Anyone who’s followed Latin American politics over the past few decades is familiar with Abrams. He’s an unreconstructed, neo-con cold warrior with a checkered past across all GOP administrations since Reagan. He was a big player in the Iran Contra scandal. Most recently he was Trump’s Venezuela envoy from 2019 to 2021.
He is unsurprisingly happy to see Maduro gone but seems to be somewhat shocked by the incoherence of the day after planning (such as it is.)
[N]ow what? Again, the answer should be easy: The United States should be backing Venezuela’s democratic parties. They united last year under María Corina Machado as their candidate for president, and she would have won the election. When Maduro barred her from running, they united under retired career diplomat Edmundo González as a substitute candidate. Though he was almost unknown in Venezuela, he won a huge landslide because Machado backed him, and because he represented a return to democracy. The unity and effectiveness of the opposition last year were remarkable as it fought an election under the worst circumstances—with the danger of arrest, exile, or worse constantly present, with rallies broken up violently, with no access to state media. Its victory is both a tribute to the opposition leadership and a measure of what Venezuelans want.
But President Trump seems much more concerned with Venezuelan oil than Venezuelan democracy. In his press conference he went out of his way to belittle Machado, stating that she lacked the necessary “respect” from Venezuelans to govern. There is simply no basis for that judgment (or prejudice) given the election results, her courage in remaining in hiding in Venezuela month after month, and now her receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Instead, Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken to Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez. Venezuelan democrats are now wondering whether Trump intends a deal with the remnants of the regime, in which they make all sorts of concessions on oil in exchange for being allowed to hang on.
That is a formula for disaster, and if that’s U.S. policy, Trump will have turned triumph into a new crisis. If Rodríguez hangs on, what of the rest of the regime? Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino is also under a drug indictment, as is interior minister and key regime thug and enforcer Diosdado Cabello. If they stay in office, Trump will have sold our souls for a small amount of oil production.
There is no reason to believe that those people are going to resign or be deposed through any legitimate means. Certainly Rubio and Trump seemed to say that if they do what Trump and his oil buddies want they can stay — otherwise they will unleash a “second wave” of violence. It’s now a full-fledged protection racket.
Abrams points out that a democratic government could, theoretically, accomplish the same their state goals. (Maybe — they might not be as thrilled with a bunch of oil companies coming in and exploiting their resources as people think…)
He is a neo-con so he still believes that you can enforce democracy, but be that as it may he’s not wrong that allowing the current government to stand as a puppet of the United States will not go well:
Everything Trump says he wants will be the product of a democratic transition in Venezuela. While news stories sometimes warn of another Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan, those comparisons are foolish. Venezuela has a homogeneous population and a strong democratic tradition. There are no social or religious divisions of the sort we see in the Middle East. Democratic institutions existed and need to be revitalized, rather than invented. Last year’s election showed exactly what Venezuelans want, and the country is surrounded by democracies. The only thing that could produce massive unrest and more migration is if the regime holds on—with U.S. support.
He then offers some interesting speculation:
This seems so obvious that one has to wonder about the sources of Trump’s information. I understand his allergy to the phrase “regime change,” but that is precisely what is needed, and he is more than halfway there. Were there intelligence analyses suggesting chaos if the regime falls and saying Machado lacked wide respect? If so, they are the biased product of a bureaucracy strongly opposed to the kind of military intervention we saw this weekend.
Nah, he’s doesn’t care what the CIA thinks. And the only reason he’s not going for an all out regime change operation is because what he cares about is the oil and he thinks he can do business with the regime. Everything is personal with him and since Maduro didn’t lick his boots, he needed to go. If the rest of them give him a prize or something he’s fine with them.
This is almost certainly what happened:
Were there Venezuelan plutocrats or U.S. oil executives coming to Mar-a-Lago and whispering about how easy life would be if we just made a deal with the regime once Maduro was gone? Were they the source of lies about María Corina Machado’s stature?
Who knows? It could just as easily be an influencer on Truth Social or Stephen Miller’s wife. Trump believes what he wants to believe.
As I said, Abrams is a neo-con who still thinks the U.S military invading a country will be greeted as liberators. And yes, there are some who see it that way. But they inevitably sour on the whole operation once it becomes clear that we are terrible at the Day After. For some reason these neo-cons never seem to learn that lesson. But maybe Trump’s crude avarice is showing even a few of these types that this method is fatally flawed? Maybe.