This is Democracy – Episode 273: Venezuela Elections

[00:00:00] Intro: This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next. 

[00:00:23] Jeremi: Welcome to our new episode of this is democracy.

This week, we are continuing our discussion of democracies and elections around the world. This is, as we’ve said many times on the podcast, this is a year with more democracies voting, uh, and more non democracies voting as well, uh, in elections around the world than at any Point in human history before, and these elections and democracies and non democracies will really set the course for so many countries and probably for our globe, uh, moving forward for the next years and decades.

We are going to discuss today the recent elections in Venezuela and the controversies. Over those recent elections in Venezuela on July 28th, 2024, the country of Venezuela held elections and uh, the incumbent, uh, president and dictator Nicolás Maduro, uh, claims he won the elections. But almost all observers, including the United States, uh, are pretty clear on the evidence that Maduro lost these elections.

What has happened in Venezuela and where do we go from here? We’re going to understand the history surrounding these elections, what occurred in these elections, and we’re going to think about based on, uh, knowledge of what’s happened in other societies, particularly in the same region. Uh, we’re going to discuss where we think these, uh, election results might go in the future of Venezuela.

We are fortunate to be joined, uh, by my colleague and friend and someone who I think has done some of the most impressive work on authoritarianism and related regime change issues in Latin America. This is my colleague, Professor Kurt Weyland. Kurt Weyland is the Mike Hogg professor in the liberal arts at the University of Texas, Austin.

Uh, he’s done amazing primary source research and direct interviews, the kind of work that historians love when you get dirty with the primary sources. He’s done this research in so many countries in the region, probably as many as anyone else, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, and of course, Venezuela.

I finally left off some other countries and I’ve, of course, forgotten to mention that he’s also done research in the United States. Uh, Professor Wayland is the author of seven books. I’m going to just name a few of them. The Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies, which was published in 2002.

Making Waves, Democratic Contention in Europe and Latin America, 2014. Assault on Democracy, Communism, Fascism, and Authoritarianism during the Interwar Years, published in 2021, and published just this year. A book I need to read because I haven’t kept up with everything Kurt’s written. It’s impossible to keep up with it.

Democracy’s Resilience to Populism’s Threat, a book that’s probably directly relevant to our discussion today. Professor Kurt Weyland. Kurt, thanks for joining us today. 

[00:03:22] Kurt: Yeah, thank you for having me. It’s it’ll be important to talk about this tragic events in Venezuela. 

[00:03:28] Jeremi: Yes. Yes. We’re eager to hear your thoughts.

Uh, before we turn to Kurt’s insights on this important topic, we have, of course, uh, Mr. Zachary’s, uh, poem. What’s your poem titled today, Zachary? Hungry in Caracas. Hungry in Caracas. It, it, it sounds almost like a, a parable of sorts. Is it? Um, we’ll see. 

[00:03:50] Zachary: We’ll see. Okay. Let’s hear it. Outside the voting booth in Caracas.

They lined up at 6am counting the years of tyranny in stacks of bills and ribs exposed. Outside the voting booth in Caracas were guards armed with guns, frowning at the people and thinking also of their next meal. It is a truth seldom acknowledged that people don’t just vote when they hate or when they love, that sometimes people vote because they are angry, that sometimes people vote because they are hungry.

Outside the voting booth in Caracas, each of them recognized this fundamental truth. The voters lining up one by one, the guards holding their guns, and the mustachioed man staring down at them from the wall, who knew, and still does, that his people are hungry for change. 

[00:04:46] Jeremi: I love the range of that, Zachary, from the hungry, angry voters to the mustachioed militaristic leader.

What is your poem about? 

[00:04:57] Zachary: Um, my poem is about, um, I think it’s really about what motivates people to vote. Even when they know that the outcome of the election is not going to be respected. It’s a sort of anger and hunger for something different that brings people to the polls. And there’s something deeply inspiring in that, but there’s also something very sad, I think, in the sort of desperation of people turning to the ballot box, even though they know it’s not going to be respected.

