What Comes Next in Venezuela

28:55The economic situation seemed unsustainably grim back then, and it's gotten much worse. Is there a risk of a kind of precipitous economic collapse that could itself bring the kind of chaos and instability that you were warning of? Yeah, well, we had a precipitous economic collapse, of course. I mean, around the time that you were here, that was getting underway. in the first 10 years of the Maduro government, saw what economists tell us is the biggest ever economic collapse in peacetime in the modern era. I mean, the economy shrank by more than three quarters. And what happened? 8 million people left the country out of a population of around 30 million.

29:38And here's the problem now. I mean, what then happened after 2019, when Trump began the first round of maximum pressure, the government, and in particular Delce Rodriguez actually, began this sort of economic reform, which wasn't really reform. It was just a kind of, there were stopgap measures to try to bring some life, breathe some life back into the economy. So they partially dollarized. They stopped enforcing price and exchange controls, and they freed things up enough that the private sector could kind of get things going. So there was a largely sort of commercially driven, And it wasn't a boom, but certainly it meant that instead of shrinking the economy back, it began to grow again.

30:17And that helped some people. I mean, it didn't result the underlying crisis. It helped some people. Now we're going back into recession. The difference now is, of course, everybody's a lot leaner in the literal as well as metaphorical sense. The reserves are minimal to deal with this. There's no cushion to absorb the collapse. But in addition to that, people often talk very loosely about the risk of another massive exodus, right, the Venezuelans. And I mean, certainly, I think if we go to war, if chaos and violence really breaks out, then people are going to start leaving. But the fact is that it's not the same to leave Venezuela in 2026 as it was back in, say, 2016, 10 years ago.

31:06the world was a lot more welcoming place. The region was able to absorb most of these 8 million migrants. Colombia alone took about 2.5 million. All that has changed. I mean, the economic situation of all these countries is tougher. The jobs aren't there. The rules against immigrants are a lot tougher. Countries have had to, for a variety of reasons, both economic and but also social. I mean, xenophobia is a problem in a number of countries, particularly up and down the western side of South America, the Andean countries. The volume of Venezuelans that they've had to absorb has obviously been a strain.

31:49And particularly sort of socially, it's tough to absorb that many people in such a short time. And so they've tightened the rules, and it's not so easy anymore. And, of course, the U.S. has closed the door. and in fact is you know the migration has been has been the other way around the net migration even you know since since maduro stole the election in in 2024 and everybody said particularly mario quina machao said you know if maduro stays in power there'll be another massive exodus and we said no they won't because people won't be able to and it's not just because the outside world is less welcome means also because people have less money because contrary to popular belief if you're going to be if you're going to be an economic refugee you need money i mean you can't just set off and walk if you don't have anything at all and the people left behind you know a whole generation left and it's the generation you know the productive not just the middle class but right across the the social spectrum productive people in their in the prime of life left the country is exceed no prospect of being able to survive here.

32:59And who's left behind? The kids and the old folk. And yes, some of those kids have grown up and some of them will leave. And some of them maybe can afford to get on a plane and go to Spain, for example. But really the mass exodus that we saw before is not that. So that safety valve doesn't exist. And that's another serious issue to take into consideration. I've thought back often to what you wrote in Foreign Affairs a month or six weeks ago, especially the law and quoting you here. The assumption that forcefully overthrowing the current government will lead to a smooth transition to democracy is dangerous.

33:36Without a viable strategy for what comes after the government falls, ousting Maduro could lead to even greater repression and hardship for Venezuelans. You've, of course, talked a lot about how we may end up in that kind of scenario. if you're trying to be optimistic and coming up with a reasonably plausible scenario that would leave Venezuela in a better place, what might that look like? What's an optimistic path here? Yeah, I should say, first of all, that when we wrote that, of course, I said it and wrote it in other places too, you know, we were accused of being government collaborators. We were told that we were echoing government talking points and that we were in the pay, you know, of Maduro.

34:15And it's interesting that now, you know, the US has come to the same conclusion. But what's an optimistic scenario? I mean, I'm glad you asked the question because I'm often accused of being a pessimist, to which I usually respond, you know, the old definition of a pessimist is a well-informed optimist. The biggest flaw in what the US is doing right now is that they've completely ignored the role of the opposition. And by the opposition, I mean, not just the leadership, as I said before, but, you know, know, the bulk of Venezuelans who, you know, whose interests really ought to be taken into account when the fate of their country is being decided, right, one would imagine.

34:51What they would do is they would use this immense leverage that the United States now has, unprecedented leverage, to say to the Venezuelan government, look, you know, we'd like the oil and all that, and that's very nice, and thank you for, you know, tying it up with a nice little bow and sending it to the US. But that's not good enough. You have to come up with a plan for resolving the underlying political conflict. And what that means is you have to start talking to the opposition. And you can't just talk to the people you decide are the opposition, your tame opposition. You've got to talk to the people who really represent most Venezuelans.

35:25And they're going to say, yeah, don't like that idea very much. And the US is going to have to say, well, that's tough, because if you don't like that, then you're out. you know and you know that bet that we just made that you're you know a better guarantee of a stable transition we can forget that and we'll bring somebody else in i don't think it's particularly realistic that the u.s is likely to do that but i mean this is here's where i think it should go but because it's i mean at the moment the u.s is not paying attention to this kind of thing i think that there's an immense burden on the opposition itself and the different factions of the opposition.

