Ideology matters, as I learned from surviving 18 years under the Chavista regime in Venezuela. The United States pretended otherwise for three decades, clinging to the “end of history” and similar dreams. Today, with ideologically driven conflicts simmering around the world, it is time for America to integrate deterrence, defense, and a theory of victory across the so-called gray zone of geopolitics. Doing so will require policymakers to start listening to what America’s enemies have been saying for years about their ideological designs.

In 2004, when questioned about whether a Venezuela-Cuba alliance was exporting communist revolution throughout the Western Hemisphere, the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States averred: “It is a thing outdated in time and it is not understanding the relationships that exist between the countries.” That was a backhanded ‘yes,’ if there ever was one. The message was meant to assuage the busy, post-9/11 national security community, diverting attention away from the problems brewing south of the U.S. border. More than two decades later, the annual warnings of USSOUTHCOM Combatant Commanders before Congress have finally been heeded by the White House.

Ideology has been slapping America in the face since the late 1990s. For this era of refocusing on state-based threats, it comes in these forms and many others: Beijing’s obsession with employing “united front” organizations to silence dissidents overseas; Moscow’s obsession with Ukraine, kicking off a murky war in 2014 that is now sustained conventionally; Tehran’s obsession with aiding and abetting proxy martyrs of the Islamic Revolution; Havana’s and Caracas’ shared obsession with waging “asymmetric war” on Western powers (which included flooding the American homeland with illicit narcotics); and Pyongyang’s obsession with subverting Seoul’s political processes and civic life. All these gray-zone efforts have an ideology at the heart. Their ideologies, variously rooted in Marxism, religion, and revanchism, drive the leaders of these states to employ irregular warfare tactics without any remorse and at any cost to civilians in the West or anywhere else. You will not find high degrees of intellectual coherence between these constructs; shared hatreds and collectivist doctrines and dogmas are cohesive enough for what now amounts to an anti-Western coalition.

Anti-Western adversaries became sneakier when strategizing and aligning with those espousing similar worldviews. They also became more convinced of their moral superiority. The U.S. national security community makes arbitrary distinctions between geopolitics and ideology. These distinctions obfuscate reality, which is already tough to comprehend, and lead to poor policymaking. Nowhere is this weakness more prominent than in the domain of irregular warfare. How did ISIS carve out its domain between Iraq and Syria, for instance, if not through the aid of its ideology?

Discussing rival-state ideology in the Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security seems to generate discomfort despite some strides to understand strategic cultures. It started with the spectacular triumphs of 1991. After Saddam Hussein’s defeat in the First Gulf War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, international relations’ ideological variables have been marginalized in the Federal Government. The American bureaucrat could finally put ‘Sovietology’ to rest, and, with it, anything to do with alternatives to liberal internationalism. The term ‘Great-Power Competition’ continues the delusion; ‘strategic-ideological struggle’ captures reality much better.

Disclaimer: Ideologies are messy. Their study requires incredible levels of nuance, subtlety, cultural awareness, philosophical skill, and extensive interpretive room. It is not a field of expertise attuned nor prone to engineering solutions or linear responses, making it politically dangerous to confront ideological challengers. Bringing up ideology always risks alienating a group and hurting its feelings. Hence, American political leaders and senior officials have scarcely breathed a word about state-centric ideological conflict since the demise of the USSR.

This problematic approach is a vestige of America’s long-gone “unipolar moment.” Through mirror imaging, it takes our attention away from elements that the Western world’s rivals thrive on. Several foes of the West have developed highly complex irregular warfare doctrines, intelligently focusing on the types of operations that some of these actors can excel in, and backing off from the type of war that they know they cannot win. Because illegality is the common denominator to all irregular warfare activities coming from any type of challenger, ideological zeal and fervor are absolute strategic imperatives to the leaders of these revanchist entities. Indeed, during the Global War on Terror, we recognized it as an essential enemy warfighting capability. Ideology is the glue that authoritarians, totalitarians, and other extremists apply to bind together the domestic constituencies that they rely on for control and aggression. In ideology, those leaders find the corpus of thought and the narratives required to morally justify atrocities committed in pursuit of greed, territorial expansion, or a simple clinging to power.

Acknowledgement is growing that defeating mere symptoms of its rivals’ irregular warfare campaigns cannot bring American strategic victory or even achieve deterrence in the “gray zone.” Looking back at the U.S.-led quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq, more observers have called for defeating root ideologies, rather than just crushing the fighters who currently espouse a certain ideology’s flavor-of-the-moment (e.g., Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, FARC, ELN, etc.).

Defeating our enemies must include defeating their ideologies. This no longer demands global wars in the traditional (conventional) military sense. To defeat regime ideologies, whole-of-government efforts require dusting off forgotten or atrophied competencies that America used to cultivate, including the ‘dark arts’ of U.S. foreign policy. Washington needs to articulate once again what it believes in, beyond vague notions of stability, and bring like-minded allies to our side.

David Guenni is completing his doctorate with Missouri State University’s Graduate School of Defense & Strategic Studies. His research focuses on nation-states’ employment of narcotrafficking as an irregular warfare modality. He is a Venezuelan political asylum seeker in the United States, having spent many years in the struggle against the Chavista regime in Caracas. His opinions are his own and no one else’s.

Why Ideology Matters in Irregular Warfare was originally published on Global Security Review.

While the coming days will clarify what will happen in Venezuela, security studies scholars are concerned with broader systemic implications of this operation. Specifically, what effect will this have on nuclear proliferation? While some may think actions like this (and the bombing of nuclear sites in Iran) will hasten proliferation, this article argues that this may not necessarily be the case.

 Causes of Proliferation

The academic literature on nuclear proliferation has identified several factors that affect a state’s decision, including security, technology, economic, and normative-institutional factors. The realist school argues that security is the foremost reason behind states’ motivation to acquire nuclear weapons. Due to the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons, they are deemed a guarantor for a state’s sovereignty. Nuclear weapons can deter both nuclear attacks and conventional attacks from more powerful states.

Concerns over sovereignty have been attributed to nuclear programs of several states in the past (including successful pursuits such as North Korea, Pakistan, and Israel, and unsuccessful pursuits such as Sweden, Taiwan, and Libya). As such, many security studies scholars and experts have argued that external intervention (like what is happening in Venezuela) would have systemic effects and hasten nuclear proliferation, potentially undoing the years of good done by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime.

Lessons from Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine: Would Nuclear Weapons Have Helped?

Those who argue regime change would accelerate proliferation often point toward Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine. In all of these, they argue, nuclear weapons would have prevented regime change (or an attempt at it in Ukraine’s case). They further argue that other states would learn the lesson and seek a bomb to secure their state.

How true are these assertions? In Libya and Iraq, they had active nuclear weapons programs that they shut down due to external pressure (sanctions in Libya, the air campaign during the Gulf War in Iraq). It is likely that had they continued nuclear pursuit the United States would have more forcefully attempted to stop it. Ukraine is different; while it inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, it never had direct control over them, and had it not given them up, it is unlikely they could have been used.

Another country proliferation pessimists point to is North Korea. They argue that because North Korea has nuclear weapons, the U.S. has not attempted regime change. This overlooks three facts. Firstly, North Korea only tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006. If nuclear weapons prevented an American invasion, why did the U.S. not invade North Korea prior to that? Secondly, it is likely the massive artillery force North Korea has aimed at Seoul, South Korea’s capital and most populous city, has acted as a deterrent against external intervention, even as its effectiveness has declined over time. Lastly, China’s support for North Korea, and possible involvement in any war over it, means that the U.S. is unlikely to engage in forced regime change even if North Korea never acquired nuclear weapons.

Changes in The Proliferation Landscape

It is unlikely the regime change operation in Venezuela will drastically change the proliferation landscape. Nuclear proliferation is an extremely complex decision with several factors. A single event, however important, is unlikely to tip over a state’s decision to pursue nuclear weapons. Even if one accepts the realist argument that nuclear acquisition is primarily rooted in security fears, the Venezuela incident changes little. A state vulnerable to external intervention would not be more vulnerable after the incident, even if they feel the probability of intervention has increased. A state cannot draw any lesson that it already did not draw from Iraq, Libya, or Ukraine.

Not to mention, the required technological knowledge and industrial base for a nuclear weapons program is immense. Not every state has the capacity to initiate one. In fact, the intersection of states which have the capability to start a nuclear program and are in the crosshairs of the United States for regime change is small. Moreover, any state that decides it needs nuclear weapons to protect itself from external intervention must also contend with the fact that until it acquires them, it remains vulnerable (with the added incentive of an external power to conduct intervention before the potential proliferator acquires nuclear weapons).

Who is the Next Proliferator?

With Iran previously on the precipice of acquiring nuclear weapons for a while, it seemed only a matter of time before the Middle East devolved into a nuclear domino scenario. However, strikes on Iranian nuclear sites appear to have extended the timeline for Iran to successfully acquire a nuclear weapon, if not extinguished the possibility altogether. This also means states like Saudi Arabia, which were most likely to respond to Iranian acquisition with their own nuclear program, are now further from the cliff’s edge.

U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites have another systemic implication: they signal that the United States would not stand by and let someone violate the nonproliferation regime by acquiring nuclear weapons and is willing to back this with force. Despite the turbulent nature of international politics in the last half decade, there is no evidence the world is on the verge of a

new wave of nuclear proliferation. The barriers to a program (political, economic, and technical) remain high, while benefits remain uncertain. It is unlikely that many, if any, new states will embark on a serious nuclear weapons program in the near to medium future.

Soumyadeep Bidyanta is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati, conducting research on the causes of nuclear proliferation. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Much Ado About Nothing: The Proliferation Debate Post Venezuela was originally published on Global Security Review.

5GW includes information dominance and manipulation, social engineering, economic coercion, cyber sabotage, and hybrid influence operations. It thrives on ambiguity, exploiting vulnerabilities without traditional combat. In 5GW, the lines between war and peace are blurred. No declarations, no clear enemies, just a relentless assault on stability. The goal is not to conquer land or destroy armies, but to cripple a nation’s spirit, economy, and infrastructure from within.

One of the most potent asymmetric tools of 5GW is economic manipulation. Palau, a serene archipelago of over 500 islands, were untouched by war until 2017. Palau dared to reject Beijing’s “One China Policy.” This move sent shockwaves through its fragile economy in the form of economic strangulation. In a masterstroke of economic coercion, China’s state-backed tour operators erased Palau from the Web.

Travel agencies stopped selling trips. Online searches yielded no results. Palau’s tourism industry, which accounted for 45 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), collapsed. Hotels emptied, airlines shut down, and the once-thriving economy suffocated.

This was not an anomaly, but a pattern. In 2016, South Korea agreed to facilitate the American THAAD missile defense system. China retaliated not with weapons but with economic muscle. Mysterious “fire and safety” violations suddenly appeared in South Korean businesses across China. A nine-month ban on Chinese tourism cost Seoul $6.5 billion. Retail giants like Lotte crumbled, thousands lost jobs, and yet, no war was declared.

The more interconnected the world economy becomes, the more vulnerable nations are to economic blackmail. Even Venezuela, despite its fiery anti-American rhetoric, was bound to the US economy. In 2018, despite Washington branding Nicolás Maduro a dictator and Caracas calling the US a “white supremacist regime,” the two nations still had $24 billion in trade, a quarter of Venezuela’s GDP.