Right. Right. 

[00:05:25] Jeremi: Very well said. Uh, Kurt, to help us understand that this sad moment in some ways, this tragic moment, as I think you mentioned earlier, uh, where, where should we start? Uh, Nicolás Maduro is the dictator who replaced the prior dictator, Hugo Chávez. How should we understand the origins of this regime?

[00:05:47] Kurt: So if you want to go back to the origins, I think Venezuela had a democracy that was oligarchic and ossified and elitist, but that used to have from the late 1950s to the 1990s two party competition and alternation in power. So it was a democracy, but it was ossified and corrupt. So that allowed for the rise of Ugo Chávez, who was a military nationalist who had actually made a coup attempt against that ossified democracy, but who then took the electoral route.

And due to vast popular discontent, he was swept into office in a landslide in 19 98. And he started as a democratically elected leader, but he is a populist and populists want power and they want more power and they want to stay in power for a long time. And so Hugo Chavez immediately transformed the institutions to concentrate more power, to get control of the legislature, soon pack the courts, push the opposition aside.

So what Hugo Chavez did He, um, trans, he used his democratically elected position to transform Venezuela gradually, slowly into what we call a soft authoritarian regime. And I say soft because Hugo Chavez was tremendously charismatic. He had an electrifying personality. So Hugo Chavez could do this transformation from democracy into authoritarian rule.

We’re not using very much violence and repression at all. So he was illiberal, he was undemocratic, he used his charisma to essentially establish his political hegemony and cement his authoritarian regime, but he was not brutal and repressive. Then what happens is that Chavez dies at an early age of cancer.

And he had, um, these charismatic leaders are so full of themselves, they don’t want to nurture rivals. So he had surrounded himself typically by comparative weaklings and sycophants. And when he was about to die, he Nominated. One of those Maduro as his successor. So then Maduro comes in, has an authoritarian regime, but doesn’t have the charismatic authority and popular support of Hugo Chavez.

So soon Maduro faces opposition challenges. So what do you do if you have an authoritarian regime, you don’t have a lot of popular support? You use the control of the military and you crack down. And so Maduro cracked down hard in 2014 against opposition protests. He cracked down again in 2017. He cracked down in 2019.

So what he did is he transformed Hugo Chavez’s soft authoritarian regime into a harsh, repressive dictatorship. By the way, much, much harsher than Viktor Orban’s in Hungary. So, um, Orbán still has a soft off retained regime. Venezuela has turned into a really repressive dictatorship. So these dictatorships, they don’t, they don’t respect elections.

They still hold elections to have a window dressing because they claim to have to be democratic, but they do whatever they can, ban opposition politicians. make life hard for the opposition, control the airwaves, spend tremendously before the election. So Hugo Chavez, um, no, Nicolás Maduro got himself re elected in 2018 in a complete sham election that the opposition boycotted.

But the opposition has no leverage against him. Protests don’t work. Um, international pressure hasn’t worked, so the opposition decided this time when Maduro came up for re election to challenge him in the election, thinking that the time was right for a change. Because at the same time that Maduro transformed Venezuela into a brutal dictatorship, he has also ruined the economy.

I mean ruined. There hasn’t been a country suffering so badly outside of war than Venezuela. Venezuela in the last 20 years has seen its GDP drop by 75%. I’m talking about 75%, which is a tremendous collapse, 75%. So about three, four years ago when the economy hit rock bottom and about 80, 90% of the population lived in poverty, 8 million Venezuelans have left the country in despair.

Um, and so, um, I mean, has done total mismanagement, but. I’m holding this election. The opposition thought they could finally make a bend and the opinion polls showed overwhelming support for the opposition, very low support for Maduro. The exit polls show overwhelming support for the opposition, so they clearly, clearly won.