36:03Because remember, I mean, Maria Corina took this ball and ran with it like she was the only show in town because, you know, she won the primary in 2023. She should have been the candidate. She was banned. And her substitute candidate won the election by a mile. And so she says, I'm the leader. I get to decide what the strategy is. And a lot of other people in the opposition whose voice is not really being heard right now said that's a really bad idea. And I think in the light of what's happened in the last few days, we can say that they were actually probably closer to the truth. It wasn't a very good idea to put all your eggs in the basket of a US military intervention.

36:38Because guess what's happened? They don't really care about you. They'll ditch you as soon as it becomes expedient, which they did. So I think it's now time to reassess that. And it's time for Marie Curie, in all humility, with her Nobel Peace Prize under her arm, to try to make peace initially within the opposition, to bring the different factions of the opposition together around a minimum set of demands, not just for the people in government here, but for Washington too, to say, this is what we, you know, as the representatives of the Venezuelan people need. And this is what you need to do.

37:14Because nobody else has the authority to say that. And I think Maria Corina no longer has the authority to say, I am the opposition. I mean, I think, as I say, she needs to... Politicians don't generally apologise. I wouldn't ask for an apology, but certainly say, I'm not the only show in town anymore. I mean, we've gone down this road and it hasn't worked out. And we obviously need to rethink. And I think that that process needs to be supported by, other governments, especially in the region, but also elsewhere, the EU, multilateral organizations to the extent that they have any say at all. They need to get together around that and say, you know, a very simple set of demands, like five demands.

38:03And it's very obvious. You know what I mean? You need to release political prisoners. You need to start opening up the political system. You need to allow exiles to come back in without being prosecuted. And you need to start talking to them. And if that process needs, It's, I don't know, it's not going to be UN blue helmet because the UN Security Council is never going to come to an agreement on what to do about Venezuela. But if it needs some sort of, you know, guarantee on the part of foreign governments, then the US should exceed to that. And they shouldn't treat, I mean, this idea, we now have to call it the Don Roe Doctrine, you know, where the US now owns the Western Hemisphere, or at least that part of it around the Caribbean Basin.

38:42And all that, you know, everybody else needs to stay out and no government here is going to tell them what to do. So that's not, this is the 21st century and that's not good. We're not, you know, we can't go back to big stick diplomacy and gunboat diplomacy and the idea that you send in the Marines if somebody expropriates your company. We can't go back to that. We shouldn't go back to that. And, you know, if the U.S. is reluctant to accept that, the rest of the world's got to try and get together and tell them that they have to. That was Phil Gunson speaking from Caracas. After the break, you'll hear from Juan González, a longtime State Department and NSC official.

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41:01Now to my conversation with Juan Gonzalez. Juan, thank you so much for doing this and for the great piece you wrote in the hours after Maduro was seized on Saturday. That piece was called The End of the Beginning in Venezuela. Thank you for having me. There's a lot to talk about when it comes to news of the last few days, but I want to look backwards. You have served in the U.S. government for much of the last 20 years or so. You were in the State Department. We were colleagues in the State Department. You were the senior director for Latin America in the White House during much of the Biden administration.

41:34The challenge of the Chavista government, first under Hugo Chavez, then under Nicolas Maduro, has been a thorn in the side of American policymakers for a long, a long time. And as you look at the failures and challenges of that policy over that period, how do you assess them? If you would kind of go back and do something differently, whether in the George W. Bush years, the Obama years, the Biden years, what might have been done to get us to a different place than we're at now? That's an excellent question. And I'll start with a brief anecdote. After the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013, which really marked my involvement in Venezuela, I was the Andes director at the time at the NSC.

42:10We had a meeting in the sit room with the president. And we were talking about what is going to happen after Hugo Chavez. Ricardo Zuniga was the senior director at the time. And the president asked me, you know, he asked everybody, but at the very end, I was the note taker. He asked me a question. I almost passed out from nervousness. But I remember saying, so there are basically two paths. There's one path where the opposition and Chavismo find some sort of third way, because Chavismo is a social ideology or is a social project with something that was very compelling. Chavez was invested a lot in social programs.

42:45is that's a sustainable way for Venezuela, where there's some sort of compromise between both sides. And then the other one is, if both sides basically dig in, then I said every political science book I ever read suggests that this is not going to end well. And our focus at that time, and I'll say that I agreed with that focus, was not to really escalate the problem or to become distracted by Venezuela, but really think about how we message it and how we manage it, as opposed to becoming a political actor inside the country. we wanted to kind of create a space for Venezuelans to really rise up and force that debate also in the region I think at that time at the time when Maduro was the weakest it wasn't clear that he was going to come in he was very unpopular maybe that was the time for us to really ramp up sanctions pressure and at the individual level and really at the weakest point press the opposition to try to enter into some side dialogue so bottom line is I think we could have been much more hands on early on.