Yet, when Washington imposed sweeping financial sanctions, Venezuela’s economy shrunk by 35 percent in a single year. After all, the United States does not just impose sanctions; it controls the very financial system that runs the world. The US dollar is the bloodline of global trade, and those who defy it find themselves cut off from international markets, unable to access capital or even conduct basic transactions. However, economic warfare breeds resistance.

Russia and China saw the writing on the wall. Between 2017 and 2020, Moscow slashed its holdings of US Treasury securities from $105 billion to just $3.8 billion and shifted towards China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), sidestepping American financial hegemony.

The true commanding heights of global dominance lie at the intersection of technology, finance, and unchecked ambition. China is not just selling 5G networks, it is embedding itself into the nervous system of global communication. On the other hand, the US does not just dominate finance, it controls the SWIFT banking system, ensuring economic warfare is just a sanction away. Similarly, corporations do not just innovate, they monopolize, influence, and quietly dictate policy behind closed doors.

“Surge forward, killing as you go, to blaze us a trail of blood.” A battle cry? Indeed. Not from a general on the battlefield, but from Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, a company waging a war not just against competitors but against entire nations. Britain’s telecom networks are suspected to have Chinese backdoors.

Information is now what oil was in the 1970s, a critical commodity to be controlled. Today, data is the new crude, and the battle to monopolize its flow has already begun. Quantum computing, AI, and machine learning are the new oil rigs, and the nations that dominate these technologies will dictate the future. Unlike oil, information is easily stolen, manipulated, or even weaponized in ways no physical resource ever could.

The first lethal autonomous drone strike in Libya, recorded in March 2020, was a grim reminder of what is to come. A suicide drone, powered by AI, needed no human command—just a target. Fire and forget was the name of the game. Imagine the next phase: terrorist organizations deploying AI-powered swarms, able to strike with precision, invulnerability, and zero risk to human operatives. They would not negotiate, would not retreat, and would prove hard to stop.  

In a world where biological warfare is outlawed, the selective control of food, aid, and healthcare has replaced mass destruction with slow, calculated suffocation. Nations can now deny access to the very essentials of life to break their adversaries in a siege without walls and a war without battlefields. Over 40 percent of the world’s population faces water scarcity, and by 2030, drought could displace 700 million people. The Turkish-backed militias that had control over the Alouk water station in Syria in 2020 was a stark reminder—when resources are weaponized, suffering becomes policy.

Interestingly, the battle of perception is gaining momentum more than ever. In an era of clickbait headlines and disinformation campaigns, lies travel faster than truth. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that false news spreads 70 percent faster than real news. From the Soviet KGB planting the rumor in the 1980s that the US government created AIDS to modern deepfake propaganda, deception is the new artillery.

Even culture is not immune. Hollywood exported American ideals, Bollywood spread Indian influence, and K-pop turned South Korea into a global powerhouse. For instance, the Cold War was not just won by missiles, it was won when a West German band sang “Wind of Change,” which then became the anthem of the Berlin Wall’s collapse.

If hunger, water, and financial systems hare already weaponized, the next battlefield is clear—space and the seabed. Subsea communication cables are responsible for carrying 97 percent of global data traffic and are the arteries of the modern economy. They enable over $10 trillion in financial transactions every single day. Yet, these vital lifelines remain shockingly unprotected and are vulnerable to sabotage, espionage, and strategic disruption. A targeted attack on just a handful of these cables could cripple stock markets, paralyze banking systems, and sever military command structures—all without a single warship being deployed.

Meanwhile, the race for space dominance is accelerating. From $63.66 billion in 2024 to an estimated $74.4 billion by 2028, the global military satellite market is growing, fueled by the realization that power no longer lies in boots on the ground, but in eyes in the sky. Satellites provide precision-strike capabilities, secure communication, and real-time battlefield intelligence. The Pentagon warns that the US is already vulnerable, with China and Russia developing anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons.

In this realm, one can say that modern states wage wars without battlefields, where the goal is not to destroy but to subdue—crippling economies, infiltrating cyber networks, and manipulating narratives without a single shot fired. What is never openly begun is rarely officially ended. In 5th-generation warfare, silence is a weapon, perception is the battlefield, and survival means accepting that war never truly ends.

Syeda Fizzah Shuja is a Research Associate at Pakistan Navy War College and an Mphil scholar in Peace and Counter Terrorism. Her work focuses on hybrid warfare and maritime terrorism. She can be contacted at fizzasyed2k@gmail.com.

The 5GW Playbook: Silent Wars and Invisible Battlefields was originally published on Global Security Review.

An inherently political phenomenon, terrorism is concerned with balances of power and the use of violence to achieve ideological and political aims. Though political goals influence the strategy of violent Islamic fundamentalists, the religious component remains the most important motivator for its agents and leaders. This makes that type of terrorism especially deadly and difficult to combat. Even seven years after the most recent wave of attacks from ISIS, Islamic terrorism is still the most prevalent type of terrorism threatening Europe, Africa, and Asia. In Latin America, Hezbollah is the only originally Islamist terrorist organization present.

Hezbollah was born during the Lebanese Civil War, which broke out in 1975 as a group of Shiite Muslims took up arms against the Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon. Under the sponsorship of Iran, this militia would attack the barracks of the coalition forces in Beirut with more than three hundred causalities.

Hezbollah’s 1985 manifesto called for the destruction of the Israeli state, the expulsion of Western powers from Lebanon, and pledged allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader. By the late 1980s, Hezbollah established operations in Colombia, the tri-border area (between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay), and, later, Venezuela. Hezbollah claims credit for attacks against an Israeli Embassy (1992) and a Jewish community center (1994) in Argentina.

Latin America’s recent history of violent revolutions and regime change shows why the region is particularly ripe for extremist movements. When Fidel Castro entered Havana, Cuba, on January 1, 1959, he imposed a type of repressive regime that was seen as a model by socialist movements on the continent. In the years that followed Castro’s victory and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Cuba became the center of the “good” guerrilla fighter. Asymmetric warfare proliferated across Latin America. The Shining Path organization from Peru relied on terror tactics that included: bombings, targeted assassinations, and guerrilla raids.

In these environments, death became romanticized through public executions commonly seen in the cartels, enabling Hezbollah to find considerable sympathy in many Latin American countries. Today, the group uses the region as a breeding ground for illicit drug trafficking and money laundering. Weak border enforcement and flawed authorities create fertile soil for Lebanese traffickers to move goods northward and southward, from Colombia’s coca fields to Argentina and Brazil’s ports.

Hezbollah activity in Peru, where the Shining Path continues drug trafficking operations, proves that the group also relies on local means to spread its influence. The center of the connection between the Shining Path and Hezbollah is in the small rural town of Abancay, where large parts of the population are converted Muslims and declared members of the Peruvian Hezbollah Party. In October 2014, a Lebanese man was arrested in connection to a plot against Israelis and Jews in Lima. According to law enforcement, he received assistance from the Shining Path to enter the country for this plot.

The State Department designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization in 1997, but Latin America was slow to follow: Argentina in 2019, Paraguay in 2019, and Colombia in 2020. As of 2024, these three countries remain the only states in South America to designate Hezbollah a terrorist entity, though several Central American states also accept Hezbollah as a violent extremist group.

In April 2024, Argentina’s Court of Cassation declared Hezbollah and Iran responsible for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center. Despite thirty years of setbacks from the court, the tide is turning against Iran and its proxies. However, Argentina still finds itself in tricky situations involving planes and passengers with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) while Venezuela’s overt relationship with Iran deepens.

On July 12, 2024, Argentina took its recent progress even further and designated Hamas a terrorist organization, the first Latin American country to do so. In today’s era of intense globalization, conflicts can be both regional and global. If Argentina’s actions are anything to go by, the influence of Iran as one of the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism may be on the decline. The path to do so, however, is far from linear. As Iran continues to sit on the brink of becoming a nuclear-armed state, the country’s reign of terror will not end.

General John F. Kelly, former Commander of US Southern Command, expertly warned, “Iran’s involvement in the Western Hemisphere is a matter for concern.” Only naïveté would support a belief that unchecked terrorist operations in Latin America will never spread north, when the incentives to do so only grow. A unified continent may be the best counter to Iran and its proxies, but the complexities of this issue prevent any easy or immediate avenues for this goal. As with many of the world’s challenges, solutions must first begin with knowledge of the problem.

Santiago Spadiliero is a doctoral student at Missouri State University’s School of Defense and Strategic Studies. Alexis Schlotterback is an Analyst at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.

Terrorism in Latin America: We Should Be Paying Attention was originally published on Global Security Review.

Today, international order is breaking down. Essays by Walter Russell Mead, Victor Davis Hanson, and Nadya Schadow, for example, detail this breakdown, and all reference China and Russia as top culprits. The October 2023 report from the Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States likewise weighs in with an acute warning that China, Russia, North Korea (DPRK), (and soon Iran) are now in the business of using nuclear weapons as a coercive tool with which to secure their objectives—raising the danger of nuclear conflict to the highest level since the 1945 dawn of the nuclear age.

American nuclear deterrent strategy is part of the international order and prevented direct military conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. Throughout the Cold War, American extended deterrence over NATO and allies in the Pacific prevented, respectively, a Soviet invasion of Western Europe and a repeat of the DPRK invasion of the Republic of Korea (ROK).

During the Cold War’s nearly five-decade-long struggle, the US faced one nuclear-armed peer adversary. In  2022 as the head of US Strategic Command warned, the US will soon face not one but two nuclear-armed peer competitors and do so for the first time in its history.

The unique dangers of this environment are reflected by the manner with which Russia and China see deterrence. Their goals are not designed to prevent war, but to embolden both nations to successfully engage in aggression—such as against Ukraine and potentially against Taiwan. Their nuclear capability acts as an umbrella under which they succeed in preventing the United States from defending the rules-based order. If the US stands down, military aggression succeeds and is not deterred.

Today’s emerging strategic environment contains a change that is not fully appreciated. American conventional military superiority, for example, is believed to help guarantee American and allied security. The US kicked Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991, defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, and decimated ISIS a decade later—all through conventional military superiority. American strategy, then and now, relies on superior technology and precision weapons, all backed by the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

However, when President Yeltsin decreed in April 1999 that the Russian military would develop highly accurate and very low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons, he set Russia on a path that now enables President Vladimir Putin to dominate warfare in Europe. China is in the process of adopting a strategy that threatens to introduce limited nuclear strikes into the conventional battlefield mix—“escalate to win”—leading the former commander of US Strategic Command to conclude that American conventional battlefield superiority “cannot hold.”

Without a robust and credible nuclear deterrent to restrain adversaries from using nuclear weapons, American plans to prevail on the conventional battlefield will no longer hold. And equally invalid is the Global Zero assumption that the US can prevail on the battlefield if the United States relies on conventional forces in a conflict that goes nuclear.

What then can the US make of the push by Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran to rewrite the rules of international behavior? That is, what should Americans make of what Russia describes as the unfair unipolar agenda and Iran describes as the great “global arrogance”? Americans should certainly worry that the nation is unprepared for the years ahead.

