What will turn out to be of Nicolas Maduro? With a $50 million bounty on his head, the CIA brazenly lively in Caracas and US forces mustering within the Caribbean, pundits and politicians all through the Americas are opining on the Venezuelan president’s destiny.
Some are relying on the United States deposing him, Saddam Hussein-style (or Salvador Allende-style, or Manuel Noriega-style). In the previous two weeks, distinguished neoconservatives Bret Stephens and Elliott Abrams have argued in favor of overthrowing Maduro outright in columns in the New York Times and Foreign Affairs.
Others surprise if Maduro would possibly depart of his personal volition. On Wednesday, the international minister of Colombia, Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio Mapy, prompt that Maduro’s negotiated exit from the presidency would be the “healthiest” possibility out there.
“I believe he has indeed considered it, that there could be a way out, a transition, where he can leave without having to go to jail, and where someone can come in who can make that transition and where there can be legitimate elections,” Villavicencio Mapy informed Bloomberg News. “It would be the healthiest thing to do.”
Soon after, Colombia’s leftist authorities clarified that the minister’s remark shouldn’t be construed as an endorsement of Maduro relinquishing energy, emphasizing that Colombia has no real interest in interfering “in the internal affairs of other countries.”
It’s been a tough yr for Maduro, who turned president of Venezuela in 2013 after the demise of its charismatic leftist president Hugo Chavez.
His self-proclaimed victory within the 2024 Venezuelan election was disputed by the nation’s opposition and went unrecognized by a lot of the Western world. The US has lengthy thought of him a felony, accusing him of heading a felony construction often known as “el Cartel de los Soles” (the Cartel of the Suns), which most experts say doesn’t technically exist.
Recently, the Trump administration labeled el Cartel de los Soles a terrorist group, creating a possible opening for US army strikes in Venezuela.
To make issues worse for the embattled president, his political enemy, opposition chief Maria Corina Machado, won the Nobel Peace Prize in October. From hiding, Machado has warned that Maduro’s time as president is coming to an finish, promising a “new era” for Venezuela.
NCS spoke to experts about what would possibly lie in retailer for the Chavista chief, all of whom agreed that Maduro and his authorities are extraordinarily unlikely to forfeit energy willingly.
Elias Ferrer, a Caracas-based danger marketing consultant at Orinoco Research, mentioned that Maduro and his colleagues are keenly conscious that leaving energy with out a assure of immunity might end in jail time or extradition to the United States.
“The US is one of the few countries in the world that if you mess with them, they can chase you until the end of the world,” mentioned Ferrer. “They are facing a very real danger.”
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez promised that her nation would “not surrender” in a speech on Thursday at a cultural occasion in Caracas.
“What Venezuela is experiencing today, I would not call dangerous times, no, but rather times of historic definition, of historic insurgency, so that they know that this people will not surrender, this people cannot be blackmailed,” Rodriguez mentioned.
David Smilde, a Venezuela skilled and professor at Tulane University, informed NCS that many observers underestimate how dedicated Maduro and his circle are to Chavismo, the socialist motion named after Hugo Chavez and the state’s guiding ideology.
“They are worried about their safety, and they are worried about their wealth,” Smilde mentioned. “But they also think of themselves as revolutionaries, as an anti-imperialist, historically important project that has thumbed its nose at the United States, thumbed its nose at Venezuela’s dominant political class and has done their own thing now for 25 years.”
“I think that for Maduro to accept any kind of transition,” Smilde continued, “There would have to be some sort of path for Chavismo to be a viable political force, for there not to be a witch hunt for Chavistas afterwards.”
Brian Fonseca, professor at Florida International University, mentioned {that a} passable “off-ramp” for Maduro is perhaps exile in Russia, however not with out stress from inside his personal interior circle.
“I think there has to be enough pressure mounted within the political or the military elite that ultimately push him out. I don’t think he’s going to go willfully,” Fonseca mentioned.
On the opposite hand, Ferrer informed NCS that he doesn’t see Maduro or his circle accepting exile.
“I don’t think they want to go into exile in Russia or Cuba or anything like that,” Ferrer mentioned. “They want essentially something very pragmatic, where Maduro and his friends can still be the economic elite of the country, and can trust whoever’s in charge of the armed forces.”
Smilde cautioned towards any hopes that the eventual finish of Maduro’s presidency would signify the top of the regime.
“Because of his lack of charisma, what he’s had to do is construct this pyramid of people that are benefiting in some way,” Smilde mentioned. “If you just take Maduro off of that pyramid, the pyramid is still there – and there’s a lot of people with a lot of interest in things continuing on the way they are.”
The professor recalled when Hugo Chavez died in 2013, many wrongly assumed that his political mission had come to an finish.
“I was getting on a plane to Caracas,” Smilde mentioned. “I was walking through first class. There were all these Venezuelans sipping champagne, hugging each other, saying ‘it’s over, Chavez is dead.’ And so here we are. Nothing actually changed. That leader left, and then you had a leader that’s worse.”