43:41But I think a lot of the failures of Venezuela, and I'll stop here, I don't want to filibuster, is I think this is also a failure, frankly, of the region. Because Latin America and the Caribbean is very good at ignoring problems until they get really bad. And often the region can't cooperate regionally without the United States as a superstructure. That sounds really paternalistic, but it's the reality. And it was a space for, I think, primarily Brazil, but I think Colombia and others to really put pressure on Venezuela in a way that we could not. And I think they kind of ignored the problems.

44:13And now that it's too late and the U.S. is involved, now everybody wants to kind of be a mediator. So I think it's two parts. We could have engaged very early on, been a little bit more aggressive and pressed for dialogue early on. And the second is maybe diplomatically, we should have been pressuring more governments to really look for a solution, but certainly on their own, they weren't doing. In 2013, you were the junior guy, the note taker in the room. By the Biden years, you were the senior Western Hemisphere official in the National Security Council in the White House. I imagine you had those kinds of conversations with your counterparts in Brazil and Colombia and Mexico and other regional governments.

44:48What were those conversations like? What was their response to that message? Yeah, I think particularly on Brazil, they put consensus and multilateralism above everything. And I think also Venezuela, to a certain extent, for Brazil, was part of a foreign policy project to really develop, I would say, hegemony in South America. Their political project was building a united UNASUR to counterbalance the United States. the conversations we had were really frustrating because they felt like they could work with Marudo. They thought that they could handle him. At the same time, and I remember this, we traveled to then Vice President Biden to the Chilean presidential inauguration for Bachelet.

45:25And I remember distinctly something that Bachelet told us. She said that they weren't sure which opposition they were dealing with because at that time, the Unity Roundtable, which was an opposition kind of unity group, was engaging in international diplomacy. But you'd have one wave of engagement by the Unity Roundtable talking about democratic outcomes. And then you would have a whole different part of the opposition coming down, pressing for pressure and a much more confrontational approach. And I believe, I think the Chilean side will say, that the opposition undermined itself by kind of being at tensions with each other on the way forward on Venezuela.

46:01And that's something that Hugo Chavez and even Maduro has been able to do successfully, which is to polarize and divide the opposition, has been their strategy, part of their strategy to stay in power. And they've been very, very good at it. In the Biden years, you were one of the people who spent time negotiating with members of the Maduro government. Some of that was about American prisoners in Venezuela and about access to oil. Some of it was about the 2024 election, which Marina Karina Machado, the opposition leader, was not allowed to run in, but her candidate won fairly decisively from everything we know.

46:34So when you look back at those negotiations, was there ever a chance of something working there or things that you would, if you could go back to the Biden years, that you would have done that, again, might have gotten us to a different place? I think both. One clarification is we never negotiated over access to oil. I mean, at that point, U.S. production was increasing significantly. And there was an allegation that when I traveled there in March 2022, where we secured the releases to Americans, that we negotiated oil over that. But really, the incentive that I gave, and I met with Maduro, I met with Delce Rodriguez, I met with Jorge Rodriguez.

47:08I sat down with the two Rodriguez brothers for several hours to really talk about the way forward. And the bottom line was this. This is what the instructions from the president and from Jake Sullivan were. I said, look, a U.S. official has not been to Venezuela since the inauguration of Hugo Chavez in 1998. We are taking a huge political risk by being here. we were opening a line of dialogue. And my message was, if prisoners are not released within 24 to 48 hours of my departure, the channel is closed permanently. And that's what prompted them, you know, with Roger Carstens to actually release those two Americans.

47:45The hostage negotiator. Correct. Yeah, Roger Carstens. But then in terms of the negotiations, to your question, the negotiations worked in that they created the democratic moment that allowed María Coría Machado to initially become the primary candidate and Edmundo González to be the opposition candidate that won the election in July 2024. where the opposition and others criticized the Barbados agreement that we signed at the end of 2023. But without Barbados, you do not have Edmundo Gonzalez as the elected president of Venezuela. Certainly, we did not expect Maduro to allow an election where he did not control the outcome, particularly when Maria Corina won the primary.

48:27We saw that becoming an uphill battle as soon as she was elected because the regime hates her with a deep passion. So I think parts of it worked, right? But in any sort of democratic engagement or process, these things take time and they are imperfect, they are slow, they're fragile, but they are the sustainable approach based on, you know, we tasked the intelligence community, talked to academics to help derive lessons from negotiations around the world to try to inform our approach. What could we have done better? I think maybe we could have pressed the opposition to provide political guarantees earlier on.

49:06That was very difficult for them to do. When we would deal with their lead negotiator, the perception we got was that political guarantees would have broken up the unity in the opposition because there were some that did not want those political guarantees. The other, I think, is, you know, I'll say that a lesson that I've derived from Donald Trump is that the United States often needs to be a ruthless international actor. I think the president is taking that to a very destructive and negative level. But maybe we should have posted a destroyer off of the coast of Maracaibo around the time of the election.

49:37Maybe there's something we should have done to really ramp up the pressure to ensure that they respected the results. But we at the same time thought, look, we don't think that Maduro is going to accept the outcome. we were taking a longer view. It was difficult for us to say that publicly because if you're in the White House, you can't say, well, you know, if Maduro doesn't accept the outcome, we'll just, we'll think about what comes next. We were very focused on the outcome of the July 2024 election. But we were also thinking, well, the municipal elections are in 2025. And traditionally, the Chavistas, which is the kind of the coalition around Maduro, they will allow regional members of the opposition to win elections.