China’s growing nuclear arsenal emboldens President Xi Jinping to run roughshod over the South China Sea and its Philippine neighbors—flying military aircraft and steaming naval vessels recklessly in international waters. China may also be assisting Venezuela’s effort to grab oil-rich areas of Guyana. This is all taking place at a time when China is seeking bases on the Persian Gulf and near Gibraltar.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and regular threats to use nuclear weapons need little description. This is at a time when Russia maintains at least a 10 to 1 advantage in tactical nuclear weapons over the United States.

Nearly nuclear-armed Iran, partially under the protection of Moscow and Beijing, wages war through Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis. The Iranians and their allies are killing thousands, grabbing commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf, assassinating regime opponents, and ransoming hostages. The American response is, at best, muted.

North Korea recklessly and with impunity fires hundreds of missiles over Japanese and ROK territory and manages a vast international criminal complex of drug running, human trafficking, and weapons transfers, all while imprisoning millions of its own people in the world’s worse gulag. This is all made possible by China. It is through Chinese banks that North Korea avoids sanctions and finances its ongoing mayhem, including its nuclear program.

In short, the United States faces a daunting challenge that it must manage if the American-led international order has any hope of surviving the growing challenges the mayhem brothers present. The time to act is now.

The Mayhem Brothers: Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran was originally published on Global Security Review.

Under Maduro’s regime, Venezuela has become a humanitarian disaster. The country’s economy has shrunk by a staggering 80 percent since 2013, with inflation peaking at over 1.8 million percent and triggering an exodus of over 5.6 million Venezuelans – a mass migration similar in size to the refugee crisis caused by the Syrian Civil War, but one that has attracted far less international support. A report from the Organization of American States (OAS) warned that the number of refugees fleeing Venezuela could reach as high as seven million in 2021 alone because of continued economic strife exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. More of the refugees have come to Colombia than any other country, and the Colombian government recently took the step of offering 1.7 million refugees the opportunity to apply for legal status and to remain in Colombia for up to 10 years.

But Venezuela’s domestic crises don’t end with the mass exodus or economic implosion. Armed gangs control large parts of the capital, and the environmental situation in Venezuela is so bad that experts have coined the term “ecocide” to describe it. In addition to its ongoing conflict with the United States, Venezuela has also been openly antagonistic towards Colombia, one of Washington’s key allies in the region, and bellicose toward Guyana, another neighbor aligned with Washington. During Chávez’s rule, his government allegedly went so far as to offer weapons, training, and funding to terrorists in Colombia.

Recent events highlight Venezuela’s continued threat to the region, and why the United States cannot afford to ignore it. In early June, an Iranian frigate and a transport ship left Iran and sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to become the first Iranian navy vessels in the Atlantic. While the Iranian government didn’t announce their destination, most analysts believed that it was Venezuela or Cuba. Based on satellite photos taken before its departure, the modified Iranian tanker was believed to be carrying seven fast attack craft capable of carrying anti-ship missiles and machine guns, as well as other arms and a large amount of fuel. The ships did not end up in the Caribbean, and instead sailed to the Baltic, likely a result of behind-the-scenes diplomatic pressure. But the delivery of Iranian weapons and illegal fuel to Venezuela would have only increased Venezuela’s threat to regional stability.

Venezuela and Iran have long and deepening ties in what one expert called the “axis of the sanctioned,” and this is not the first time the two regimes have supported one another against international deterrents. Earlier this year, Iran sent tankers with gasoline to Venezuela in defiance of US sanctions to help relieve a crippling fuel shortage, despite the fact that Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world. Importing fuel via military vessels is one way to evade US sanctions which have foiled efforts to ship fuel from Iran to Venezuela in the past. President Maduro has also spoken about the prospect of buying Iranian arms as a way to shore up the poor state of the country’s navy and bully neighbors like Guyana and Colombia while poking a finger in the eye of the United States.

The Venezuelan disaster has also been an opportunity for terrorist groups and violence has increased along Venezuela’s borders. On June 15, terrorists used a car bomb to attack a Colombian army base in Cucuta, injuring 36 people, including two US soldiers who were part of an advising mission. Cucutá is on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, and Bogotá has long accused Caracas of harboring rebels who carry out attacks in Colombia. The Colombian government has named the 33rd Front of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, better known as the FARC, as responsible for both attacks and asserted that they were planned in Venezuela. While most of the FARC demobilized in 2016 after signing a controversial peace deal with the Colombian government, the 33rd Front is a splinter group. Attacks like the car bombing in Cucutá are possible because terrorist groups like the 33rd Front can operate from Venezuela and strike in Colombia.

In addition to the car bombing, in late June a helicopter carrying Colombian President Ivan Duque and several of his ministers were attacked by fringe groups as it overflew an area near the border with Venezuela. This brazen attempted assassination is further evidence of the insecurity spilling outwards from Venezuela where groups like the FARC benefit from safe havens, enjoy constant revenue streams from the illicit cocaine trade, and leverage the combination of tacit Venezuelan support and lack of state presence, especially along the borders.

Venezuela’s maritime border with Trinidad and Tobago has fared no better. Coastal criminals have taken to the seas to threaten fishermen, merchants, and boaters in a modern-day Pirates of the Caribbean. Research by Stable Seas found that incidents of piracy and armed robbery at sea in the Caribbean increased 200 percent between 2014 and 2019 “largely due to increases in armed robberies at anchorages in Venezuela” where more than half of the incidents occurred. While some of the most brazen attacks received press coverage, such as the murder of the captain of the San Ramon, attacks and kidnapping of fishermen from Trinidad and Tobago are rarely mentioned in US news outlets.

Between the car bombing and attempted assassination in Colombia, the spike in piracy off the coast of Venezuela, and the potential delivery of Iranian arms to Caracas, there is a clear warning: the slow collapse of the Maduro regime has turned Venezuela into a cancer rotting away the security of the Eastern Caribbean. As the Biden Administration charts future US foreign policy in Latin America, it cannot afford to ignore the Venezuela crisis. The continued decaying of the regime’s security apparatus and Venezuelan sovereignty is an inviting opportunity for hostile actors that would further degrade regional security in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Building on Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit to Bogotá, the United States should maintain close ties with Colombia and continue to work with other countries in the region impacted by the trafficking and migration coming out of Venezuela. The US could also increase coronavirus vaccine donations to countries that have taken on large numbers of Venezuelan refugees and strengthen security cooperation with countries that share land and maritime borders with Venezuela.

Despite Venezuela’s implosion, there is no clear indication that the Maduro regime will fall from power any time soon. While the US should continue to back the Venezuelan opposition forces and push for dialogue, it needs to focus its efforts on limiting outside influence from countries like China, Iran, Cuba, and Russia and shoring up regional partners and allies most affected by Venezuela’s collapse. The apparent Iranian decision to send their vessels to Russia instead of Venezuela or Cuba is evidence that behind-the-scenes pressure can persuade these enablers to step away from Maduro. Other options to push for change in Venezuela, such as bellicose rhetoric, freedom of navigation exercises, and more onerous sanctions, are unlikely to improve security in the region. Instead, the United States should do more to support partners in the region that are most affected by instability in Venezuela in order to mitigate what is already a disaster of hemispheric proportions and which has no end in sight.

A Two-Pronged Approach for Dealing with Venezuela was originally published on Global Security Review.

Decades of interventionist policies have contributed to the view that the United States is the greatest threat to global peace, according to research by Gallup, with the decades-long “War on Drugs” contributing to the migration crisis and perceived insecurity along the U.S. southern border.

Wilsonianism—the interventionist doctrine espoused by the 28th President of the United States—aimed to advance the role of capitalism and democracy throughout the world. Following the First World War, this doctrine took a back seat in favor of increased isolationism and a withdrawal from the world stage. President Franklin D. Roosevelt reversed this trend, returning Wilsonianism to the heart of U.S. foreign policy, thrusting the country into the heart of global geopolitics.

However, U.S. foreign policy—particularly from the 1970s-onwards—has only served to diminish the United States’ role in the Western hemisphere, with aggressive policies pushing its adversaries closer together while influencing them to turn to the USSR for support. The forging of ties between Cuba and Venezuela may have begun long before the ideological assimilation of the Castro-Chavez years, but, more than a decade after the cigar-wielding Cuban left office, aggressive U.S. policy has strengthened the region’s anti-American bloc and diminished American influence.

As the humanitarian, political, and economic crisis in Venezuela escalated—brought to a head by President Nicolás Maduro’s fraudulent electoral victory, following years of deteriorating economic conditions—the Trump administration adopted a policy of regime change, throwing its weight behind Juan Guaidó and alluding to the possibility of military intervention. Backed by a chorus of Western governments, the Trump administration appeared to be making progress in ousting the unpopular socialist leader.

Maduro’s continued grip on power can be attributed in large part to Cuba’s commitment to propping up the socialist dictator. Numerous outlets have reported that Venezuela is teeming with Cuban intelligence officials rooting out opposition. Forged through mutual ideological understanding and staunch opposition to American interventionism, the Cuban-Venezuelan relationship is unlikely to be broken by the re-imposition of sanctions, which has been the Trump administration’s approach thus far.

Last month, I stood watching the final U.S.-flagged cruise ship leaving Havana harbor, before the reinstatement of sanctions (previously relaxed by Obama) that prohibits U.S.-flagged vessels from docking in Cuba, and prohibits foreign ships from docking in Cuba and the U.S. within six months of each other. This foreign policy is a clear indication that Trump is returning to the hardline interventionist policies of his predecessors, moving away from Obama’s reconciliation and diplomatic approach.

The Obama administration relaxed many of the sanctions placed on Cuba throughout the preceding decades; with the relaxation of the controversial wet-foot, dry-foot policy, as well as a host of new opportunities for Americans to travel to the island. These policies resulted in significant moves by the Cubans towards a more outward and capitalist economy, with private property and limited trading being permitted in recent years.

The re-imposition of sanctions is a mistake and will only serve to jeopardize U.S. national security interests in the long-term. As the recently published The Ordinary Presidency of Donald J. Trump points out, such an approach to foreign policy is likely only to deepen the resolve of the United States’ adversaries—strengthening the bond between Cuba and Venezuela, thereby reducing American influence in Central and South America. Stricter policy towards Cuba will only heighten the common security concerns of Cuba and Venezuela, encouraging the Cubans to continue supporting the Maduro regime.

Hans Morgenthau’s theory of realism has been the guiding philosophy in American foreign policy throughout much of the post-World War 2 era. Morganthau’s philosophy centered around security and power concerns on the international stage, suggesting that these were the driving forces in international relations. Ironically, America has failed to account for how security is the driving force behind the Cuban-Venezuelan relationship, with greater aggression only driving the joint security policy of the two states towards greater cooperation.

This approach will not only weaken the United States’ ability to direct policy in the region but could further destabilize volatile environments, encouraging far greater national security threats than currently exist. The use of force to remove Maduro and replace him with a more friendly ruler has been floated by U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton (a driving force behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq). Given Cuban influence, however, such a move is likely to destabilize the region and produce new national security dangers akin to those in the wake of the U.S. nation-building project in the Middle East.

Instead, the U.S. should focus on reinvigorating the diplomatic approach championed by Barack Obama, employing American soft power and influence among the Cuban populace to decouple the relationship between Havana and Caracas, allowing for the U.S. to achieve its foreign policy objectives.

The crux of the United States’ argument in favor of intervention in Venezuela comes from the Wilsonian tradition of championing democracy, as Venezuela has consistently reneged on democratic principles. Maduro’s faux victory in the latest election threatens this tradition, encouraging the U.S. to push for intervention, but diminishing the achievability of its foreign policy aims.