Maduro, for reasons that I can explain later, Maduro just simply claims to have won, sits there, has support from the military, has taken over all the institutions, and just says, I won. And the opposition can claim whatever they want. The international community can demand whatever they want, I’ll just keep governing.

[00:10:51] Jeremi: Kurt, that’s an incredibly, uh, helpful overview and I’m, I’m amazed at how much you were able to pack into that one answer that’s, that really helps us understand the rise of what was first a populist authoritarian regime and what now sounds like almost Um, and it also helps to explain the incredibly large number of Venezuelan refugees coming to the United States, for example.

Why did Maduro Hold this election. It was clear he was going to lose. He did ban the leader of the opposition, Maria Corina Machado. But even with the stand in opposition figure Edmundo Gonzalez, it was quite clear from weeks ago, I think, right, that the opposition was going to get more votes. Why did he subject himself to this election?

[00:11:45] Kurt: So this is interesting about these authoritarian regimes. When you go back, um, you mentioned my interwar book. In the interwar years, authoritarian rulers were happy to call themselves dictators. And they were proud that they are dictators. But after the Second World War, dictatorship hasn’t been that cool anymore.

And especially after the end of the Cold War, when the United States in the 1990s had tremendous global hegemony and Pushed countries to become liberal and democratic nowadays. It’s not cool anymore not to hold elections. So virtually every country in the world holds elections. And a lot of these elections are complete sham.

The incumbent wins by 98 percent of the vote, but the old elections to say, Oh, you know, we have a democratic facade. And I think that is especially the case in cases where, um, authoritarian regime emerges fairly gradually from a democracy. I mean, there wasn’t a military coup. You know, I’m right now. I’m down in Chile when in Chile There was a military coup dictator Pinochet closed elections.

That’s just what to do as a military dictator, but if you are a populist leader who transforms his country from a democracy Into an authoritarian regime. You don’t want to cancel elections and then suddenly become a dictator You try And if you’re a Chavez, you have a lot of popularity. You think you can win all these elections and you maintain elections.

It’s not cool not to have elections, especially in the Western Hemisphere, under the nose of the United States, in a region that in 2001 adopted a democratic charter that the region committed to democracy. And so you, Claim against all evidence that this is democratic and this is democratic and you’re all the elections and then you try to Manipulate the stage.

You mentioned the banning of the main opposition candidate you tried to Manipulate things in all kinds of ways so that somehow or other you think he might be able to eke out Victory, I I don’t know what Maduro thought whether he thought somehow his manipulations would allow him to to achieve some kind of shame victory or whether he just thought, you know, it doesn’t matter, but not holding elections.

It’s just not legit anymore. 

[00:14:02] Jeremi: Kurt, did Maduro think he would win? Was he fooled? There have been a number of articles saying that he’s surrounded by so many syncophants that he actually thought he was still popular. Is that true or is he more cynical than that? 

[00:14:22] Kurt: It’s very hard to know. We don’t have access to the inner in our workings of the Maduro regime.

We don’t know. Some of these, some of these dictators are really quite benighted and believe their own propaganda. I mean, what is interesting, and what I honestly do not understand, while Maduro outlawed the main opposition candidate and created all kinds of trouble for the opposition, and, um, imprisoned opposition leaders left and right, and all that kind of thing, He allowed opinion polls to go forward and every single credible opinion poll showed like the vote preference of 70 percent for the opposition and 25 percent for Maduro.

So if, so I would find it kind of surprising if Maduro didn’t know what the population was like. Maybe they thought that by, for example, there are rumors that on election day, they created trouble for people to vote, especially in opposition neighborhoods, you know, long lines and very slow movement. And whereas in their own neighborhoods, you know, so they, maybe they thought in just manipulating the voting process or that they could somehow others.

manipulate ballot boxes that they would come up with the result. It’s hard to know what exactly is going on. But, um, but what I frankly wonder is whether Maduro, um, just thought The result doesn’t matter. I mean, he, he said before the election, the famous quote, I’ll, I’ll win by hook or crook. It doesn’t matter, you know, this way or other.