50:15So there are pockets of democracy inside of Venezuela. It's Miraflores, the presidential palace that has been really the focus of the opposition. It's been the main kind of power center that's been fought over since Chávez arrived in power in the late 90s. It's fascinating that you sat down with Maduro and also with Delce and Jorge Rodriguez. What's your sense of them? What was it like? Well, you know the whole term, the banality of evil. I wouldn't call them evil, but they're very charismatic people. I think Nicolás Maduro is somebody who has a very thin skin and a very brittle ego and will never take a decision, even if it's in his interest, if he is seen as being forced into that decision.

50:56At the same time, he is a believer in the Chavista ideological project of socialism and believes that the problems of Venezuela are not because of the mismanagement of their Chavismo, but rather because of sanctions. I mean, they fundamentally believe that. And they wanted to enter into this status quo ante that existed under Obama, where we still worked together in some areas and kind of, you know, agreed to disagree, but, you know, maintained a civil or at least a diplomatic relationship. Delcy and Jorge are very different animals. You know, they, by really, by briefly, by way of background, their father was detained and tortured to death.

51:34Detained by? By the government that was in power at the time. All pre-Chavez. Paul Prechavez was detained and tortured to death. And they, I think, secretly blame the imperialist powers for that. So I think they have a deep animosity against Western powers. And I think the United States for what they believe is what happened to their father, but also, again, they're preventing the blossoming of this kind of ideological vision that began under Hugo Chavez. But they're also fundamentally pragmatists. Jorge Rodriguez is a very good negotiator. He's a psychiatrist. He's actually a very charismatic person to talk to, but he's there to win the negotiation.

52:14Whereas Delcy is very, very serious. I believe ideologically she's also very aligned with what Chavez will do, but she's, I think, considered, I consider to be, and I think others do, to be probably the best manager and bureaucrat of the bunch. but she doesn't have the political power that Maduro and that Chavez had. And so I think right now we're in this position where Vladimir Padrino, who was the minister of defense, Diosdado Cabello, the minister of interior who controls the intelligence apparatus and has been behind the crackdown post-election. And now they hate her. But I think there's this understanding that Del C is keeping the Americans at bay.

52:52And so I think right now the stability, you know, relative stability, even though there's violence in the streets, is very, very brittle. I want to come back to Delcy and this incredibly complicated balancing act she's trying to pull off. But sticking with the Washington side of this for a bit, you, of course, are not in the U.S. government right now, but you have deep connections with the government. You served for a long time. What is your understanding of how we got here? What was the policy process? Who was driving it? How much of the planning for this kind of operation is kind of on the shelf in the Pentagon versus stuff that was spun up relatively recently?

53:26You know, it's interesting because at the beginning of the Trump administration, both Rick Grinnell and Secretary Marco Rubio rushed to try to get a hold of the Venezuela account. Rick Grinnell went down, met with Maduro. There's a photo of them. Got the release of a bunch of Americans and started developing a plan that would allow the United States to have access to Venezuela's resources, would help them drive a wedge between Venezuela and external actors, China, Iran, and Russia, but would preserve Maduro in power. And Rubio rushed to recognize the legitimacy of Edmundo Gonzalez, who I'd mentioned as the, you know, the person who won the election in July of 2024.

54:10And since then, there's been a tension between the two. My takeaway is Rubio won because he commanded the entire State Department bureaucracy and was the international security advisor. And I think Rick Grinnell made the mistake of thinking that when the president says something, it becomes the law, right? And you know, because you've served in government too, is that sometimes presidential ideas die at the bureaucratic level if there isn't this kind of wherewithal, within the bureaucracy to really drive. Often, particularly if there's change involved, the bureaucracy resists change. And Rubio was just a better bureaucratic knife fighter than Rick Grinnell.

54:46I also think Rubio has been preparing for this project since he was in the Senate, right? Trump only played a very key role in Venezuela and Cuba policy, Latin America policy in general. He, I think, pressed for the indictment. And then as Secretary of State, the designation of Trindaragua, which is this vulcanized and diffused criminal group the creation or the designation of Cartel de los Soles, which is not really a cartel in the vertically integrated sense, but rather a label used to describe officials in the military and the government that are, you know, getting money from helping traffic drugs.

55:22That, I think, bureaucratically started putting Grinnell in a corner. Now, how do we get from there to an actual intervention the way that happened? You know, I think that in any scenario like this, and you've seen these two, when the president wants options, you put together all the options, even the worst options, and you try to weight those. But you say, look, we can invade, but we don't think this is a good idea because of this and this and this and this. They presented those options to the president. I think Rubio won the argument that they eventually had to get to this point where they were going to pull him out.

55:51And I think the scenario we're in right now is where Rubio wants to have his Kate Anita too, where he's not going to actually put boots on the ground. They got Maduro, so they checked the boxes is a law enforcement operation. They're going to get the resources from Venezuela. He's going to try to pull the strings from the outside by, you know, continuing the oil embargo and using sanctions leverage in the threat of a future invasion to try to actually manage an eventual transition in Venezuela. I do believe we're eventually going to get to elections, but not before the United States has basically taken over the entire oil and gas sector in Venezuela.