Although some suspect that John Bolton and Mike Pompeo’s interventionism is underlined by a muscle-flexing attempt to use the military, rather than effectively achieve national security objectives. If the U.S. is to champion Wilsonian principles of democracy and capitalism, diplomacy and the exercise of soft power is the way forward. Cuba is primed for more considerable U.S. influence, with one of the most striking features in Havana being the shiny new U.S. embassy, a perfect symbol of American potential to reconcile with Cuba.

The Cuban people seem ready for a more significant American presence. Speaking to a taxi driver in Havana, it was clear that there was real hope of American reconciliation and the influx of American goods during the thawing of tension during Obama’s administration. The same taxi driver spoke of the damage the Trump administration’s policies are doing to the potential reconciliation between Cuba and its behemoth neighbor, with such aggression only diminishing America’s potential to decouple Cuba and Venezuela.

America clearly could exert significant influence through diplomatic means. Cuban infrastructure remains almost entirely the product of a now-defunct state, with Soviet-era power plants and motor vehicles dominating the Caribbean island. This provides the opportunity for quick growth to be facilitated by the United States, by the opening up of relations with Cuba and offering developmental aid, instead of pressuring them into submission—a wholly unsuccessful policy. Cuban people have a hunger for modern American goods and allowing them access to such products will only grow the potential for Cuba to be an American security asset, rather than a potential strategic threat.

Amongst the Cuban people, adherence to socialism is seemingly borne out of two realities, respect for Castro and the revolution, and the inability to pursue a different course of political economy. Cuba would likely be decoupled from Venezuela should their national security no longer rely on creating a regional buffer to the U.S., with the Cuban economy being almost entirely strangled except for limited regional trade.

Recent reforms indicate the willingness of the Cuban government to open up and reform away from their state-controlled economy; the 2019 constitutional referendum affirmed this by recognizing private property, recognition of foreign investment and introduction of habeas corpus, somewhat reflecting America’s declaration of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—a clear indication of a willingness to align more closely with the United States.

Given this willingness, the Trump administration’s policy is counterproductive in achieving all of the United States’ regional objectives. Cuban shifts towards increased openness will provide a significant opportunity for America to drive policy in the region, using diplomatic means to maneuver Cuba away from their socialist dogma and weaken a key pillar supporting the Maduro government.

If the United States is genuine about its adherence to Wilsonianism and wish to achieve democratic governance and economic upturn in Venezuela, its policy of sanctioning Cuba to pressure Maduro will only weaken its efforts to effect change.

Instead, the U.S. should pursue reconciliation and take advantage of the waning ideological alignment of the Cuban regime, allowing for the capitalization of markets and free trade, that can make Cuba a critical regional partner. Using its considerable economic might rather than military force, the U.S. should pursue the Wilsonian tradition of tackling injustices abroad, while ensuring its national security.

Engagement with Cuba is the Key to Greater U.S. Influence in Latin America was originally published on Global Security Review.

The seemingly omnipotent regimes in each of these countries are on increasingly shaky ground after years of corruption, public deception, and coercion. Protests in Venezuela, Algeria, and Sudan have laid the groundwork for potentially positive changes in those countries. In Iran, many wish for a similar movement towards reform. However, they face critical challenges ahead if any changes are to be realized. Going forward, it would behoove policymakers, particularly those in Western countries, to closely monitor events in Iran.

From the outset, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran undermined the functioning of an effective government in the country. Revolutionaries established parallel institutions alongside each government apparatus which imposed obstacles on nearly every decision-making process in Iran. The Islamic Revolution enmeshed itself in domestic, economic, and foreign policymaking to ensure its interests were upheld. For example, the religious Guardian Council of the Revolution can impede the Parliament, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) meddles with the country’s economy and interferes with the Iranian armed forces whenever it deems necessary to do so.

Today, parallel institutions in Iran have amassed substantial power, and it’s unlikely they will relinquish it voluntarily. The Guardian Council is a hindrance to parliamentary decision-making on critical matters like international anti-money laundering bills, while the IRGC provides support, funding, and resources to foreign militia groups, and brings them into Iran.

During the 2009 Iranian Green Movement, the IRGC deployed armored vehicles into volatile cities alongside anti-riot security forces and attacked protestors, arresting and subsequently torturing them. When it came to fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Iranians were never fully supportive of the IRGC’s actions. Many disregarded Tehran’s strong support for the Assad regime in Syria and disapproved of money that was badly needed at home being spent on expansionist programs.

Presently, Iranians are even more furious with the IRGC following widespread flooding in several Iranian provinces, further underscoring the regime’s inability to manage a crisis effectively. The matter is exacerbated by the fact that the majority of infrastructure and economic development projects in Iran are awarded to firms connected to the IRGC. Many projects have been entirely unnecessary or were improperly planned.

During a visit to areas affected by the flooding, IRGC commanders were confronted by angry and disappointed residents, in some cases being on the receiving end of “long live the Shah” chants. Their solution is to bring in al-Hashd ash-Sha’abi—or the Iraqi Shia Militia of Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF)—to the province of Khuzestan under the guise of providing aid. In reality, the group is there to suppress protesters and dissenters. Khuzestan is home to a significant population of Iranians of Arab descent, so it’s ironic that foreign Arabs are charged with suppressing dissent.

During the 2009 Green Movement, protests across Iran in 2017, and in the aftermath of the 2019 flood, the IRGC has repeatedly shown that it holds no reservations about using brutal tactics to oppress the Iranian people. Thus, once the IRGC begins to feel that it is losing its grip on power, it’s likely Iran will descend to the verge of civil war. Practically speaking, any foreign actors intent on constraining the IRGC should establish an agile taskforce to monitor, identify, and block every IRGC financial transaction and trade deal from North Africa to East Asia.

The Islamic Republic’s long and tragic record on human rights has been overlooked by the West—primarily Europe—for the sake of business and commercial opportunities in Iran. Iran’s rank of civil and political rights was stagnant during the 1980s and 1990s. Furthermore, Iran’s human rights ranking out of a score of one hundred) improved by just eleven points over two decades—from six to seventeen. It is a false hope to believe that the current system in Iran will bring about any positive or substantive changes to both Iran and the broader region.

With or without sanctions, with or without the nuclear deal, with or without the IRGC being officially designated as a terrorist organization, the theocratic regime in Tehran will continue as it has for forty years. The Iranian presidency was held first by a moderate, then by a reformist, then by a fundamentalist, and now by a moderate—yet any case for true peace within the country or with the rest of the world is nonexistent. Real reform in Iran would mean the release of imprisoned members of the Baha’i faith, journalists, women’s rights activists, and citizens of the U.S. and U.K. accused of espionage. This is, however, unlikely as the regime’s survival is increasingly dependent upon the repression of dissent.

In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iranian opposition groups increasingly felt that the international community was turning a blind eye to the regime’s repressive policies. For some time, the Iranian opposition movement appeared to stagnate. In recent years, however, the Iranian diaspora has led to a resurgence of opposition. As older generations hold meetings and conferences around the globe, younger groups such as Iran Revival are breathing new life into the fight against the regime of the Islamic Republic.

Iran Revival’s members are primarily younger Iranians who have left the country. The group has established a ten-point transition path for Iran. Since the group’s establishment in September, it’s social media following has grown substantially and the group’s Instagram features numerous videos filmed by Iranians residing in Iran. The U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, met with representatives of the group during Nowrooz, the Iranian New Year. Officials in other Western governments would do well to engage with groups that have a vision for Iran such as Iran Revival. Engagement with opposition groups is essential if the country is to have a peaceful path to political transition.

Iran—similar to Venezuela, Algeria, and Sudan—displays the right criteria for a possible regime change. The country is facing severe economic woes, Iranian opposition groups are organizing themselves more effectively over issues like corruption and women’s rights, and possible alternatives to the current regime are emerging. No authoritarian regime in history has survived indefinitely, and the one currently ruling Iran will be no exception.

Iran, Algeria, Sudan, and Venezuela Have One Major Similarity was originally published on Global Security Review.

Venezuela kicked 2019 off with a turbulent and fragile political start of the year. President Nicolás Maduro began his second presidential term on January 10th. The May 20th presidential election last year was internationally decried as illegitimate by the United States and the 14-member Lima Group throughout the region. On January 5th, a new face in Venezuelan politics emerged, Juan Guaidó, the 35-year-old newly elected President of the National Assembly.

As public and military support continue to mount, Guaidó is preparing to challenge Maduro and has called for a change of power. At Guaidó’s behest, the first public rally for Maduro to resign took place on January 23rd, with a massive protest against the Maduro government.

Guaidó rapidly emerged as a young new leader of the opposition in the National Assembly. Following his participation in the 2007 student protests of Hugo Chavez, Guaidó began to make a name for himself within the Venezuelan opposition. His involvement in the protests ultimately led him to Leopoldo Lopez, the long-standing leader of the Venezuelan opposition. Lopez ultimately mentored Guaidó through the Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) political party, preparing him to assume the Presidency of the National Assembly.

With Lopez’ continued house arrest and ban from serving public office, Guaidó emerged as the leader of the opposition within the National Assembly. Upon assuming his new position, on January 5, Guaidó became increasingly vocal through his first few weeks in office, declaring Maduro a usurper of the presidency. On January 13, Guaidó was briefly detained by police officers in La Guaira on the way to a town hall rally. A video of the detainment taken by a motorist rapidly circulated social media. Guaidó was soon released, but the detention spread international awareness about the opposition’s struggle and brought Guaidó to the international stage.

Despite Guaidó’s prominence in the National Assembly, his efforts will lead to limited results without the support of the armed forces. While the military command remains under the control of the Maduro regime, personnel have begun to desert their ranks. Voluntad Popular has called on the National Guard to break ranks to help bring about a transition in government in exchange for amnesty. Videos were circulated on Monday of dissident soldiers swearing loyalty to Guaidó in Cotiza. The soldiers in question headed to the special security unit headquarters to commandeer military vehicles and call for a local uprising. On Monday, 27 soldiers of the National Guard were detained for their insubordination in connection to the transgression.

Maduro has overseen a steady decline in his executive power and public approval since taking office. In 2017, protestors took to the streets of Caracas for months, beginning in March and ending in August. Despite their conviction, the protestors were forced to discontinue their demonstrations after six months of continuous protesting and heavy-handed police repression. The repression of political dissent in Venezuela caused many countries within the Lima Group began to question the policy of diplomatic support for Maduro. In August of 2017, a bizarre drone attack was launched against Maduro during an open air rally. The Maduro government blamed the Lima Group for organizing the assault.

Maduro’s consistent response to the decline of the state has been to centralize state authority. Although the Supreme Court remains under the bridle of Maduro, the majority in the National Assembly remains unyielding in opposition of Maduro. In March 2017, the Supreme Court tried to dissolve the National Assembly and engineer a replacement executive-run legislative body called the Constituent Assembly. The Supreme Court ultimately failed to win the legal battle following strong pressure from the international community and fierce opposition from the National Assembly. Yet Venezuela’s highest court remains a central voice in Venezuelan politics — on January 21st, the Supreme Court ruled Guaidó’s leadership and calls to remove Maduro illegal.