And so, um, these dictators, you know, he knew that he had a lot of support from the military, which is absolutely decisive for reasons that I can explain. And so in some sense, it doesn’t matter to him what the election result is. He just sits there protected by the military, knows he will stay in power.

The domestic opposition can shout and yell. The international community can make pressure. He has enough support from China, Russia, Iran. And he’ll just sit there, he sits on oil, so he has some economic lifeline, and election result in some basic sense doesn’t matter that much to him. 

[00:16:36] Jeremi: It’s a terrible situation, Zachary.

[00:16:39] Zachary: Why is the military support so critical? Why does that make or break Maduro’s regime? 

[00:16:45] Kurt: So this is interesting. Um. Um. In any authoritarian regime, ultimately it comes down to who controls organized coercion. Because if you are in an authoritarian regime, you don’t have procedural institutional legitimacy.

And so you need ultimately the capacity to rely on coercion. If there’s problem, if there is protests, you need to have the capacity to clamp down. Now, frontline of that is the police and these paramilitaries that they have in these paramilitary gangs that they have in Venezuela. But ultimately, when push comes to shove, it depends on the military.

The military is the mainstay of every single authoritarian regime, the ultima ratio. So, and Maduro has that military support for the same reason that Maduro feels compelled to stay in power, which is the following. During his 11 years as a dictator, Maduro has committed a bunch of human rights violations.

He has. Ensured military loyalty by allowing the military to engage in large scale corruption, contraband. The military and Maduro are involved in international drug trafficking. Two of Maduro’s nephews were apprehended in 2015 for involvement in drug trafficking. So the whole clique in power, Maduro, His political support, his narrow aides, and the military, which is the mainstay, they’re all essentially a crime cartel.

They are a mafia. Um, and so the problem is the international community has become legalized. The international community says we don’t accept corruption. We don’t accept human rights violations anymore. And so the international community has threatened to indict Maduro and a whole bunch of his underlings for their human rights violations, for their corruption, for their involvement in drug trafficking, not only the U.

S., but also the International Criminal Court. And so that whole mafia in power. Essentially feels compelled to stay in power because if they were to lose power, they go to jail to jail. And you see the international precedence when the president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, stepped down in 2022 within three weeks, he was in chains and extradited to the United States.

And so that’s what Maduro and all the main generals fear. If they lose power, they’re going to go to jail, forever. And so that’s the reason why they cling to power, regardless of what happens, and why Maduro can be assured of military support. They’re all, you know, they’re saying they all have to hang together, so that they don’t hang separately.

[00:19:38] Jeremi: Right, right. It makes a lot of sense. And it’s, it’s, it’s a paradoxical consequence of creating an international system that is in some cases trying to hold war criminals and other horrible leaders accountable. The examples of Slobodan Milosevic, uh, from Serbia and others obviously stand, stand out. Um, 

[00:20:01] Kurt: can I, 

[00:20:01] Jeremi: can I comment on that?

Please, please, please. 

[00:20:04] Kurt: I think this is one of the most painful dilemmas that the international community is facing because in many ways we want to hold these bad guys accountable, you know, and we want to deter bad behavior in the future. But the big paradox that unfortunately a lot of the advocates and academics who are in favor of this legalization of international affairs don’t want to face up to, the terrible paradox is That the current leaders in power who have already committed all kinds of malfeasance and misdeeds, they now have a big incentive not to give up power and to keep doing their bad things due to that threat of international prosecution.

It’s a terrible paradox that the international community has a hard time dealing with. 

[00:20:54] Jeremi: So do you think, Kurt, that it would be a better scenario if the international community were able to offer Maduro and, and his closest, uh, criminals, uh, safe haven to go live in Russia or live in the South of France as the former dictator of Haiti did?

Um, is that a viable alternative? 