56:28so you know and i'll say on the on the operation i um coincidentally like the morning of the invasion i was up at 1 30 in the morning going down this rabbit hole on on the internet of whether a special forces op inside of venezuela was viable of all things and i concluded you know based on what i know you know decades of of working on this issue there's just a very difficult undertaking the risk was too high it was a very high denial environment an urban area And so when I saw this go down, I was blown away. It goes to show that the capabilities of the United States when it comes to doing something like this, I think are second to none.

57:04I was amazed that they were able to pull this off. Is that about a level of penetration of circles around Maduro that allowed that relative ease of operation, or is that just a reflection of American capabilities? I think it's both. I think it got to this point, and I think this is where Rubio's approach succeeded. I never thought that the circles around Maduro, there's regime cohesion insofar as they need each other. And I think over time, and with the support of the opposition on the ground, they were able to identify players inside the inner circle of Maduro that were eventually able to pinpoint the location and help them stage this operation.

57:43Because you're not able to do that if you're only getting human resources and the CIA is on the outside. That's not, that's way too risky because human sources are notoriously untrustworthy. And so they had to actually develop some sort of infrastructure inside of the country, which is very difficult to do and they were able to pull it off. So as an operation, this was something that, I've never seen it, right? I've never worked in the Middle East, so I've never seen the stuff that we do there. But in Latin America, I've never seen something this complex be executed. I'm interested in your relatively optimistic view of the path to transition, but first lingering on the current administration.

58:20How do you understand their objectives? What is the, if we're applying the Dunro doctrine to Venezuela now, what is the policy path ahead? And what do you expect the consequence of that to be? Some of that's about oil, but also about their ability to keep relative stability in that very complicated power structure with the Venezuela. yeah well in the United States I mean obviously the the Dunro Doctrine is it's the revival of that very old idea that you know we're familiar with and it's unilateral enforcement and it treats as I wrote in the piece engagement is a choice rather than a requirement and and it aligns closely with with I think Rubio's worldview on Latin America where I think he's believed that U.S.

59:00policy in the region has been like too hesitant too multilateral too constrained by process. And so a more muscular approach, they're seeing it as a return to not the Monroe Doctrine, more like the Roosevelt Corollary, where if these countries aren't doing what's in their own interest, the U.S. will come in and do it for them. That is an approach that is going to fundamentally change how U.S.-Latin-American relations work from this point forward, in the sense that we are now in the very transactional environment, but also one where countries in Latin America and the Caribbean do not have agency because the United States decides and they are bystanders when it comes to these sorts of decisions.

59:40And I think that you can only put guns in your friends so long before they start pointing them back. So I don't think this approach is, I think, sustainable over time. Now, what does the administration want to get out of this? I think number one is this whole kind of peace through strength brand that the administration has in the national security strategy, exercising control over what we call our hemisphere is a return to 1950s to 1970s U.S. policy. And it's going to be one where, you know, even the threat of intervention is going to allow the United States to shape political dynamics, at least in the short term, inside of Latin America and the Caribbean.

1:00:15The other is, you know, my wife actually says this. She says that we're right now in World War III, not a conventional war. I agree with this, but rather this competition for resources at a time when the world is going through transformation, revolutionary changes, where China's really on the ascendant, Russia is going after Ukraine and really pushing Europe around. I think Donald Trump has really latched onto that idea is that's the way of the world. We saw Stephen Miller do that on Jake Tapper that might makes right at this point is really what they want. And then lastly, it's the oil. But the oil is, I don't think it's going to be the panacea that I think this administration is promising it to be.

1:00:56And I think over time, this approach is not going to age well, necessarily. And the idea that they're going to sell it to the American people when it's actually not going to yield concrete results, I think people are going to start asking questions. Just as a, let's say, a thought experiment, it does seem possible that the Rubio approach or the Trump approach will work on its own terms, that the U.S. has such extraordinary leverage and capabilities at this point that you could see the kind of resource extraction parts of it and the political control, at least for some period of time, shape the region.

1:01:29Is that plausible? Yeah. I mean, on the flip side is that is by, quote, running the country, Rubio and the administration hear everything that goes wrong, right? Right now, the violence that's taking place, the 800 political prisoners, the repression, the corruption, any economic failure, it all becomes a political albatross for this administration. But what I've been telling people, been very clear, and I mentioned this a piece, there's a chance Rubio pulls this off. You know, this is not the Middle East. Certainly, 26 years of Chavismo have complicated, you know, the criminal networks that are basically embedded inside of Venezuela are going to make it very difficult for the United States, even if we have troops on the ground.

1:02:05But there's a chance that with Delce Rodriguez, if she's able to basically consolidate control, is able to find an arrangement with the United States where she's making Trump happy, but she's also able to stabilize the Venezuelan economy, generate jobs, get sanctions lifted, that this becomes not a regime change, but an autocrat change. and it becomes a scenario that is that in six months to a year, you have an election, right? Even though there was already an election in 2024, this administration is talking about having a new election. In that election, there's definitely a scenario where Delce Rodriguez becomes a competitive candidate because people see the benefit and they don't want this shift to the opposition.