Going Global

Debate and politicking over the Venezuelan Crisis is not confined to the domestic space. For years, the United Nations, U.S., Europe, and neighboring states have decried the abuse of executive authority, illiberal governance, and repression of the Venezuelan public. Now, it seems, the world is ready to assume a more active role in countering Caracas.

In the past year, Trump expressed on several occasions that all options remain on the table with the Venezuelan conflict. In September 2018, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration had met with dissident Venezuelan military officers about plans to overthrow Maduro. The meetings proved inconclusive — U.S. officials ultimately decided not to aid the officers in a coup attempt. However, the fact that the U.S. administration actively considered a kinetic engagement to support a regime change in Venezuela at a time when President Trump is scaling back the United States’ military presence in the Middle East underscores the dire threat that Maduro’s grip on power poses to regional stability and the level of engagement that the international community believes necessary to restore democratic governance to Caracas.

As widespread disapproval across the region for a military coup persists and the U.S. government remains mired in its own political showdown, it is unlikely that Washington will sponsor or encourage a military coup d’état in Venezuela. However, Guaidó has already indirectly presented the United States with a way to support the struggling democratic opposition. By amplifying Guaidó’s message and drawing attention to the conflict — Washington has already contributed to Guaidó’s international image and credibility.

The United States and the Lima Group have already voiced public support for Guaidó and backed his denouncement of the Maduro regime as illegitimate. Taking it a step further, on January 15, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence spoke on the phone with Guaidó and expressed the U.S. government’s “unwavering support” for the opposition. That message was then amplified by a public video that the Vice President released on Twitter, expressing the U.S. government and American people’s support for both the Venezuelan opposition and general public.

In the video, Pence affirms that “We will stay with you until Democracy is restored and you reclaim your birthright of Libertad.” In response to the video, Maduro has called for a revision of diplomatic relations with the United States on television and on Twitter, claiming that Pence is overstepping his authority.

Diplomatic reprisals in U.S.-Venezuelan relations are nothing new. In 2008, President Hugo Chávez expelled U.S. Ambassador Patrick Duddy from Caracas, citing a U.S.-crafted coup plot against his administration. Since then, the United States has been unable to send an official ambassador to Venezuela, relying on Foreign Service Officers to serve as the Chargé d’Affaires. That tenuous diplomatic thread was finally cut last year after Maduro targeted the remaining leadership of the diplomatic mission and expelled the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Todd D. Robinson and the Deputy Chief of Mission Brian Naranjo. Given the current state of relations, it is difficult to see how Maduro can take any meaningful action against Washington short of military escalation, which would immediately undermine his efforts at diverting international engagement.

In addition to the brazen violation of civil liberties and human rights, the U.S. Government has denounced Venezuela’s burgeoning relationship with Russia. The Russian government has become a key ally of the Maduro government, providing aid in the form of debt-restructuring, the creation of the petro crypto-currency, and recently, procurement of military bomber planes. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly criticized American support for the Venezuelan opposition.

Trial by Fire

Regardless of the outcome, these events will prove to be a turning point in Venezuela. Either the opposition will succeed in rallying the people and the military to overthrow Maduro with the support of the Lima Group, or Maduro will demonstrate his unshakable control over Venezuela’s government. The culmination of the opposition’s appeal to the people combined with the gravitas placed upon the outcome by the international community has given the occasion particular weight. The opposition must demonstrate to the Venezuelan people and the international community that they can — and will — bring about a peaceful democratic transition. The time is now, or never.

In a grand gesture, Guaidó timed the widespread protests to coincide with the anniversary of the 1958 ousting of Venezuelan Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez. Responding to a fellow member of the National Assembly on Twitter, Guaidó proclaimed, “We only have one clear action: to remain united and firm for a democratic and free Venezuela.” The stage is set. Whatever follows will influence Venezuelan politics and governance for years to come.

This article was originally published on The International Scholar.

Trial by Fire: Guaidó Calls on Venezuela to Oust Maduro was originally published on Global Security Review.

As the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the threat of escalations on the Korean Peninsula continue to draw the majority of international media attention, Venezuela’s deepening political and economic crisis rapidly grows regarding significance for security in the Americas.

To understand the complexities the perfect storm of food and economic insecurity, political repression, and violence stemming from the absence of any form of law and order, we spoke to Jennifer McCoy, Ph.D., distinguished University Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University. Dr. McCoy served as Founding Director of the Global Studies Institute at GSU (2015-16), and Director of the Carter Center’s Americas program (1998-2015) where she led projects strengthening democratic institutions, provided mediation and encouraged dialogue and hemispheric cooperation. Her latest book is International Mediation in Venezuela (co-authored with Francisco Diez, 2011).

Dr. McCoy directed the Carter Center’s projects on Mediation and Monitoring in Venezuela (2002-2004), the Ecuador-Colombia Dialogue Group (2008-2010), and the U.S.-Andean Dialogue Group (2010-2011), and led over a dozen election monitoring and observation missions.

According to Dr. McCoy, three main scenarios could potentially play out. One of these is the current situation; people willing to publicly protest led by a unified opposition with specific demands are being met by the government with repression. If no concessions are made by the government, the unrest could potentially peter out if no change occurs.

The Maduro government has been hanging on… waiting for oil prices to rise… trying desperately to make its bond payments…

This has happened twice before in the past three years. Venezuelan’s went out into the streets, drawing international attention, and resulting in dialogues that were sponsored by the international community. Each time, an exchange was sponsored and then protests died down, but nothing was changed as a consequence of the inter-party dialogues. The government and its economic policies continued, the social situation deteriorated, setting the stage for another crisis like the one we see now.

But what makes this round of protests different and more sustained is the lack of elections as an alternative means to resolve differences. The cancellation of all election options, as well as the Supreme Court’s undermining the authority of the legislature (the only institution controlled by the opposition), means the people are losing hope of peaceful means of changing the situation.

Russia and China have provided the Venezuelan government with financial support as it tries to hang on. The government is counting on the situation to improve—i.e., for oil prices to rise—before the presidential elections scheduled for late-2018. They’ve already delayed or all-out suspended local, regional, and governor elections and successfully halted an effort by the opposition to have a recall referendum that would cut short the president’s term.

The worst-case scenario for Venezuela

A prolonged economic crisis and food shortages, coupled with rapidly escalating violence and unchecked arms proliferation could lead to a civil war.

If there isn’t any meaningful resolution of the crisis or a decrease in public anger, Dr. McCoy says a significant escalation in tensions and armed conflict is possible, from what is currently mainly peaceful protests with low levels of violence.

Harsh repression has been widely propagated by the government or by government-armed militias and gangs. However, the risk of escalation increases due to the large number of young Venezuelans that are coming out and setting up barricades in the streets, mainly in the evenings after protests have ended, and engage in fights with police, the National Guard, and the government-armed gangs.

Dr. McCoy notes that the youths coming out in opposition aren’t using firearms. Instead, they’re using Molotov cocktails, sticks, and are setting fires in the streets. The danger here is if this low-level of violence escalates and spirals out of control with increasing levels of chaos and violence between civilian protesters, the political opposition, government-armed militias and street gangs, and government police and military forces.

Is Venezuela the Next Syria?

In some ways, it is possible Venezuela’s situation could escalate to the level currently observed in the Syrian civil war. That would be the absolute worst-case scenario, according to Dr. McCoy, with some fundamental differences. Both crises arose from food and resource shortages, but ethnic and religious factions—like those engaged in the Syrian civil war—don’t exist in Venezuela.

In Syria, the military has supported Assad partly because of the ethnic and religious alignments in the region and—to some degree—the belief that the armed forces best chances of survival lay with Assad. In Venezuela, the socialist Chavez movement arose from the military. It was when it incorporated some civilian leftist intellectuals that it became a hybrid civic-military coalition movement.

The Venezuelan military, however, has a long professional history, and members of the armed forces have been very reluctant to fire on their citizens, and have been pushing for the military to maintain the legitimacy and professionalism of the institution of the armed forces. Still unclear, however, is the degree to which the military has been politicized in Venezuela.

Since Chavez and his supporters came to power 15 years ago, they’ve made political promotions within the military, but it is unclear how far lower-ranking troops, who are also suffering from low salaries and food and medicine shortages, will support their superiors if they are called on to repress their fellow citizens.

How will the events in Venezuela affect the region geopolitically?

Geopolitically speaking, the situation in Venezuela is much different than the conflict in Syria. Venezuela’s neighbors are democratic. The Maduro government is also very conscious of legitimacy; it doesn’t want to be seen as an authoritarian regime—and a military takeover would carry the stigma associated with an authoritarian ruler. In this day and age, military coups aren’t as accepted in the Western hemisphere.

While the worst case scenario is Venezuela devolving into civil war, Dr. McCoy believes that point is still some ways off. Venezuela’s democratic neighbors—Columbia, or Brazil, for instance—would likely exert tremendous pressure on the government and security services in Venezuela to negotiate an end to hostilities before it escalates into a full-blown civil war.

If the worst is to occur, with continued failures of the state to govern effectively, if the country enters a state of general lawlessness, then there will be repercussions for the entire hemisphere, as well as Europe, Dr. McCoy says. While Venezuela doesn’t produce drugs, it’s a major transport hub for drugs going to Europe and even to Africa before making their way to Europe.

Drug trafficking increases under lawlessness, as we saw in Honduras after 2009. There was a coup, and for a while, the country was run by a fragile government, and lawlessness increased dramatically. Now, Honduras has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Countries like the United States are seeing a significant increase in the number of people arriving from countries like Honduras that are plagued with violence.

An actual collapse of the state in Venezuela would likely mean large numbers of economic migrants and refugees fleeing the violence. Notably, the Venezuelan border with Colombia would be most fragile. For a while, Venezuela closed the border with Colombia as thousands of people would try to cross the Amazon into Colombia just to try and get food or medicine.

If the security situation in Venezuela worsens, the Colombian border would be the main point where people would cross. Internally, Colombia is just starting to get its peace agreement in place, so further destabilization in Venezuela could have significant ramifications for Colombia.

A negotiated political settlement is the best-case scenario for ending Venezuelan political and economic upheaval

Dr. McCoy discussed a third potential outcome for the situation in Venezuela: a negotiated solution. A negotiated settlement means addressing the food and medical shortage and ensuring people’s basic survival needs are met while providing international economic support on the condition that specific political and institutional reforms are implemented.

Years ago, Venezuela cut itself off from the Inter-American Development Bank, the IMF, and the World Bank. Since then, it has been relying on loans from Russia and China in exchange for oil as collateral, but that’s increasingly becoming an unsustainable source of funding for the Venezuelan government.

China and Russia are becoming more leery about continuing to loan new money because of depressed oil prices, instability, and their internal problems. As a result, Venezuela’s financial options are thinning out. However, Dr. McCoy notes that negotiations could resolve this issue in this third scenario, which is the most optimal.

In exchange for international aid, the Venezuelan government would have to agree to implement changes in monetary and fiscal policy and to reinvest revenues, particularly in the nationalized oil sector. The national oil company has lost its capacity to produce efficiently and in the required volume. Venezuela’s commodity-based economy needs an efficient oil industry to generate sufficient revenue to reinvest in other sectors to promote a more diversified economy.

Additionally, the government needs to agree to political negotiations, as well. The independence of Venezuela’s democratic institutions has been critically undermined, so there needs to be a significant effort to restore the independence of the judiciary, the legislative branch, the security forces, and the media, in addition to setting in place a timetable for elections.

