Mar 24, 2019 6 min read

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts.

Previously, I documented the troubles in the Venezuelan oil sector. Recently, they got worse, and U.S. efforts to cripple the Maduro government have exacerbated the situation. As the price of oil began to recover from its 2014 nadir, in August 2017, the Trump administration imposed sanctions that cut off access to financial markets around the world, which meant Venezuela had difficulty getting paid for its oil exports and paying off its creditors. So even while the price of oil recovered, oil production in Venezuela did not.

While the decline in the oil sector is the primary reason for the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela today, the Venezuelan governments of both Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro made some poor economic decisions that exacerbated the crisis. They allowed a black market in the Venezuelan currency to exist outside of the official exchanges, which has enabled some well-connected people to profit while regular citizens face shortages of goods, and inflation has been rampant. Many of the higher-ranking officers in the military are in position to profit from the situation, which is one way Maduro retains their support (probably the most important factor keeping him in power).

But to think American intervention in Venezuela will make things better is pretty wishful thinking. While many American citizens are rightfully concerned about their Venezuelan neighbors, the Trump administration is focused on regime change in order to get rid of an annoying socialist dictator and to provide access for U.S. oil companies to the largest known oil reserves on the planet. The people in charge of the Trump administration’s efforts on Venezuela are John Bolton and Elliot Abrams. Bolton is a neo-conservative hawk who still thinks the invasion of Iraq was a good idea, and Abrams was responsible for covering up war crimes of the U.S.-backed government in El Salvador during the 1980s (including the Mozote massacre, where U.S.-trained soldiers killed 900 peasants). He was also convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal (but pardoned by President GHW Bush). These men are not inspired by humanitarian concerns.

The primary purpose of the humanitarian aid offered by the U.S. is to put pressure on Maduro, not to help the Venezuelan people. The value of the aid is $20 million; given that experts estimate that U.S.-imposed sanctions are costing the Venezuelan government $30 million a day, offering aid without removing the sanctions is disingenuous at best. The political nature of the aid is demonstrated by the U.S. requirement that the opposition leader (not the government) be allowed to distribute it. The Red Cross and the UN refuse to get involved with the aid because they see its political nature.

The opposition boycotted the presidential election in 2018, which President Maduro won, because they claimed it would be rigged. Based on that claim, the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó makes the tenuous argument that the office of president is “vacant,” which allows the president of the National Assembly to assume the office. But Guaidó is only president of the National Assembly by chance (he was not elected by either the people or the delegates). Guaidó is in that position because after the four parties in opposition won a majority in the National Assembly in the 2015 election, they agreed to a power-sharing arrangement, and in January 2019, it was Guaidó’s party’s turn. Guaidó is not even the leader of his party (Voluntad Popular); that would be Leopoldo López, who is under house arrest for inciting his supporters to try to overthrow the government (which he denies, but video evidence suggests he did). The party put forward Guaidó because he was Leopoldo’s protégé and was the most likely to be able to get foreign support to take power. Before declaring himself president (at the urging of the U.S.), 81 percent of Venezuelans had never heard of Guaidó (he won his parliamentary election with only 26 percent of the votes in his own district). Most of his current support is because he is not Maduro.

It is sometimes difficult to tell what is actually going on in Venezuela, and we must be very careful to view what is reported in the media skeptically. There is a long history of media manipulation in Venezuela; the privately owned TV stations dictated a false narrative that helped instigate the 2002 coup against Chavez, when they selectively blamed Chavez supporters for violence at one of their rallies, and only showed the crowds supporting the opposition (refusing to show the much larger crowds in support of Chavez). More recently, the mainstream media declared that Maduro had closed a bridge from Colombia (the bridge was built recently and had never been opened), and had set fire to aid trucks trying to bring aid to the people of Venezuela. The latter incident was used by U.S. government officials to demonstrate the supposed depravity of the Maduro administration (going so far as to make the unsubstantiated claim that Maduro had ordered the aid to be set on fire). New video evidence shows that the fire was started when one of the opposition demonstrators threw a Molotov cocktail at the police, and the flaming rag separated from the bottle and landed on the tarp of an aid truck, setting it ablaze. There are also conflicting stories about how little food there is in Venezuela, and how much support there is for getting rid of Maduro.

There are not a lot of good options for the U.S. in Venezuela, but some are much worse than others. Military intervention by the U.S. would be a disaster. While Maduro never had the support that Chavez had, many Venezuelans still support him (including the army), so we would not likely be regarded as “liberators,” and given our historical record in Latin America, the Venezuelans would be right to question our motives. Military action could spark a violent civil war. Removing sanctions on the oil industry (and financial transactions) while keeping them on the individuals at the top of the regime would ease the burden of the average Venezuelans while still demonstrating that Maduro’s actions are unacceptable, and prevent large-scale looting by the people in power. We should know from our history that foreign interventions rarely go as planned, and we should be humble enough to recognize we cannot control the world. Venezuela poses no threat to the U.S., and the people of Venezuela need to work out their issues free of U.S. interference.

Kent James is an East Washington resident and has degrees in history and policy management from Carnegie Mellon University.