1:02:49So I think people game it as a 5%. I don't think it's that low. I think, you know, I would give Rubio good odds. I would say there's like a 30 % chance that Rubio pulls this off. But there are so many other ways that this goes horribly sideways. You have, you know, this as well as I do, you have the National Liberation Army in the west of the country. You have, in Colombia, hardened non-state actors that have been fighting very well-trained military for about 50 years. You could see a scenario where there are, you know, people forget what Colombia looked like in the late 90s when there were car bombs going off everywhere, where there were assassinations going on all the time.

1:03:22And these are groups that are experts in urban warfare. And that'll become, I think, very difficult with or without U.S. troops on the ground. Let's stick with that relatively benign scenario first. If you were in your old job in the White House or you were at the State Department, what would you be doing in terms of U.S. policy to get us to that kind of outcome? Yeah, so we are, you know, let's say I was in the administration now. I think they're doing the right thing by opening up the U.S. Embassy. um the second thing is you know is that we can't we can't take all of the resources we have to make sure that we are um bolstering delzy rodriguez the third which the administration has already started hinting at is you you find a way to arrest dios dado cabello i think he's probably the the biggest veto player um for for delzy at this point you know bloody you know they and him both ladir padrina and dios dado cabello are heavily implicated in drug trafficking If there's a Cartel de los Soles, they are the Cartel de los Soles at the highest levels of the government.

1:04:23And you need to find a way to really control the military apparatus. But I think Dios de la Cabello has to go. You make sure that you empower Del Ciro to a certain extent. And if things start going sideways, I think this president at some point is going to have to have some sort of presence inside the country, especially as oil companies go in. And you've been seeing the reports that the administration has offered to subsidize the investments by oil and gas industry, because what I've been hearing is in some of the meetings that the president or the White House has had with the oil majors, they are not rushing to get into the country because they want some legal certainty.

1:05:02The United States is going to, you know, Donald Trump, you know, you have an election in 2028. The Democrats may win by a small or large margin. The House of Representatives and the oversight mechanisms will start. There's a concern because if you need to grant licenses for these companies to go in, if you do a general license, those are public, right? That's what we did. We did a general license lifting temporarily sanctions on the oil and gas sector. Individual license to specific companies, those are private. And that's a huge space for graft. And I imagine Democrats are going to want to be all over that.

1:05:37So I think it's something where it's going to be very complicated for this administration to execute. but if if all in gas companies go in uh you know maybe they get eric prince to go in there with a private army i don't know but like i don't think it's going to be as easy as you know i think there's going to be violence there's going to be instability there are these pseudo paramilitary groups that are already roving the streets uh i don't think it's going to be as easy as as uh people think and i think there's a very real danger that that despite the resources that venezuela has that we start seeing venezuela become almost like a haiti where we're gangs start developing around the country because today the venezolan military does not have full control over the state and there are there are times where they will engage in in battles and firefights and along the colombia venezuela border where they will lose these battles and their entire parts of the country like their eln is basically uh serves as a way for the government to maintain control of areas where they have no presence farther in the east there are cartels and other criminal actors that are going to be really hard to control.

1:06:37It's not going to be easy by any stretch. Given your experience sitting down with Del C. Rodriguez, how do you rate her chances of managing this very, very complicated process, this balancing act? She's a very effective manager. And some people have spent a lot more time with her, but every conversation I've had with her, she's the, you know the type. You meet somebody in government that they're very straightforward. When they say they're going to do something, they do it right away. They're very effective. She's not somebody who wastes time. And when I sat down with her and Jorge with Jimmy and had long conversations about what comes next when we did that visit in 2022, she is like, I don't want to say she's the boss, but she is formidable bureaucratically.

1:07:23I think the challenge for her is going to be political. And I give it a good chance. Her brother, Jorge, is, I think, you know, he was a key advisor to Hugo Chavez, has been essentially the right-hand man of Nicolás Maduro and is a brilliant negotiator and has been really good at basically mobilizing and kind of moving around inside of the Chavista coalition. So the two of them are a pretty formidable group, but sometimes all it takes is an assassination to throw the country into a tailspin. So they're going to have to be very careful as they try to consolidate power. One of the sharpest warnings in your piece, and I'm not sure I fully appreciated the importance of this when we were first talking about the piece over the weekend, was the effects on the Venezuelan economy and the prospects for some kind of better path if the U.S.

1:08:17is extracting such extreme concessions on oil. and from what we've seen so far, that seems to be the main focus of White House policy at this point. How do you see this playing out and what kinds of consequences will that have for the prospects of Venezuela going forward? What I would say first is it's unclear whether Venezuela has the highest oil reserves. That's something that they, you know, you self-report that in OPEC. And Hugo Chavez began that trend because of a pride issue. I don't think anybody really knows because, you know, most oil companies have been out of there. So people need to go in and see what's been contracted, uncontracted, what are the wells like, what are the reserves like.

1:08:56Nobody really knows. But I think also Venezuela has the highest reserves of gold in Latin America and the Caribbean. They have critical minerals, a lot of rare earth minerals inside the country. So they have the resources. They also, but the country's infrastructure is completely dilapidated. The electricity grid has collapsed. There are bridges that are falling down. So there are investment opportunities, certainly, but there's a lot of risk. And I think on the oil and gas side, particularly, you know, the U.S. is already producing at historic highs. You know, Venezuela, by contrast, is, as I mentioned, a restoration story.