The problem, Dr. McCoy says, is that the government is reluctant to hold elections because if they perceive it as an all-or-nothing situation if they (the Maduro government) falls out of power. If the Chavez movement loses control of the Venezuelan government, they fear recrimination and are afraid of losing all the gains they’ve made—in their eyes—for the Venezuelan people through what Chavez called his “Bolivarian revolution.”

There is significant corruption that permeates the government and armed forces, and reported criminal activity, as well. Therefore, many officials will be reluctant to risk giving up power if they think they will be tried and punished, or if they expect a witch-hunt without due process.

Also looming over members of government is the possibility of extradition to the United States. This threat is particularly worrisome for those who’ve already been indicted in the U.S., or who have had sanctions imposed upon them by the U.S. in response to corruption, drug trafficking, or human rights abuses.

Applying transitional justice in Venezuela

Transitional justice is usually implemented after countries have emerged from a civil war with a peace agreement, or after a transition from a military dictatorship or authoritarian regime to a democratic system. In the past, it has granted pure amnesty to everybody.

Now, Dr. McCoy says, transitional justice typically provides reduced sentences for abusers of human rights, and potentially for corrupt officials, conditioned on their agreeing to provide compensation to the victims or the country, acknowledge responsibility and tell the truth, and guarantees not to repeat the criminal activity.

Some form of negotiation must include elements transitional justice to ensure a peaceful transition of power, and more importantly, to even have the ability to hold elections where it’s possible that the government could be ousted.

What’s at stake for American interests?

A failure to reach a solution in Venezuela would have considerable implications for American interests, both economic and national security. A failure would result in a marked increase in the number of Venezuelan’s fleeing the country, either seeking better economic opportunity or fleeing political violence and oppression.

This risk involves the point that if there is a state collapse, oil production will likely cease in Venezuela and worldwide prices escalate. An interruption in oil exports to the U.S. from Venezuela has never before occurred, despite political tensions and lack of ambassadors in each country.

The criminal and extremist activity would increase in the absence of order. There have been allegations that Venezuela has sold visas to Hezbollah in Iran, Dr. McCoy says, noting that these haven’t necessarily been concretely proven, but provide a window into the range of threats that could emerge from Venezuela if it became a failed state.

Venezuela’s Economic Collapse & the Rise of Authoritarianism was originally published on Global Security Review.

Fewer than half of Venezuela’s registered voters participated in the South American country’s May 20 election, punishing a government they don’t support by simply not voting.

Nevertheless, Nicolás Maduro was re-elected as president of Venezuela by a wide margin over his strongest opponent, Henri Falcón.

Maduro received 6.2 million votes, or 68 percent of total votes cast. Falcón followed with 1.9 million, and a third-place contender, evangelical minister Javier Bertuchi, received 925,000 votes.

Few Venezuelans, with the possible exception of Falcón, expected otherwise. Most opposition parties boycotted the May 20 election, which they said was rigged. Venezuela’s parliament declared it an illegal “electoral drill” and asked the international community to ignore the results.

Democratic fraud

As in recent elections, the ruling Socialist Party used all the power of its increasingly authoritarian regime to tip the May 20 election in Maduro’s favor. For months, the regime coerced citizens to register as Socialist Party members, traded food for votes and blacklisted opposition candidates.

Even so, it is difficult for me to believe – both as a political scientist and as a Venezuelan citizen – that amid a profound political, humanitarian and economic crisis, more than half of Venezuelans voting supported Maduro.

Since taking office in 2013, the president has overseen the country’s descent into chaos. According to national surveys, Maduro’s popularity is at its lowest ever. Just 18 percent to 25 percent of Venezuelans support his administration.

I do not know whether the election results announced by the regime-controlled Venezuelan electoral authority correctly reflect the ballots cast. Falcón has challenged the tally, saying it “lacks legitimacy.”

Authoritarianism in the 21st century

Certainly, Venezuela’s was not a competitive election. Many believe Maduro’s re-election constitutes a fraud against democratic principles. Nearly 50 countries worldwide – including the United States and almost every Latin American nation – have declared Venezuela’s election results illegitimate.

In response, President Donald Trump imposed new sanctions limiting how U.S. companies and citizens can do business with Venezuela, including the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela.

Only Russia, China, Cuba and 13 other nations have recognized the election results.

Maduro will start his second term, which beings in January 2019, quite isolated. Despite promises to work with the opposition, he is vilified domestically as an autocrat who seized power illegally.

But Maduro is not alone in the world. In recent years, Venezuela has rebuilt its strategic global alliances, giving clear preference – in the form of oil diplomacy and insider access to Latin American politics – to countries that share Maduro’s worldview and governing style.

The regime’s relationships with the authoritarian governments of Russia, China, Turkey, Bolivia, and Cuba – all of which congratulated Maduro on his win – are strong.

These countries’ leaders practice a new kind of authoritarianism. In the 21st century, dictatorships do not necessarily take on the classic form – that of Mao, Lenin or the Latin American military juntas of the 1970s and 1980s.

Instead, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the like often maintain a democratic facade. They hold elections – but they do so under corrupt conditions, ensuring that they and their parties stay in power.

They decry capitalism and imperialism, claiming to rule in the name of the people. Meanwhile, they amass great personal wealth and power.

Venezuela’s Maduro, who enriched his inner circle while the country starved, is now indisputably part of this crowd.

El Chavismo

Venezuela’s path to dictatorship has been decades in the making.

In 1998, Hugo Chávez was elected president based on promises to transform Venezuelan society. His movement, “El Chavismo,” enacted deep and progressive changes in the country.

Throughout most of his 15 years in office, Chávez enjoyed high international oil prices, which made Venezuela rich – and bought him significant popular goodwill. His government spent heavily on social programs, funding public education, poverty reduction, and cultural programs.

But Chávez, a populist and ardent Cuba admirer, also eroded Venezuela’s democratic institutions and consolidated power in the executive. He nationalized oil production, telecommunications companies, and other Venezuelan industries. He assailed the “bourgeoisie” and declared globalization to be imperialist.

Over three administrations, his government eroded civil liberties, particularly freedom of speech and independence of the media.

Strategies to maintain power

Oil prices have fallen consistently during Maduro’s reign, cutting government revenue and ending Venezuela’s lavish, Chávez-style lavish government spending. Maduro’s mishandling of the national economy led to widespread poverty and mass civil unrest starting in 2015. His regime brutally repressed protests.

These, in part, are the reasons Maduro could not risk a legitimate, democratic election on May 20.

The country is now firmly in his command. The military – potentially the only domestic force that could destabilize him – seems to be under control. Maduro recently imprisoned a former general, Rodríguez Torres, whom he accused of conspiring against his regime. The regime also arrested several other colonels for the same alleged crime.

Maduro’s next step could be to change Venezuela’s Constitution, transforming the country from a democratic republic to a Cuba-style “communal state,” in which state-controlled committees decide the country’s future and control most aspects of society.

Maduro may even run for office again, or hold regular elections, as 21st-century dictators do. But they won’t be free, fair or democratic. I suspect he will be in power for a long time to come.

Venezuela is Now a Dictatorship was originally published on Global Security Review.

Iran’s Bid for Regional Hegemony.

Iranian leaders must be pleased with how 2017 played out. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad looks to be securely in power in Damascus. Ditto Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Islamic State lost much of its territory. The Iraqi government retook the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Houthi rebels have Saudi Arabia bogged down in a quagmire in Yemen. Iranian involvement figures prominently in all of these developments, which has entrenched Iranian influence across the region. But this success is not Tehran’s doing alone. Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy missteps have helped as well. Besides its ill-considered Yemen adventure, Riyadh led the effort to embargo Qatar for its alleged pro-Iranian sympathies and support for terrorism.

That has pushed Qatar closer to Tehran and created a diplomatic headache for Washington. (Qatar hosts the largest U.S. airbase in the Middle East.) Still, Saudi Arabia likely retains President Donald Trump’s ear. The new U.S. National Security Strategy vows to “neutralize malign Iranian influence.” Contrary to his campaign pledge, Trump hasn’t pulled the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He instead opted to refuse to certify Iran’s compliance. That effectively kicked the issue over to Capitol Hill. Congress has now effectively kicked it back to him. While the White House wants to turn up the heat on Tehran, the question remains how far it will be willing to go. After all, Europe opposes torpedoing the JCPOA, and the White House has its hands full with North Korea. One thing you can be sure of: Iran will press its advantage wherever it can.

North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions.

Something has to give. Trump has vowed to prevent North Korea from gaining the capability to hit the United States with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. He’s backed that up with angry tweets and threats to unleash “fire and fury.” So far North Korea isn’t blinking. Pyongyang boasted after its ballistic missile test last month that it “can now reach all of the mainland U.S.” That’s probably not true. However, the trend is not America’s friend. Unfortunately, Washington’s options for compelling Pyongyang to back down aren’t promising. China either can’t—or won’t—use its economic leverage to make North Korea cry uncle. Meanwhile, the cost of U.S. military action would likely be steep—possibly even “catastrophic.”

A diplomatic solution might still be forged. But that would almost certainly require recognizing North Korea as a nuclear weapons power—at the risk that Pyongyang will pocket any concessions and then renege on its commitments. It has done that before. Yes, the United States can rely on deterrence to keep North Korea at bay. That strategy worked against the far larger Soviet threat. The danger is that Kim Jong-un may be willing to take risks that Soviet leaders weren’t. Of course, an assassination, coup, or popular uprising could scramble everything—and not necessarily in a good way. However the situation plays out, the current level of tensions creates the possibility that war will begin not through calculation but miscalculation.

Crisis in Venezuela.

Venezuela should be a prosperous and vibrant country. After all, it has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Instead, the country is gripped by a horrific economic and political crisis. The fault lies squarely with President Nicolás Maduro. He has implemented disastrous economic policies and run roughshod over the country’s constitution. Hungry Venezuelans bitterly joke about being on a “Maduro diet,” medicine is in short supply, and Maduro’s allies have frustrated efforts to change things at the ballot box. As bad as things were in 2017 for Venezuelans, things could be even worse in 2018.

The International Monetary Fund projects that inflation will exceed 2,300 percent next year. And Maduro has banned three opposition parties from participating in next December’s presidential election. Venezuelans have taken to the streets to protest Maduro’s dictatorial ways. More than one hundred protestors have been killed, but nothing has changed. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled to neighboring countries. Latin American countries are divided over how to respond. The United States has already imposed sanctions on Venezuelan officials and may impose more. Trump’s suggestion that U.S. military intervention might be necessary drew rebukes from across Latin America and probably gave Maduro a much-needed propaganda victory. In all, Maduro isn’t likely to go unless Venezuelans make him go.

Trump’s Effort to Transform Trade.

President Trump has been complaining about America’s “horrible” trade deals since the mid-1980s, and he made it a central theme of his 2016 presidential campaign. But during his first eleven months in office, he spent more time barking than biting on trade. True, he signed a presidential memorandum pulling the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). However, he didn’t impose tariffs on China or withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, or the World Trade Organization (WTO), all steps he either implied or vowed on the campaign trail to take. That may soon change.