[00:21:18] Kurt: Yeah, that is the thing, right? I mean, you think France would want to have Sigma Dover in some fancy. Fancy mansion in the Riviera, you know. sipping gin tonic while lying around the pool in France. I mean, you know, this has become impossible. Can you imagine the outcry? And of course nobody would want the guy.

The only places that he could go to would be in North Korea, which is not precisely a site that’s very attractive. And so that is a terrible dilemma because you refer, you know, you probably alluded to the south of France. The former dictator of Haiti, um, Duvalier, he is, he went to France at that time.

There was still, you know, Haiti, former French colony, he could go to France and he left. And so he ended that nightmare in Haiti. But nowadays, Maduro go to France. I mean, no way. And so that is the problem. We would, we would, the international community would need to designate like St. Helena or something at the safe haven for former dictators.

I’ll tell you this. and give them beautiful mansions there. But you see, for my joke, it’s not a viable alternative. And it’s not a credible offer. The opposition, knowing of the terrible dilemma, the opposition said, Maduro, you know, if we win, we will negotiate with you an exit. That’s not credible, because if they win and Maduro recognizes the victory, he is in a very weak position.

Is he going to believe that they will? Give him safe haven. And even if the Venezuelan opposition would want it, how about the U. S.? And how about the International Criminal Court? I mean, now in this election controversy, the head of the OAS has requested the, of the International Criminal Court to have an order of imprisonment for Maduro.

You can’t easily have that go away. 

[00:23:08] Zachary: Zachary? Um, one thing I’ve noticed, which I find fascinating but also deeply strange, is the way in which some on the far left in the United States, um, idolize, uh, Venezuela and the Chavez, uh, tradition that Maduro, um, carries on. And you also mentioned that there is still some popular support in Venezuela, um, for, uh, Maduro and for Chavezism.

Uh, where does that come from, do you think? And, and, and what role will that play in the potential resolution of of this, uh, fiasco. 

[00:23:43] Kurt: So, to talk about the support inside Venezuela, I mean, Hugo Chavez was hugely popular. For all his failings, Hugo Chavez took on an ossified, elitist democracy and claimed to do things for poorer people.

And given that Hugo Chavez benefited from the global commodities boom. He rolled out a bunch of social programs, you know, he tried to advance popular health care and literacy campaigns, all these kinds of things. So some people benefited from Chavez and Chavez was highly revered. And some of that still persists, but I think the main support for Maduro is essentially people who are utterly dependent upon him.

Every person who works in the vastly swelled public administration has to promise support to Maduro, otherwise they lose their job. And what Maduro has done, he has devilishly taken advantage of the terrible crisis that he helped to create by using a program of distribution of funds. food packages to the poor who have nothing to eat and controls that through a surveillance system to essentially say you only eat if you support me.

And so when you see now people protesting in favor of Maduro, a lot of those are essentially bought lackeys. And so that is also You know, the regime holds a whole bunch of people hostage because if you don’t vote, and people probably fear if they vote, they have to vote for Maduro. If you don’t vote, you don’t eat.

So that’s the domestic support. So, so is that voluntary autonomous? Probably not. I think a lot of that is coerced and dependent. Internationally, unfortunately, as I said, I’m down in Chile, and I was recently in Brazil. A number of left wingers still have this sort of, um, strange ideological affinity. So the Chilean Communist Party has recognized the Venezuelan election and Maduro has re elected them.

Brazilian Workers Party, the Workers Party of President Lula in Brazil, which rose under an authoritarian regime and was very important for Brazil’s democratization, the Workers Party has recognized Maduro’s victory, out of that kind of misunderstood ideological affinity. So there’s this left wing thing like, Oh, yo, you know, he’s kind of bad, but he still is a left winger and we need to support him.

And also driven a little by anti Americanism. So, so you have this strange kind of, um, sort of support for a left winger that leaves democracy out of the picture. And that is really very disturbing. 

[00:26:18] Jeremi: This is all very depressing. I have to say, Kurt, uh, it sounds like we have a truly dystopian regime, but a dystopian regime that has developed cool proof.