1:09:36And heavy crude is, you know, trades at a much lower price than light sweet crude. And so at current prices, the economics are tough for this. And I think that's why the oil majors are cautious. And that's why the administration may end up needing to subsidize or guarantee the investment. So I think oil can shape the trajectory, but it's definitely not a silver bullet. And again, I worry that those that are going to be first in line to go into Venezuela are those that have membership in Mar-a-Lago. I think if the administration wants to reassure, you know, other companies, and I think the broader public, there should be some transparency around who gets those licenses, you know, to be able to actually to go in.

1:10:21But Venezuela can be a success story. It's just going to take, by some estimates, you know, over$110 billion worth of investment and a whole lot of time. And the idea that they're going to have production online, I think they could have production online faster than people think. Because when I talk to folks in the oil and gas space that are there now, what they say is that, look, it's not that we need 100 miles of pipeline. It's often that we just need six miles. So, you know, often, you know, Chevron was able to ramp up production much faster than people thought. So it will be able to be produced.

1:10:55But is that going to be something that's going to be seen as a benefit? I think the balance here is going to be, can the president deliver on benefits at the pump, at the gas pump in the United States, ensure that the United States is deriving benefit on Venezuela before the security situation begins to deteriorate? In Iraq, it took six months. Here in Venezuela, we're already starting to see that security situation deteriorate because the United States is not on the ground. In the piece, you have three scenarios. One is that relatively optimistic managed transition. The other is what you call criminalized continuity.

1:11:28The third is escalation, as you put it. And this is what you're hinting at, power struggles, escalating, different kind of armed groups causing chaos and violence in the streets in the U.S. being kind of pressured to get more deeply involved. What's the path there? What worries you when you look at that prospect? So I think that the managed transition, I think that's basically where you have an election that ends up with legitimacy. And I think the escalation one, I think, is the one that I worry about the most. If you end up having fragmentation of this coalition that Del Cidiste maintained, you're going to see different actors, similar to Haiti, where you had political actors that are aligned with gangs and different groups are going to start babbling out in the streets.

1:12:16And I think that is something that is incredibly dangerous. And then that leads into a direction of creeping U.S. entanglement. But obviously, I think the scenario we're in right now is the one that matters most, which is the one of criminalized continuity. And I think that we need to understand that the guns are still in the same hands. The networks are all still intact. And, you know, we're basically in this handoff. And I think that's why the crackdown right now matters analytically, because I think the criminalized. This is the Venezuelan leadership's crackdown on opposition within Venezuela, you mean?

1:12:55Correct. They're going after anybody who is suspected of having aided the U.S. operation. Over 14 journalists now have been detained. You know, I think opposition leaders are in hiding. And so, you know, I think criminalized continuity can impose order like for a while, but it does so through coercion. So I think what is happening right now is that Delcy is buying time, not legitimacy. And that's, I think we're in a very dangerous period right now. And I believe that Rubio understands that, which is why they are waiving this threat. You know, you're seeing in reports yesterday and today that Diosdado Cabello might be next, you know.

1:13:30So he's going to avoid going fishing in international waters, if you know what I mean, because he may get picked up by American military if he does something like that. And I think you're going to see that a lot of these guys that are very close, kind of on the higher level of the regime, they're not going to be leaving Venezuela for any time soon. So I think they're going to be afraid that anywhere they go, they can get grabbed. There's been lots of discussion of the presence of Cuban intelligence, but in geopolitical terms, what probably matters more is the Chinese role and Russian role and perhaps Iranian role, those connections.

1:14:05How deeply embedded are those actors in power structures and the oil sector and other parts of Venezuela? And do you see any prospect for reducing that influence? I imagine that that will be another administration priority going forward. Yeah, I think Cuba's role is overstated. They helped Maduro consolidate power within the party in 2013 because that's what they do. They're experts at kind of the in-house management of that. They provided advice and security to Maduro, but they didn't call the shots. Often when I would talk to the Cubans in the context of some of the negotiations we had during the Biden administration, they would complain about the Venezuelans as being obstreperous.

1:14:49And so when you hear that from the Cubans who are the most obstruperous to negotiate with, it should tell you something. I'd say the Iranian role is also overstated. Iran has tried to get a foothold inside of Latin America for a really long time, but they're just not good at it. And I think fundamentally, a region that is primarily Christian is very averse to that influence. So, you know, even though you'll see, you know, mosques that are popping up, that does not signify Iranian influence. And there are examples of some actors inside of Venezuela that are Iranian that are trying to expand Iranian influence, but they really haven't been able to get traction.

1:15:35I think the Iranians have been able to sell drones and some military equipment, but they're not in there. and in terms of the oil and gas sector, they provide dilio. I think that's the main thing. And then for the longest time, the Venezuelan oil was getting pulled out on sanctioned Iranian tankers. So the Iranians were basically giving us the middle finger as we were opposing these sanctions. They would go to Malaysia, get trans-shipped, and then they'd end up with China. China, people think that China owns the oil and gas sector. They have some presence in the upstream, but they're primarily a consumer of Venezuelan oil.