The White House is moving to impose punitive actions on predatory Chinese trade practices, its demands for revamping NAFTA look to be unacceptable to Canada and Mexico, and it is waging a low-level war against the WTO. Trump’s push to counter what he calls “economic aggression” could create considerable turmoil abroad—and at home. America’s trading partners are likely to retaliate. No one knows how far such tit-for-tat actions might go. What is known is that some U.S. export sectors would be hurt. Meanwhile, Trump’s trade initiatives won’t fix what bothers him: America’s yawning trade deficit. The United States runs a deficit because Americans consume far more than they save. Tweaking trade deals won’t change that. To make matters worse, the tax bill he has championed will likely make the trade deficit larger.

China’s Ambitions Abroad.

Xi Jinping had a terrific 2017. He consolidated his hold on power and now ranks as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. The question is, how will he use his new status? To judge by his 205-minute speech to China’s National Party Congress in October, he won’t be sitting on the sidelines; he will be flexing his muscles. He used the terms “great power” and “strong power” twenty-six times in his speech. Xi’s assertive foreign policy will likely mix soft and hard power.

He will be offering substantial aid to countries throughout Asia under the banner of the One Belt One Road initiative. Most countries will find it hard to pass up these funds, even if they sometimes come with substantial strings attached. Beijing will also be supporting sympathetic politicians and groups overseas, a tactic that has started to trigger a backlash. The vinegar supplementing the honey will be China’s continued effort to turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake. Countries in Southeast Asia will be watching closely to see whether, and how, the United States pushes back on China’s effort to make itself the regional hegemon. A world order may hang in the balance.

The Mueller Investigation.

Americans aren’t the only ones watching to see what happens with the investigation Special Counsel Robert Mueller is conducting. Foreign capitals are as well. President Trump has called the investigation a “witch hunt,” and he dismisses allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia as “fake news.” Partisans on both sides think they know how the investigation will turn out. We’ll see who is right. What we know for sure is that Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has pled guilty to lying to the FBI, as has former Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos. Mueller also has indicted Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort and Manafort’s business partner and senior Trump campaign staffer, Rick Gates.

Trump’s lawyers predict that the investigation will wrap up shortly; history suggests it could drag on for months. At a minimum, the investigation distracts White House attention from policymaking and raises doubts overseas as to whether Trump has the political capital to carry through on his threats and promises. At the maximum, the investigation could plunge the United States into an unprecedented constitutional crisis. Whether we get either extreme or an outcome somewhere in between, America’s democracy is being tested. We’ll see if we live up to the framers’ expectations.

Democracy Under Stress.

Democracy is under siege. Just examine the rankings that Freedom House generates—global freedom has been declining for over a decade. The problem isn’t just that emerging democracies like Thailand and Turkey have slid back into authoritarian rule, though that’s bad enough. Many Western democracies are struggling as well. The EU is threatening to strip Poland’s voting rights in EU institutions because Warsaw has adopted anti-democratic laws, while Spain faces a secessionist movement in Catalonia. Centrist political parties across Europe have been losing vote shares to parties on the two extremes. Traditional center-left parties have had the most trouble, having suffered humiliating defeats in the Netherlands, France, and Austria among other places. But center-right parties are struggling as well, as recent elections in Britain and Germany attest.

The United States still has a robust two-party system, but its democracy also seems far from its glory days. Congress struggles to carry out is most basic function, funding the government, Trump regularly violates longstanding democratic norms, and many Americans view members of the opposite party unfavorably. It’s not surprising, then, that some now see the United States as a “flawed democracy.” Authoritarian governments like China and Russia are both working, in different ways, to undermine free and fair elections across the globe. Is democracy doomed? No. It remains popular worldwide, even if it has become less so among young people in democratic countries. There will be important elections in 2018 that could reverse the negative trends, though they might also give us more “illiberal democracies.” Here’s the thing about democracy: it empowers the people. It’s up to them to use that power wisely.

Corey Cooper and Benjamin Shaver contributed to the preparation of this post.

Geopolitical Hotspots: The World in 2018 was originally published on Global Security Review.

Venezuela’s problems will only get worse as President Nicolas Maduro strips Venezuela’s democratic institutions of their authority while consolidating his power. While government and business elites who have access to petrodollars enjoy overwhelmingly favorable exchange rates, the majority of Venezuelans are going hungry.

Further economic mismanagement will increase already-widespread starvation, illness, and insecurity. The result will be a massive overland exodus of refugees from Venezuela to Colombia, Brazil, and Guyana. The Dutch island territories of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao—just 40-80 km off the northern coast of Venezuela—would face a significant number of refugees.

Summary

• Government mismanagement of the oil industry is at the root of Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis, as productivity has rapidly collapsed. 
• Hyperinflation has made Venezuelan currency nearly worthless as the prices of essential goods have skyrocketed.
• If the already-dire situation worsens considerably, there will be a massive overland exodus of refugees from Venezuela to Colombia, Brazil, Guyana, and the United States. 
• The number of Venezuelans seeking political asylum in the United States has increased by over 160% from 2016.

A massive refugee crisis in the Americas wouldn’t just affect Venezuela’s neighbors.

Already, thousands have fled, and the number of Venezuelans seeking political asylum in the United States has increased by over 160% from 2016. As food insecurity worsens for the public and the government steps ups its repression of dissent, there will be a spillover effect regarding migration to the United States from South and Central America.

If the United States is unprepared for such a crisis, the results could have catastrophic implications for American national security. The Venezuelan Vice President, Tareck El Aissami, has been accused of having ties with Iranian and Hezbollah connected individuals and entities. El Aissami has been linked to 173 Venezuelan passports and identity cards that were issued to individuals from the Middle East and Central Asia, including alleged members of Hezbollah.

Holders of Venezuelan passports are afforded visa-free entry to over 130 countries, including 26 European Union member states. While a visa is required to enter the United States, there are likely more lenient standards for accepting applications from holders of Venezuelan passports than for holders of Iranian, Syrian, or Lebanese passports.

The situation in Venezuela is terrible for everyone

For Venezuela, the worst case scenario is a complete breakdown of the central government’s control over the state. If the Venezuelan government is unable to contain the flow of refugees and an overwhelming number cross into neighboring Brazil and Colombia, those governments may be forced to act in the interest of their national security interests.

Given the geographic proximity of the United States to Venezuela, democratic governance there along with adherence to the rule-of-law is paramount for American security in the long-term. Otherwise, the U.S. will undoubtedly face a massive influx of immigrants. Such a flow would not be stopped by a wall, like the one proposed by President Trump along the U.S.-Mexico border. Venezuelans seeking refuge from the humanitarian crisis will utilize air or maritime transport routes to reach the U.S.

Already, over 250,000 Venezuelans have migrated into Colombia in search of greater security and access to food and medical care. Colombia is in the process of finalizing a significant peace agreement with the FARC Rebel group, and a continued mass-migration of Venezuelan refugees could threaten Colombia’s internal stability. Absent a political settlement, which seems increasingly impossible due to the criminal nature of the Venezuelan regime, military intervention may be the only solution.

The Colombian government—possibly in cooperation with Brazil and other regional partners—may decide to pre-empt a mass-exodus of Venezuelans into Colombia by launching a military operation with the intent of deposing the government of Nicolas Maduro.

This would be no easy task. Venezuela, in addition to its military resources, has close security ties with Cuba. An attempt at intervention in Venezuela by a coalition of American democracies could rapidly descend into a much more significant conflict, mainly if hardliners in Havana perceive the operation as an American-led proxy war directed against Cuba and Cuba’s overseas interests.

Forget about North Korea, Venezuela is the next major national security crisis was originally published on Global Security Review.

If there isn’t any meaningful resolution of the crisis or an abatement of public anger, Dr. Jennifer McCoy, Distinguished University Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University, says a significant escalation in tensions and armed conflict is possible, from what is currently mainly peaceful protests with low levels of violence.

Harsh repression has been widely propagated by the government or by government-armed militias and gangs. However, the risk of escalation increases due to the large number of young Venezuelans that are coming out and setting up barricades in the streets, mainly in the evenings after protests have ended, and engage in fights with police, the National Guard, and the government-armed gangs.

Dr. McCoy notes that the youths coming out in opposition aren’t using firearms. Rather, they’re using Molotov cocktails, sticks, and are setting fires in the streets. The danger here is if this low-level of violence escalates and spirals out of control with increasing levels of chaos and violence between civilian protesters, the political opposition, government-armed militias and street gangs, and government police and military forces.

Is Venezuela the Next Syria?

In some ways, it is possible Venezuela’s situation could escalate to the level currently observed in the Syrian civil war. That would be the absolute worst-case scenario, according to Dr. McCoy, with some key differences. Both crises arose from food and resource shortages, but ethnic and religious factions—like those engaged in the Syrian civil war—don’t exist in Venezuela.

In Syria, the military has supported Assad partly because of the ethnic and religious alignments in the region and—to some degree—the belief that the armed forces best chances of survival lay with Assad. In Venezuela, the socialist Chavez movement arose from the military. It was when it incorporated some civilian leftist intellectuals that it became a hybrid civic-military coalition movement.

The Venezuelan military, however, has a long professional history, and members of the armed forces have been very reluctant to fire on their citizens, and have been pushing for the military to maintain the legitimacy and professionalism of the institution of the armed forces. Still unclear, however, is the degree to which the military has been politicized in Venezuela.

Since Chavez and his supporters came to power 15 years ago, they’ve made political promotions within the military, but it is unclear how far lower-ranking troops, who are also suffering from low salaries and food and medicine shortages, will support their superiors if they are called on to repress their fellow citizens.

Regional Geopolitics and the Venezuelan Crisis

Geopolitically speaking, the situation in Venezuela is much different than the conflict in Syria. Venezuela’s neighbors are democratic. The Maduro government is also very conscious of legitimacy; it doesn’t want to be seen as an authoritarian regime—and a military takeover would carry the stigma associated with an authoritarian ruler. In this day and age, military coups aren’t as accepted in the Western hemisphere.

While the worst case scenario is Venezuela devolving into civil war, Dr. McCoy believes that point is still some ways off. Venezuela’s democratic neighbors—Columbia, or Brazil, for instance—would likely exert tremendous pressure on the government and security services in Venezuela to negotiate an end to hostilities before it escalates into a full-blown civil war.

If the worst is to occur, with continued failures of the state to govern effectively, if the country enters a state of general lawlessness, then there will be repercussions for the entire hemisphere, as well as Europe, Dr. McCoy says. While Venezuela doesn’t produce drugs, it’s a major transport hub for drugs going to Europe and even to Africa before making their way to Europe.

Drug trafficking increases under lawlessness, as we saw in Honduras after 2009. There was a coup, and for a while, the country was run by a very weak government, and lawlessness increased dramatically. Now, Honduras has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Countries like the United States are seeing a significant increase in the number of people arriving from countries like Honduras that are plagued with violence. An actual collapse of the state in Venezuela would likely mean large numbers of economic migrants and refugees fleeing the violence.

Particularly, the Venezuelan border with Colombia would be most fragile. For a while, Venezuela closed the border with Colombia as thousands of people would try to cross the Amazon into Colombia just to try and get food or medicine.

If the security situation in Venezuela worsens, the Colombian border would be the main point where people would cross. Internally, Colombia is just starting to get its peace agreement in place, so further destabilization in Venezuela could have significant ramifications for Colombia.

