Delcy Rodriguez, acting president of Venezuela, is preparing to put herself out of a job. In an address to the United Nations General Assembly this week, Rodriguez declared that Venezuela is getting ready for a return to democracy.
“I want to make this very clear at this General Assembly: There will be elections in Venezuela,” said Rodriguez Wednesday. “Venezuela has initiated a process of democratic transformation for its rebirth, an orderly, institutional, and verifiable process.”
Exactly when that orderly process will produce an election is not yet clear, although a rough plan is beginning to take shape. The rump Chavista government, under the careful management of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has been in talks for some months now with the political opposition. The National Reconciliation Council, as the body mediating these discussions is called, is intended to ease a prospective transition by integrating some key opposition members into Venezuela’s government, thereby providing a measure of confidence in the integrity of the electoral process.
Allowing the opposition such a foothold, or even just visibility into government operations, is an important step toward ensuring a workable transfer of power. Opposition politicians, judges, and functionaries were systematically excluded from government posts under Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, and in some cases the structure of the state itself was reorganized around institutionalizing Chavismo, or specifically benefiting regime clients and supporters. Some of those changes have been rolled back under Rodriguez; others remain much as they were before Maduro’s capture.
If, as is probable, opposition parties win the promised election, they will face a number of daunting tasks. They will assume control of a government that is institutionally hostile to them and filled with functionaries who fear being held to account for their previous actions. New leadership would have to reassert control over the basic functions of the state—ideally without eroding public order or indulging in sweeping purges or other acts of political revenge. (The U.S. is very familiar with the hazards of de-Baathification.) This will require reorganizing the courts and the bureaucracy, which are currently stuffed with Maduro loyalists who may make it difficult to implement the policies of a new government. The most powerful bodies, like the National Electoral Council and the Venezuelan Supreme Court, may require the most extensive renovations, but by necessity most of the people who will fill the lower posts in government will have achieved their position under Chavismo. The opposition will have to figure out how to command and restrain them.
The new government will also need to reassert civilian control of the military. This is perhaps the most difficult and dangerous issue facing a democratizing Venezuela. For decades now, the military has been recruited, trained, and organized around loyalty to the regime above all else. In order to secure this loyalty, Chavez and Maduro granted their generals lucrative sinecures, powerful posts in the government, and opportunities to profit from Venezuela’s rampant corruption and crime. A number of military officers have intimate ties with the cartels and other criminal bodies engaged in drug trafficking and illegal mining.
With the backing of Washington—and the implicit threat of the Pentagon meting out the same treatment to recalcitrant generals as it did to Maduro in January—a new Venezuelan government can shake up its military leadership, cashiering the worst offenders and putting in new officers who are amenable to civilian control. Many of the new leaders will likely be relatively junior, with careers heretofore stymied by the aging generals who dominated things during the Maduro and Chavez years. But the corruption in the officer corps and the poor state of the army will take decades to overcome—and there is no guarantee that the U.S. will maintain an active interest in Venezuela throughout that period.
Overcoming such challenges would be hard in the best of circumstances, but the new government will not have the luxury of a stable economy or even full control over its own territory as it attempts to rebuild. The Venezuelan economy has been shattered by decades of poor management, international isolation, and corruption. Since the removal of Maduro, trade has opened up and the oil industry is beginning to function again, but the country remains deeply impoverished and loaded with debt and dysfunction. Many in its professional classes—lawyers, doctors, engineers—have fled abroad, and while some will return, most will probably prefer to remain in their new countries of residence.
Perhaps the most dangerous elements are the cartels, which control significant stretches of the interior. Venezuela’s mineral fields, especially its gold deposits, have proven lucrative resources for cartels to exploit. Mining is a vital part of many criminal organizations’ supply chains, as the sale of illegally mined gold provides a convenient way to launder money made by extortion and drug trafficking. Efforts to professionalize the military and law enforcement will inevitably cause conflict with the cartels, who have made arrangements to avoid excessive government interference with their operations.
Conflict with the cartels has been a significant challenge for neighboring Colombia, which has an effective and professional military. Open war between the cartels and an incoming Venezuelan government, which would have relatively few resources and a weak military of questionable loyalty, could plunge the country into a wave of crime and violence similar to that engulfing nearby Ecuador. Support from the U.S. could help keep a lid on things, but fighting organized crime in South America often requires military and police ground operations against heavily armed criminal groups—and no administration will be eager to send American troops to occupy the Orinoco Mining Arc.
All of this would be difficult enough with watchful and consistent American oversight. But the timelines that have been suggested for holding a vote in Venezuela—late 2027 or, more likely, 2028—mean a transfer of power may not occur until after the next U.S. presidential election. This makes sense for domestic political reasons: The Trump administration can close with the successful administration of a new election in Venezuela, ushering in a democratic, pro-American government just before the presidential election at home. Any negative consequences of the transition will be another White House’s problem.
But the potential for confusion, miscommunication, and misalignment in this scenario is immense. Managing another country’s affairs is a difficult business; and only time will tell whether U.S. nation-building efforts in Latin America will meet with greater success than they have in the Middle East.
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