The disappointing statements of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the Dominican Republic, indicating that in his opinion, he does not expect anything to happen in Venezuela that will change the political path of the Venezuelan and Cuban regimes in the remainder of the year 2025, is quite definitive of the true place that the new Trump administration has given to the Latin American tyrannies in the immense chessboard of US world politics, even if they are fully aware of Venezuela's cooperation with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, and Cuba's cooperation with China and Russia:
“In the case of Venezuela, which cooperates with Iran, with Hizballah, with Hamas; in the case of Cuba, which has allowed Russian presence, Chinese espionage. This is my opinion. I don’t think there will be a change in those countries between now and December, but that is the way in which I refer to those countries based on the reality of their behavior. I wish it wasn’t the case, but it has been the case for a long time, unfortunately” (see Secretary of State Marco Rubio And Dominican President Luis Abinader At a Joint Press Availability, in https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-and-dominican-president-luis-abinader-at-a-joint-press-availability/) (highlighted our).
And it is clear that it will not change if the US does not move absolutely nothing in its foreign policy for that to happen, because neither in Cuba nor in Venezuela, if conditions remain the same, changes will not be possible without external help, especially that of the US. But if the person who conducts US foreign policy says publicly that he believes that nothing is going to happen, you can be sure that nothing will happen, unless what Trump has in mind for our countries changes unexpectedly. And as far as the naked eye can see, the disappointment is well-founded.
This being so, Moisés Naim seems to be right when he says that what will finally happen in Venezuela will be the result of the combination of three different directions: Marcos Rubio's hard line of not negotiating with tyrannies, Richard Grenell's pragmatic one of tolerating them as long as they are in the US orbit (it should be noted that this is how they behaved for many years with Latin American dictatorships in the past), and finally the belligerent one that supports a military action (see in Spanish Moisés Naim, What will Trump 2.0 mean for Venezuela, in https://www.costadelsolfm.org/2025/02/10/moises-naim-que-significara-trump-2-0-para-venezuela/).
But strangely no one is advocating for a VENEZOLAN solution, whatever it may be, when it turns out that everyone says that the problem is ours. So far, what we have seen since January 9, and apparently no one has denied it, is the traditional attempt to convince the Venezuelan military to comply with the Constitution and restore its validity, and especially now when all of them are fully aware of the results of the election of July 28, 2024, because they also voted in majority for Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia (EGU), as was demonstrated in the centers where the uniformed voted.
This strategy of pressuring the military with people in the streets has been applied time and again since 2002, when it was last successfully applied, at least to remove Hugo Chávez for 48 hours. And from that very moment, the tyranny understood that they would not apply the same strategy again, starting by dismantling the Armed Forces as they were historically known, turning them into their praetorian guard at the service of their permanence in power. And that has not gone backwards, but rather forward in 22 years.
The problem is that the opposition seems to insist on applying the same strategy -as demonstrated by the events of January 9 and 10-, even after having changed the subject and conditions of the country since 2002 (8 million expatriates and a crisis of hunger and inflation), clearly obtaining the same results. It is not for me to question the insistence on continuing down this apparent dead end, but as an outside observer I believe it is time to change the perspective.
And one of the steps of that change is to finish understanding that this is a problem of all of us. That it is not only María Corina Machado's (MCM) and EGU's, that although they have made an extraordinary effort to put us in the place where we are, they should start by internalizing that all of us in majority delivered a MANDATE that is still pending to be fulfilled, and that we have every right to demand from them as leaders. That while the help to fulfill that mandate may be in the offices of Donald Trump and Marco Rubio in the U.S., they should not be the ones controlling the course of events in our country. That stewardship was given to EGU and MCM through an electoral process, not to Trump or Rubio, and it is INELUDIBLE.
And if EGU is not sworn in for any reason, he is evading that constitutional mandate since January 10, waiting for another country -for example, the US- to put him in Miraflores, through that resulting combination mentioned by Naim in his note.
I am sorry for the crudeness of the comment, but I feel it is something that needs to be said. If once EGU, MCM and all those officially appointed to assume the responsibilities derived from that constitutional mandate are sworn in, are wrong because the strategy they decided to liberate Venezuela is to sit on a bench waiting for whatever comes out of the White House, who am I or anyone to question that decision, derived from a popular mandate? No one! And even if I think it is a mistake, I will have to accept it. But before that it is mere voluntarism.
EGU knows better than anyone from his life career, that in diplomacy the form is the substance. That if he is not sworn in, for all purposes and for all countries, even for those that recognized him, he will remain in a neutral condition that is worth absolutely nothing in decision making, so they will continue to accept the regime as the only power in Venezuela, until further notice.
And in the meantime, what? We will be like a bargaining chip that can be traded on any of the world boards where those who have interests in Venezuela play. We will be tokens of the U.S., Russia, Iran, China or anyone else. What can prevent that? That in Venezuela a situation of such magnitude is generated, coming from a government empowered by the popular vote, that forces the participation of that government in anything that is negotiated with our country. That situation and magnitude can only be decided by a government with the formal backing of the vote of the majority of Venezuelans.
In the meantime, we are pieces in a world Monopoly game at the order of the players' decisions. And within those decisions may very well be to leave Maduro in power at their convenience. The clearest example of that is Trump negotiating with Putin the fate of Ukraine without even asking Zelensky or Europe, as Alina Polyakova, president and executive director of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), rightly pointed out in response to the news of President Trump's recent call to Vladimir Putin: “One, we saw a bilateral call that the Ukrainians weren't informed or briefed on ahead of time and neither were the Europeans. And of course, it set off a lot of panic already here in Europe that Europe is being cut out on the negotiations on what security or peace in Europe will look like for the foreseeable future” (see Alina Polyakova, Global Stage, Trump's call with Putin is big win for Kremlin, in https://youtu.be/6ClkFYZyEwU?t=26). If this is what the President of the United States does with a country that has caused thousands of deaths defending itself from an invasion, in order to impose its policy in Europe, imagine what he can do with Venezuela.
This is not the first time I mention that we are in a situation of war against a regime that declared it to us over our proven decision to reject it. Many opposition politicians still believe that we are dealing with politicians and not with criminals who by definition do not believe in the democratic model. By now they should be convinced. However, many leaders are still surrounded by advisors who have not yet assimilated the ground we are treading on and who insist on following the traditional rules to fight tyranny, such as letting the US decide “what is best” for Venezuelans, resulting in the “paralysis by analysis” we are witnessing.
To better illustrate this point, I will resort to a simple comparison that everyone will understand, coming from an all-time movie classic, Francis Ford Coppola's “The Godfather”. We can recall the scene where the new Godfather, Michael Corleone, tells his “consiglieri” Tom Hagen: “Tom, you are not a war consiglieri”, when the fight to the death between the five Mafia families of New York was unleashed. The new consiglieri would be his own father, who had not yet died, but who had spent his whole life killing his opponents in order to survive successfully.
Well, the Venezuelan opposition leadership is full of “consiglieri” of peace, who have not yet understood that Hugo Chávez's ill-named “Fourth Republic” is over and never to return, and that we find ourselves in an unequal bloody struggle that must be evened out, and that begins by understanding that we find ourselves in a war with tortured, imprisoned and murdered people. It is time to say goodbye to the “consiglieri” of peace and look for some good “consiglieri” of war to help them prevent Venezuela from being used as a bargaining chip for the benefit of interests that are not ours, if we want to recover it as promised.
Caracas, February 16, 2025
Blog:
TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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