Source: Jennifer McCoy, Ph.D., Distinguished University Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University. Dr. McCoy served as Founding Director of the Global Studies Institute at GSU (2015-16), and as Director of the Carter Center’s Americas program (1998-2015) where she led projects strengthening democratic institutions, provided mediation and encouraged dialogue and hemispheric cooperation. Her latest book is International Mediation in Venezuela (co-authored with Francisco Diez, 2011).

How Likely is a Civil War in Venezuela? was originally published on Global Security Review.

Leftist governments have been kicked out in Argentina, Peru, and Guatemala. Venezuela’s left-wing populist government is stripping the country of its democratic institutions in a sharp slide towards authoritarianism, leading to a sharp increase in lawlessness across the country.

Furthermore, while Venezuela doesn’t produce drugs, it’s become a major transport hub for drugs going to Europe or  Africa before being routed to Europe. Drug trafficking increases under as the rule of law decreases. After a 2009 coup in Honduras, the country was run by a fragile government—lawlessness increased dramatically.

Honduras now has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Countries like the United States are seeing a significant increase in the number of people arriving from countries like Honduras that are plagued with violence.

Unrest in Venezuela and Regional Security in the Americas

An actual collapse of the state in Venezuela would likely mean large numbers of economic migrants and refugees fleeing the violence. The United States, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia would all see massive amounts of refugees fleeing the conflict.

The Venezuelan border with Colombia, in particular, would be the most fragile. Venezuela closed the border with Colombia for a time as thousands of people attempted to cross the Amazon into Colombia to get food and medicine.

If the security situation in Venezuela becomes increasingly destabilized, the Colombian border would be the main point where people would cross. Colombia is in the process of implementing a domestic peace agreement, so a mass-migration from Venezuela could create a humanitarian crisis with significant political and security ramifications for bordering countries like Brazil and Colombia—and more developed countries in the region like Canada and the United States.

Central and South America was originally published on Global Security Review.

Despite Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves, the decline of the country’s oil production can be attributed to four major factors: the first, the current absence of qualified extractors that could exploit the heavy petroleum reserves. Nevertheless, as oil prices rose, the government demanded changes to arrangements made with companies to get higher revenues. When companies denied, their assets were captured and expropriated.

Oil Industry Mismanagement

Even when petroleum prices were higher, the government spent the proceeds to finance the country’s social programs, but failed to reinvest properly at all levels from the capital intensive business that is oil production.

The second is the failure of President Chavez’s government to understand the degree of capital expenditure which was needed to continue developing the country’s petroleum. After Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) Workers had gone on strike, they were dismissed and replaced by workers loyal to President Chavez, regardless their lack of expertise. Over 40,000 workers were fired and were replaced with over 120,000—largely inexperienced—workers. This resulted in a substantial decrease in oil production.

Venezuelan Oil Tankers

The next reason is Venezuela’s tankers inability to deliver their freight. Vessels which sail the high seas are obliged by the international maritime law to meet environmental criteria. This usually implies that the tankers must be cleaned before traveling to overseas ports to prevent environmental harm In the port, port facilities or others boats.

For the boats to be cleaned, workers in scuba suits scrub crude oil by hand from the tankers. PDVSA has since failed to pay back the service providers that keep clean and repair the vessels, the accumulation of cleaning invoices that the company can’t pay has caused the tankers transporting oil to be stranded up to two months.
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Global Oil Prices

The last reason is the fall in petroleum prices in the international industry. The decrease in oil prices that began in late 2014, when the overall poor economic performance in China, Brazil, and Europe fuelled a fall in the requirement, while the distribution and production continued to increase. The situation sent Venezuela’s economy to a plunge; the petroleum sector contributed to 95 percent of Venezuelan exports. Even when oil prices were higher, the government spent the proceeds to finance the country’s social programs but failed to reinvest properly from the capital intensive business.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that Venezuela’s inflation rate will increase up to a crippling 720% this past year. The country’s economic catastrophe has further exacerbated deep political tensions, causing a constitutional crisis, mass protests, looting, and civilian casualties with the death toll now in excess of 100. Price controls were intended to keep the essential goods affordable to the poorest inhabitants of the country, however, manufacturers reduced production because of the limit on what they can charge customers.

The crisis has forced people to deal with the shortage of foodstuffs in stores and supermarkets by substituting unavailable products like corn flour and pasta with locally grown plantains and potatoes. Nevertheless, shortages of basic and specialized medications, along in the lack of medical care in virtually all of the country’s health service units continue to be widespread. This has led to looting and massive demonstrations in the streets of Venezuela.

Analysis: The Economic Roots of Venezuela’s Collapse was originally published on Global Security Review.

As the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the threat of escalations on the Korean Peninsula continue to draw the majority of international media attention, Venezuela’s deepening political and economic crisis rapidly grows regarding significance for security in the Americas.

To understand the complexities the perfect storm of food and economic insecurity, political repression, and violence stemming from the absence of any form of law and order, we spoke to Jennifer McCoy, Ph.D., distinguished University Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University. Dr. McCoy served as Founding Director of the Global Studies Institute at GSU (2015-16), and Director of the Carter Center’s Americas program (1998-2015) where she led projects strengthening democratic institutions, provided mediation and encouraged dialogue and hemispheric cooperation. Her latest book is International Mediation in Venezuela (co-authored with Francisco Diez, 2011).

Dr. McCoy directed the Carter Center’s projects on Mediation and Monitoring in Venezuela (2002-2004), the Ecuador-Colombia Dialogue Group (2008-2010), and the U.S.-Andean Dialogue Group (2010-2011), and led over a dozen election monitoring and observation missions.

The Current Situation: Repression, Resource Insecurity, and the Risk of Escalation

According to Dr. McCoy, three main scenarios could potentially play out. One of these is the current situation; people willing to publicly protest led by a unified opposition with specific demands are being met by the government with repression. If no concessions are made by the government, the unrest could potentially peter out if no change occurs.

The Maduro government has been hanging on… waiting for oil prices to rise… trying desperately to make its bond payments…

This has happened twice before in the past three years. Venezuelan’s went out into the streets, drawing international attention, and resulting in dialogues that were sponsored by the international community. Each time, an exchange was sponsored and then protests died down, but nothing was changed as a consequence of the inter-party dialogues. The government and its economic policies continued, the social situation deteriorated, and the stage was effectively set for another crisis like the one we see now.

But what makes this round of protests really different and more sustained is the lack of elections as an alternative means to resolve differences. The cancellation of all election options, as well as the Supreme Court’s undermining the authority of the legislature (the only institution controlled by the opposition), means the people are losing hope of peaceful means of changing the situation.

Russia and China have provided the Venezuelan government with financial support as it tries to hang on. The government is counting on the situation to improve—i.e. for oil prices to rise—before the presidential elections scheduled for late-2018. They’ve already delayed or all-out suspended local, regional, and governor elections and successfully halted an effort by the opposition to have a recall referendum that would cut short the president’s term.

Source: Jennifer McCoy, Ph.D., Distinguished University Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University. Dr. McCoy served as Founding Director of the Global Studies Institute at GSU (2015-16), and as Director of the Carter Center’s Americas program (1998-2015) where she led projects strengthening democratic institutions, provided mediation and encouraged dialogue and hemispheric cooperation. Her latest book is International Mediation in Venezuela (co-authored with Francisco Diez, 2011).

Crisis in Venezuela: Economic Collapse, Violent Unrest, and Human Survival was originally published on Global Security Review.

Dr. Jennifer McCoy, Distinguished University Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University, discussed a third potential outcome for the situation in Venezuela: a negotiated solution. A negotiated settlement means addressing the food and medical shortage and ensuring people’s basic survival needs are met while providing international economic support on the condition that certain political and institutional reforms are implemented.

Years ago, Venezuela cut itself off from the Inter-American Development Bank, the IMF, and the World Bank. Since then, it has been relying on loans from Russia and China in exchange for oil as collateral, but that’s increasingly becoming an unsustainable source of funding for the Venezuelan government.

China and Russia are becoming more leery about continuing to loan new money because of depressed oil prices, instability, and their internal problems. As a result, Venezuela’s financial options are thinning out. However, Dr. McCoy notes that negotiations could resolve this issue in this third scenario, which is the most optimal.

In exchange for international aid, Venezuela’s government would agree to implement changes in monetary and fiscal policy and agree to reinvest revenues, particularly in the nationalized oil sector. The national oil company has lost its capacity to produce efficiently and in the required volume. Venezuela’s commodity-based economy requires an efficient oil industry to generate sufficient revenue to reinvest in other sectors so as to promote a more diversified economy.

Additionally, the government needs to agree to political negotiations, as well. The independence of Venezuela’s democratic institutions has been critically undermined, so there needs to be a major effort to restore the independence of the judiciary, the legislative branch, the security forces, and the media, in addition to setting in place a timetable for elections.

The problem, Dr. McCoy says, is that the government is reluctant to hold elections because if they perceive it as an all-or-nothing situation if they (the Maduro government) falls out of power. If the Chavez movement loses control of the Venezuelan government, they fear recrimination and are afraid of losing all the gains they’ve made—in their eyes—for the Venezuelan people through what Chavez called his “Bolivarian revolution.” There is significant corruption that permeates the government and armed forces, and reported criminal activity, as well. Therefore, many officials will be reluctant to risk giving up power if they think they will be tried and punished, or if they expect a witch-hunt without due process.

Also looming over members of government is the possibility of extradition to the United States. This threat is particularly worrisome for those who’ve already been indicted in the U.S., or who have had sanctions imposed upon them by the U.S. in response to corruption, drug trafficking, or human rights abuses.

Applying transitional justice in Venezuela

Transitional justice is usually implemented after countries have emerged from a civil war with a peace agreement, or after a transition from a military dictatorship or authoritarian regime to a democratic system. In the past, it’s granted pure amnesty to everybody.

Now, Dr. McCoy says, it typically provides reduced sentences for human rights abusers, and potentially for corrupt officials, conditioned on their agreeing to provide compensation to the victims or the country, acknowledge responsibility and tell the truth, and guarantees not to repeat the criminal activity. Some form of negotiation must include elements transitional justice to ensure a peaceful transition of power, and more importantly, to even have the ability to hold elections where it’s possible that the government could be ousted.

What’s at stake for American interests?

A failure to reach a solution in Venezuela would have considerable implications for American interests, both economic and national security. A failure would result in a marked increase in the number of Venezuelan’s fleeing the country, either seeking better economic opportunity or fleeing political violence and oppression.

This risk involves the point that if there is a state collapse, oil production will likely cease in Venezuela and worldwide prices escalate. an interruption in oil exports to the U.S. from Venezuela would be the first time that has happened, despite political tensions and lack of ambassadors in each country.

The criminal and extremist activity would increase in the absence of order. There have been allegations that Venezuela has sold visas to Hezbollah in Iran, Dr. McCoy says, noting that these haven’t necessarily been concretely proven, but provide a window into the range of threats that could emerge from Venezuela if it became a failed state.

Source: Jennifer McCoy, Ph.D., Distinguished University Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University. Dr. McCoy served as Founding Director of the Global Studies Institute at GSU (2015-16), and as Director of the Carter Center’s Americas program (1998-2015) where she led projects strengthening democratic institutions, provided mediation and encouraged dialogue and hemispheric cooperation. Her latest book is International Mediation in Venezuela (co-authored with Francisco Diez, 2011).

Solving the Economic & Security Crisis in Venezuela was originally published on Global Security Review.