David Pratt: Why the military holds the key to Venezuela's crisis

No sooner had he done so than news broke of the United States’s recognition of Guaido as the interim president – and a short time later, a whole raft of Latin American countries, notably allies of Washington, duly followed suit.

It all might have had a feeling of spontaneity, but watching the dramatic events unfold last week in Venezuela, one was left with the persistent impression that so much of what was unfolding was all very carefully orchestrated.

By Friday, in a leafy square in the Caracas neighbourhood of Chacoa, Guaido, now the de facto opposition leader to incumbent president Nicolas Maduro, was urging Venezuela’s armed forces to “come over to the side of the people” to bring about fresh elections and a return to democracy.

As every day passes, the distinct whiff of regime change becomes ever stronger in Venezuela, leaving this giant Latin American country at an uncertain political crossroads, and one not without some considerable danger.

Even the timing of last week’s resurgence in the country’s opposition to President Maduro seemed to have been worked out to the day. It came during a highly symbolic date for Venezuelans, as they marked the 61st anniversary of a civilian and military uprising that overthrew former Venezuelan dictator General Marcos Perez Jimenez back in 1958.

So, is history repeating itself, and is Maduro, widely regarded as a dictator, about to be ousted – or will he, as some suggest, hang on with the help of the country’s all-powerful military?

Nicola Maduro is facing a battle for his position as Venezuela's president

Venezuela’s journey to this volatile political juncture has been a rocky one, to say the least. For his part, Maduro has continued the huge social welfare programmes and price control policies of previous Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, who steered the country towards socialism before dying in 2013.

But a crash in the price of crude oil in 2014 was the catalyst for Venezuela’s woes, with the cost of a barrel dropping from nearly $200 to $35.

This coincided with nearly a decade of mismanagement, as the country’s government squandered its phenomenal oil wealth. Today, oil production has declined to barely a third of the level a decade ago.

At the same time, inflation has soared, and the International Monetary Fund predicts it will reach a staggering 10 million per cent this year.

The crisis has left Latin America reeling from an unprecedented mass exodus of Venezuelan migrants in search of food. About 2.3 million people have fled the crisis since 2015, according to the United Nations, while the 32 million Venezuelans left behind face failing public services including water, electricity and transport.

Last week, it seemed as if their patience had finally run out, and, buoyed by the appearance of a new leader in the shape of telegenic congressional chief Guaido, many seemed ready to face down the Maduro regime.

The United States has backed Juan Guaido as 'interim president' of Venezuela

Such a stance, of course, has been music to the ears of those in the US administration of President Donald Trump, who have been gunning for Maduro for some time.

As far back as the summer of 2017, Trump, citing George H W Bush’s 1989-90 invasion of Panama as a positive precedent, repeatedly pushed his national security staff to launch a military assault on crisis-plagued Venezuela.

According to reports in the American weekly magazine The Nation, Trump wanted to know why the United States could simply not invade? Time and again in meetings with senior staff he is said to have brought up the idea.

WHILE mil-itary and civilian advisers are said to have forcefully dismissed the notion, Trump then outsourced Venezuela policy to Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who, along with National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, began co-ordinating with the Venezuelan opposition.

Indeed, prior to being appointed Secretary of State, Pompeo, former director of the CIA in 2017, was already on the record as admitting that he was “hopeful that there can be a transition in Venezuela”.

The CIA, he said, was “trying to help [Venezuelans] understand the things they might do so that they can get a better outcome for their part of the world and our part of the world”.

CIA meddling in Latin America is nothing new, making it easier for Maduro to point the finger at Washington and cast those it supports in Venezuela as nothing more than American puppets.

Almost immediately after Washington’s recognition of Guaido last week, Maduro broke off relations with the US, giving its diplomats until this weekend to leave and ordering Venezuelan diplomats to return home by the same deadline.

Not surprisingly, Maduro’s reliable allies – in the shape of, China, Cuba, Bolivia and Turkey – then rallied in their backing for the president, none more so than Russia.

For if Cuba was the Kremlin’s closest ally in Latin America during the Cold War, these days it’s Venezuela, whose still vast oil wealth gives Moscow direct influence over an OPEC member.

That Maduro’s predecessor and mentor Chavez was stridently anti-American made Venezuela the ideal partner in the eyes of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to an investigation by the Reuters news agency, the Kremlin is deeply invested in the survival of Maduro’s regime, having sunk both political and financial capital into Venezuela.

Russia is said to have propped up the country’s rulers with at least $17 billion in loans and credit lines since 2006, often taking oil assets in return. For obvious reasons then, Moscow is far from happy about what one Russian official government newspaper described as the US “carrying out a classic coup d’etat in Venezuela”.

Like some contemporary re-run of an old Cold War standoff, Venezuela now finds itself in the middle of a new contest of wills between the Kremlin and Washington.

