Venezuela After Maduro: Why the System is Still Intact

Delcy Rodriguez, vice president to Nicolás Maduro and new interim president of Venezuela

Two things are true at the same time.

Nicolás Maduro is a dictator who has overseen the oppression and mass impoverishment of Venezuela. His regime is responsible for what I would call real mass starvation (which has real and massive undernourishment) in Venezuela and the colossal rise in poverty in the country. This regime is also responsible for one of if not the largest refugee crisis in the Western Hemisphere’s history. Moreover, Maduro has shown no respect for election results or the will of his people to no longer have him in power.

Good riddance to a vicious and brutal dictator.

That being said, Maduro’s regime is still intact, and Trump’s raid to capture Maduro will likely make things worse for the people of Venezuela.

Historical Context

Nicolás Maduro’s regime and the policies that led to the current humanitarian crisis in Venezuela did not start with him.

It started with Hugo Chávez, who was elected president of Venezuela in 1999 and, except for a brief coup in 2002, won reelection until his death in 2013.

As a country, Venezuela made many of the same mistakes the United States did regarding Trump after his coup attempt on January 6, 2021.

Hugo Chávez attempted a coup in 1992 as a colonel in the Venezuelan army and for the most serious of crimes against a state, served only two years in prison.

In my opinion, he should have been sentenced to thirty years in prison, the maximum sentence permitted in Venezuela at the time.

To provide some context, Venezuela at the time was undergoing a serious economic and social crisis thanks to a fall in oil prices in the 1980s. Reforms to stop the economy from falling apart under then President Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez (known more often as CAP) included eliminating price controls, slashing social spending, and most serious of all, a sharp increase in gasoline and public transport prices. These were meant to restructure Venezuela’s debts and get a bailout but were extremely unpopular. The measures led to a series of riots and mass protests called Caracazo, which CAP used the military to put down. CAP’s crackdown killed hundreds if not thousands of people.

Maduro’s regime is not the first in Venezuela’s history to face an economic and social crisis from falling oil prices. However, Maduro’s policies (which were marked by mismanagement, reckless fiscal and monetary policies, systemic corruption, underinvestment, and falling oil production) made what would normally be an economic crisis turned into one of the largest humanitarian crises in Latin America’s history.

It is important to keep in mind that Venezuela is a petrostate: extremely dependent on oil money for everything.

Back to the Present

To dismantle a dictatorship, it is not enough just to take out the guy in charge.

True, dictatorships are notoriously bad at succession, and the death or removal of a dictator can cause the regime to fall if it is solely dependent on said dictator to maintain control.

However, what many of my fellow Americans don’t understand is that authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are systemic. They can often survive the removal of a dictator if someone is well positioned to take over or if a better system fails to take root.

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is a prime example of such a leader. Even though the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the old Russian and Soviet ways of thinking and systems were not dismantled.

For all the justified criticism President George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq gets, he at least understood that just removing Saddam Hussein from power was not enough, that his regime was a system that had to be dismantled.

An even better example of a regime change done well is Operation Just Cause, where the United States invaded Panama to remove Panamanian Dictator Manuel Noriega with 26,000 personnel in 1989. Noriega himself was captured but more importantly, his entire regime was dismantled and an opposition leader was ready to take over.

I suspect that if Trump declares victory, will see a boost in approval ratings, and once the American people forget about it in a few months at most, his approval ratings will go back down to earth as people look at their grocery bills.

Assuming Trump does not get dragged into a quagmire in Venezuela.

But here is the most important thing to understand about authoritarian regimes throughout the world. They are just as dependent on certain segments of society as support bases as they are on violence and repression.

More importantly, mass hunger, a humanitarian crisis, or even famine does not automatically weaken an authoritarian system. Often, it can strengthen it.

See the Holodomor under Stalin and the famine in North Korea in the second half of the 1990s.

In the case of Venezuela, the system that started under Hugo Chávez is still standing. Shaken perhaps but still intact. The military and police that do Maduro’s dirty work are still intact, as is the system that Hugo Chávez created as a whole.

If the system is left intact, whoever serves as Maduro’s successor will, if anything, be worse than he was.

I suspect Trump thinks this will get him a quick and easy win (from his perspective) without having to consider the bigger picture.

If anything, this raid, impressive as it was from a purely operational perspective, is typical of Trump. Look for a superficial, slapdash success without having to do anything of substance.

Let’s hope that is all this stays as and does not become the prelude to a rattrap.