Looking back of the Venezuelan coup attempt

It was five weeks ago yesterday that Juan Guaidó proclaimed himself the president of Venezuela, starting what is the weirdest coup attempt I've ever heard of. This past weekend, it pretty obviously fizzled out. Once it looked like this could lead to an American military intervention and war, even the governments of Brazil and Colombia, neighboring countries to Venzuela and both very much opposed to the actual Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, made it very clear they didn't want this to turn into a war. Not least of the reasons is that an invasion or civil war in Venezuela would send even more refugees into Brazil and Colombia in addition to the three million or so they already have.

New York Times reporter Anatoly Kurmanaev provided some important details on the humanitarian aid event on the Venezuelan border this past weekend in a long Twitter thread, which includes the following:

The opposition's message of imminent salvation was misleading. Pretty much every opposition leader & activist talked about "food & medicine" that would flood into Venezuela on the 23rd. The fact is there was no medicine to bring in on that date.

— Anatoly Kurmanaev (@AKurmanaev) February 25, 2019

He introduces the thread with this disclaimer, "the lion's share of the blame for the current impasse lays with Maduro. By refusing to even recognize humanitarian crisis & blocking the aid he condemns thousands to premature death. That said, I believe we need to look critically at the opposition's strategy & performance."

Stephen Loiaconi reports on the fizzled-out operation last weekend (US-backed opposition in Venezuela struggles to break Maduro's blockade of food, supplies WJLASinclair Broadcast Group 02/26/2019):

Experts say what happens next is difficult to predict because Guaido’s strategy appeared to bank heavily on breaking the blockade of humanitarian relief and there had been little talk of a backup plan.

“It was a high-stakes gamble that did not pay off in terms of seeing a break of the military with Maduro,” said Jennifer McCoy, co-author of “International Mediation in Venezuela” and a professor of political science at Georgia State University. “Also, the opposition, Guaido and his supporters, appeared to hope the failure of the entry of aid into Venezuela might galvanize or justify the U.S. to support a more aggressive intervention.” ...

McCoy noted some in Europe and Latin America are calling for Maduro to accept international aid and hold an early presidential election. This offers him a path out of the crisis while still allowing him to limit the political cost by continuing to rail against U.S. imperialism.

“They actually could provide a face-saving way out for Maduro,” she said. [my emphasis]

A negotiated agreement that would allow new internationally-supervised elections would be the optimum solution. But that would also be a very complicated thing to arrange. Given that this five-week coup attempt directed by the Trump-Pence Administration makes the infamous Bay of Pigs operation in 1961 look like a stunning success, it's hard to imagine the main Washington players in this - Mike Pence, John Bolton, and Elliott Abrams - now pulling off such a difficult arrangement. And this leaves the US, most of the governments in the Western Hemisphere, the EU, and a number of the EU member countries recognizing an official government for Venezuela that apparently consists entirely of Juan Guaidó. (Although see below for more on the legitimacy question.) That obviously won't make it any easier for those governments to convince the internal parties in Venezuela to hold new elections.

In connection with that prospect, this is a helpful summary of the major milestones in the democratic deficits in Venezuela since 2015, Venezuela, esa herida absurda Anfibia Jan 2019, from José Natanson, an editorial director for Le Monde Diplomatique.

The "chavista" era in Venezuela began at the latest when Hugo Chávez become President in February 1999 and extends to the present. The Clinton, Bush II, and Obama Administrations were not fans of Chávez, who passed away in 2013. Nicolás Maduro replaced him as President and won the Presidential election of 2013. In the National Assembly election of 2015,

Si la democracia puede definirse como un tipo de régimen en el que no sólo hay elecciones sino que además no se sabe de antemano quién las va a ganar, si la democracia comporta en definitiva un cierto grado de incertidumbre, Venezuela era todavía una democracia; en el límite, pero democracia al fin (de hecho, al chavismo se lo podía acusar de muchas cosas salvo de no realizar elecciones y de no reconocer sus derrotas en los pocos casos en los que ocurrían, cosa que por otra parte no hacía la oposición, acostumbrada a denunciar fraude cuando pierde pero no cuando gana, y siempre con el mismo Consejo Nacional Electoral, las mismas urnas electrónicas y el mismo tribunal).