Tension between the two rivals was further heightened with reports over the past few days that Russian private military contractors have been flown to Caracas to beef up Maduro’s security.

According to an exclusive report by Reuters, the contractors are associated with the so-called Wagner Group, whose members, mostly former service personnel, fought clandestinely in support of Russian forces in Syria and Ukraine.

The story cites Yevgeny Shabayev – the head of the Khovrino Cossack organisation, who has his own background as a mercenary and routinely speaks to the international press about such activities – as well as anonymous sources.

“Our people are there directly for his protection,” Shabayev told Reuters, adding that the mercenaries were there specifically to prevent rogue members of Venezuela’s security forces from detaining Maduro. He also claimed that Wagner had around 400 individuals in the country.

Citing contacts in a Russian state security organisation, Shabayev claims the Russian contingent flew to Venezuela at the start of last week, a few days before opposition protests to Maduro started.

He said they set off in two chartered aircraft for Havana, Cuba, from where they transferred on to regular commercial flights to Venezuela.

While verifying such claims remains difficult, the report, if accurate, would underline the extent to which Russia is concerned over the latest development in Venezuela and the potential of the crisis to draw in outside forces.

For the moment, though, most observers agree that the direction in which the crisis travels in the coming days and the fates of Maduro and his rival Guaido will very much depend on the reaction of Venezuela’s own military.

Showing considerable astuteness, Guaido has tried to break the strong bonds that tie the army and Maduro by offering an amnesty to any personnel in the 365,000-strong armed forces who disavow the president.

Addressing members of the military last week before renewed street protests, Guaido said: “We’re not asking you to launch a coup d’etat, we’re not asking you to shoot. We’re asking you not to shoot at us.”

ON Friday, at a news conference, he went even further in efforts to appease the army. “I want to insist to our military family, our brothers, the moment has arrived for you to put yourselves on the side of the constitution,” Guaido appealed.

Whether the army that is also supported by some 1.6 million civilian militiamen listens to Guaido’s offers is crucial in determining whether Maduro stays in office or the country makes a peaceful transition of power.

Earlier last week, before the streets protests and Guaido declaring himself interim president, there was a small uprising on a Caracas military outpost by low-ranking National Guard officers, that some thought might mark the start of a shift in the military’s position – but nothing has followed since. Not all are convinced, though.

“A sergeant at a National Guard outpost is not to me important. What would be important is a situation like that in a major unit or a battalion,” observed Rocio San Miguel, a military expert with non-profit group Citizen Control, speaking of the uprising. In the main, opinions of analysts on which way the armed forces will jump, if at all, remain mixed.

Some suggest that there are subtle indications they may, for the first time, be reconsidering their ironclad support for Maduro.

“What I think we are seeing is a security system and armed forces that are still trying to figure out where they are on this issue,” William Brownfield, a former US ambassador to Venezuela, told the Washington Post on Friday.

The point on which most analysts agree, however, is that soldiers have multiple reasons to be angry. Military installations are steadily decaying along with the rest of the country, and salaries quickly disappear amid two million per cent annual inflation.

Rights organisations say that around 180 soldiers were arrested in 2018 for conspiring against the government, while 4000 more deserted the National Guard.

More than aware of the potential threat that lurks within the military to his government, Maduro has played his own card to keep the army on side, putting officers in charge of key posts in the government and state oil company PDVSA, while offering lucrative oilfield services contracts for military-linked firms.

So far, though, over the past week, the armed forces have been unusually restrained in dealing with the political crisis.

Not only did they refrain from launching an all-out offensive against the massive anti-government demonstrations – although 29 people have been killed in recent days – they have also not arrested Guaido.

According to the New York Times, factions of army officers who have already defected say they are plotting returns from their makeshift headquarters in Peru, Colombia and other neighbouring countries.

The Trump administration is also said to have held secret meetings with rebellious Venezuelan military officers over the past year to discuss their plans for the overthrow of Maduro, according to American officials and a former Venezuelan military commander who participated in the talks.

But not all within Venezuela’s military’s ranks view Washington in a favourable light – far from it.

A resilient anti-American ideology remains, and in some cases was no doubt inadvertently bolstered last week by Washington’s eagerness to back Guaido “These are guys that fought with Chavez, that believe in their hearts that the US is the enemy,” says Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer and author of Confidante Of ‘Tyrants’, who is also an outspoken supporter of the late Venezuelan leader.

Sixty years ago when Venezuelans took to the streets, the then dictatorship collapsed in the face of surging protests.

But demonstrations alone didn’t bring down Venezuela’s strongman back then. Only when the military stepped in, with tanks alongside protesters, did the dictatorship fall.

That sobering fact is something that not only ordinary Venezuelans are acutely aware of, but also self-declared interim president Juan Guaido and those in Washington, who have given him their blessing and support.

For that simple historical precedent alone, in the days ahead, all eyes will be on Venezuela’s army, for it’s in their hands that the future political direction of the country almost certainly now lies.