1:16:07You know, so I think Russia is probably the one that has the largest presence, but even they are not in control. Because, you know, the Venezuelan constitution says that the natural resources of the country belong to the country. And so anything that the Russians are doing are in a joint venture with Benevisa, which is the national oil company. And those terms can be renegotiated. I think Maduro was like this, and I think Delcy is like this. She would rather be able to deliver oil in a day as opposed to the four days it takes to actually get something across the Atlantic. And American companies are much more effective.

1:16:47They are much more transparent. And whereas with the Russians, I think there's some coercion involved. Where I'm more concerned about Russia and China has been on the military side. Russia provides intelligence support to Venezuela. They provide security. You know, they have Russian techs that keep the planes flying and do training. And the Chinese, you know, right now, what was known of the air defense systems, there's a lot that they had from China that is not known, if you know what I mean. And that was concerning to me when I was thinking about a potential air assault. but you know obviously the f-35s made very short work of venezuela's air defenses as as we thought they would because the way the f-35s work is any sort of radar even the chinese radars had no idea the f-35s were there until they were right on top of them um and uh and but i was still surprised i expected that maybe there'd be uh one plane shot down you know where there'd be some some kind of pushback and i think what it showed what this showed me here and it should be a message to everybody who's buying Russian and Chinese equipment is that they don't stand a chance against the United States.

1:17:59Rubio clearly hopes that the end of Venezuelan oil flows and support for the Cuban government will cause the Cuban regime to crack. That's been hoped for a long time among many parts of the, certainly people around Rubio, but also other parts of the foreign policy world. Do you foresee any risk of the Cuban regime falling? I think that's been the top goal, Rubio. I think Venezuela has been a means to Cuba, fundamentally. And I've seen some commentary and I've talked to some Venezuelans in South Florida who are dismayed that the Cubans don't care about what's going on inside the country because they want a repeat of that in Cuba.

1:18:41So everything I know about Cuba and, you know, our common friend, Dan Erickson, who wrote Cuba Wars and knows this much better than I do. You know, when I talked to him, you know, he would agree and I agree with him that that the Cubans are not going to go willingly. The idea that you're going to negotiate their departure is just not what they do. Their approach is crack down when you're on their back foot, circle the wagons and try to wait out an administration. organization often they do it for too long under obama they were obstreperous until the very end and then and then when they saw that that obama was leaving they you know they they kind of freaked out and tried to rush to actually come to an agreement um so i think i think what we will see is uh a further deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the country of course cubans are already suffering significantly i think that's going to get worse i worry that um you know so far, we have not seen people getting on boats off the coast of Cuba.

1:19:43But in April is when the Florida Straits get calm. So I think I would keep an eye out for that. If the situation gets really bad, people are going to get on boats. We saw a lot of Cuban migration during the Biden administration. That was the people that could afford to go to Guyana or could afford to go to Mexico and then go up. You have the people that are suffering the most are going to put together makeshift rafts and just jump in the water and risk it. And that worries me a lot because that means that we are pricing in the cost of Cuban lives in the name of actually changing the regime. And that's a theory of change that I fundamentally do not agree with.

1:20:21I think it's not only not effective, it is morally wrong that you promote regime change by crushing a country. I think there's a better way. It's slower, it's more painstaking, but it is more sustainable, I think, in the long term. What have you made of the broader regional reaction within Latin America thus far? And what do you expect the long-term repercussions to be? Not surprised at all. It's been a left-right divide. So, you know, Brazil came out against Colombia, Mexico, all came out against this. And that's what I expected. A lot of countries are, you know, everybody I think around the world has celebrated the departure of Maduro.

1:20:57But you're seeing others that are basically reserving judgment until they see what happens. And if Rubio pulls this off, then people will maybe applaud the ends, if not the means. But I think a lot of people are waiting to see if Rubio falls on a space, I think including Republicans on the Hill are seeing this way. But I think a lot of Latin American countries, even those of the center and of the right, are concerned because, again, this is a situation where it doesn't matter if you're a democratic country, the U.S. can come in and impose its will on you is something that is incredibly concerning and takes us back to a time when we did that.

1:21:42And I think if we do a look back, you know, hindsight's 20-20. Hopefully we should have learned from that experience is that we did not do ourselves any favors through containment during the Cold War. And I think the approach now is to actually use economic tools, as I mentioned in the argument. Today, the military is not the best tool of the Monroe Doctrine or the Dono Doctrine. It is economic tools to actually help Latin America and the Caribbean take advantage of these revolutionary changes that are happening in technology and healthcare and other sectors. because Latin America today is a region that remains very dependent on fossil fuels.

1:22:23Productivity is low. Their doctrine of technology is behind its peers. And so Latin America is heading in a very negative direction. And the military, U.S. military is not going to solve that. The U.S. has to come in with more than just trade, but have a very ambitious approach to economic policy, especially if he wants to compete with China and the Western Hums. Juan, thank you so much for joining me today. And thanks for the great piece you did over the weekend. It's called The End of the Beginning in Venezuela, one of the sharpest early analyses out there. And we will obviously have a lot more to talk about and for you to write about in the coming stretch.

1:22:58Dan, thanks for having me. It's a great conversation.

1:23:16Godfrey, and Kanesh Therroer. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager, with audio help from Marcus Zachariah. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Irina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.

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