juvenile resentment that she and not he won the Nobel; and it only deepens concerns that re-democratizing her country is low on his post-Maduro agenda.
Worse, as this week’s regime crackdown indicates, Trump’s apparent disinterest only seems to have encouraged Rodríguez and her fellow mafia chieftains — her brother Jorge, the National Assembly president; Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello; and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino — to thumb their noses at any notion they’ll be the U.S.’s cooperative caretakers.
Perhaps, as the Trump administration believes, Rodríguez has morphed in recent years from a hardliner to a pragmatist who can collaborate with the U.S. on oil and political reform.
Perhaps she can convince Jorge, Diosdado and Vladimir to phase out their disastrous, quarter-century-long revolution, usher in new elections the opposition would likely win, and accept amnesty exile to a chateaux complex in France as Machado moves into the Miraflores presidential palace.
Perhaps, however, they won’t.
Trump will then face the realization that he can’t have it both ways in Venezuela.
That collaring Maduro didn't pre-empt — but triggered — those expectations for regime change.
That restoring democracy in Venezuela may well require further, larger U.S. military incursion there, if not outright boots-on-the-ground occupation, to dislodge sinister holdouts like Cabello and Padrino.
In which case, Trump will discover the other guy he handcuffed in Venezuela was himself.