Pero en los últimos años esto cambió. En diciembre de 2015 la oposición triunfó inesperadamente en las elecciones para la Asamblea Nacional. Consiguió una mayoría de dos tercios, suficiente para reformar la Constitución y bloquear al gobierno, y anunció que su plan consistía en forzar una salida anticipada de Nicolás Maduro. El chavismo, que había denunciado irregularidades en la elección a pesar de que controló todo el proceso, presentó una serie de impugnaciones. El Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (TSJ), que le responde, aceptó una, y ordenó, con argumentos dudosos, repetir la elección en el estado de Amazonas y no juramentar a sus tres diputados. La oposición, que de este modo perdía los dos tercios, se negó a acatar la sentencia. El TSJ, ante un pedido del Ejecutivo, declaró a la Asamblea en desacato, y al poco tiempo anunció que absorbía sus funciones, un autogolpe tan ostensible – y aparentemente implementado sin el aval de Maduro - que al final tuvo que retroceder.

If democracy can be defined as a type of regime in which there are not only elections but in addition no one knows ahead of time who will win them, if democracy definitely implies a certain degree of uncertainty, Venezuela was still a democracy [up until December 2017]; within limits, but in the end, democracy (in fact, one could accuse chavismo of many things except for not holding elections and of not recognizing its defeats in the cases where they occurred, something that on the other side the opposition, accustomed to denouncing fraud when the lose but not when they win, and always with the same National Election Council, the same ballot boxes, and the same court, refused to do.)

But in recent years, that changed. In December of 2015, the opposition unexpectedly triumphed in the elections for the National Assemby [parliament]. They achieved a two thirds majority, sufficient to reform the Constitution and block the government, and announced that their plan consisted in forcing an early exit of Nicolás Maduro. Chavismo, which had denounced irregularites in the election due to which they [the opposition] controlled the whole process, presented a series of challenges. The Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), who had the responsibility, accepted one of them and ordered, with dubious arguments, the election to be repeated in the state of Amazonas and to not swear in its three deputies [just elected from that state]. The opposition which thereby would lose the two thirds majority, refused to comply with the decision. The TSJ, in response to a request by the Executive Branch, declared the 'Assembly to be in contempt, and in a short time announced that it would absorb its functions, an internal coup so blatant - and apparently implemented without the guarantee of Maduro - which they finally had to reverse it.

After months of active opposition protests, Maduro held a referendum for a Constituent Assembly in May 2017, which would be charged with writing a new Constitution. As Natanson notes, the complicated election scheme based on social sectors (in political science, this could be called a "corporate" voting structure, in this context not meaning business corporations) seemed to ensure a Maduro victory even if his party, the United Socialist Party (PSUV), failed to win a majority of votes. The opposition boycotted the election, always a tricky political tactic. When the Constituent Assembly was elected with an overwhelming PSUV majority, it declared itself the legitimate legislative power in place of the National Assembly.

In other words, the elections of the chavista era can reasonably and accurately be called democratic, up to and including the National Assembly election of 2015.

This set up a type of "dual government" with the Executive treating the Constituent Assembly as the legitimate legislature and the National Assembly considering itself the legitimate legislature. Juan Guaidó currently claims to be head of the government based on the National Assembly.

Elections for state governors took place in October 2017, and the PSUV unexpectedly won 18 of the 23 governorships. Maduro had posponed this election from the previous year, according to Natanson on the basis that the PSUV expected defeat. A new Presidential election took place in May 2018, in which Maduro won a new term that began in January 2019. In this election, the main opposition umbrella group (Mesa de Unidad Democrática/MUD), and the opposition partially boycotted that election.

At the risk of sounding like a Both-Sides-Do-It Mugwump, this is enough of a mess that an internationally supervised election would be a sensible way forward, if such a difficult thing can actually be arranged. But for that to work, both the PSUV and the opposition would have to have reasonable confidence that the major political forces inside Venezuela would respect the results of such an election. They would also have to be confident that the international community, and particularly the United States, would also respect the process and the results. The PSUV would obviously not agree in a process if they though the United States, i.e., currently the Trump-Pence Administration, would take a PSUV victory as a signal to mount another coup attempt.

This is another reminder that the longer the Trump-Pence Administration blunders along with an erratic foreign policy, the more the US ability to build international political coalitions to achieve important goals. No Foreign Ministry in the world could have failed to notice what a cock-up this recent Venezuelan coup attempt was.