Tentacles as, as many in the field would say. Um, so, so what are the, what are the options for going forward? I mean, there is a very well organized opposition, uh, courageous, uh, an opposition that was able to bring out a lot of voters, uh, and also, as you said, the economy in, in Venezuela, despite. Venezuela having more oil resources than any other country in the world, more oil than Saudi Arabia, even nonetheless, this country is starving because of the mismanagement and the corruption and the international sanctions.

So is there a breaking point? What does that look like? Where do you see this going? 

[00:27:08] Kurt: I unfortunately do not see a breaking point and I do not see a realistic chance. for Maduro leaving office anytime soon. Um, I think the opposition is enormously courageous. I admire the courage of people to not only to go out and campaign and to be opposition candidates, but even to vote for the opposition.

I admire their courage in protesting, but I do not think that they have the clout by far domestically to really do something. Um, And the international community, the international community, of course, is divided. Um, you know, as I mentioned, Maduro has support from the kind of bad axis of China and Russia and Iran and whatever.

Um, Western countries, many countries have not recognized the, um, the result of the election and they are pushing for Venezuela to make transparent the voting process and to negotiate and all this kind of thing And Maduro just doesn’t do it, you know, so here in some sense Surprisingly, a group of left wing governments in Latin America, um, led by Lula da Silva, who as president, although his party recognized the election as president, hasn’t done it.

Um, Gustavo Pedro of Mexico, um, and, oh, of, of Colombia, sorry, and then AMLO of Mexico, they have all pushed Venezuela to make the election results transparent. And Maduro says, and maybe not, and maybe whatever. and just doesn’t do it. And so I think the international community essentially has no leverage.

What leverage do you have? I mean, the country, the country’s economy is going terribly, but oil gives it a little bit of a lifeline. Um, and Maduro doesn’t care. I mean, what does Maduro care, sitting in his palace, surrounded by military people who are compelled to support him if he 80 percent of the population starve.

I mean, it just doesn’t. And what, what can the international community do? The United States has imposed sanctions, doesn’t do any good because countries like China, Russia, Iran, and enable Maduro to evade sanctions to a good extent, the Latin American governments. You know, they make like diplomatic moves, but they’re not going to, I mean, what would it take?

I mean, honestly, it would take a military invasion of Venezuela and nobody is prepared to do that. 

[00:29:43] Jeremi: Well, Kurt, what about the possibility that we’ve seen in other countries, such as Ukraine, where mid and lower level members of the military who see their families suffering, who see their neighborhoods destroyed, who are ashamed of what they’re seeing?

Uh, that they at some point turn on, uh, the generals and, and their dictator. So this is a 

[00:30:07] Kurt: good point. And I think there are two reasons why that hasn’t happened in Venezuela. Um, the first is that, um, Hugo Chavez faced a coup attempt in 2002, and then he got, of course, scared. And what do you do? And he was very close to Fidel Castro of Cuba, and Cuba sent 2, 000 intelligence agents that essentially helped, um, Chavez purge the military and install an internal surveillance and control system that is very Stringent and very effective and so they’re essentially the military I mean Maduro is aware that the only real threat he would face would be from defection of military people And so they try to prevent that at all costs through surveillance through harsh crackdowns through purges I mean, there are a lot of stories that military people who showed some sign of disloyalty are being tortured, are being killed.

Um, so, so coercion has enabled him to keep military loyalty. The second thing is the following. What is the situation in which lower level military people Essentially, if you have sustained mass protests that get, um, suppressed with large scale violence and it goes on and on and on, and then at some point or other, members of the military might say, I don’t want to, I don’t want to do this anymore.

But in some sense, you know, and I don’t know how to say that fortunately or unfortunately, from the perspective of what we are saying, unfortunately, there were large scale protests in Venezuela for two, three days, but then it died down because, um, the repression was effective. And so two, three days, you know, you crack down.

Yes. You. You imprison 2, 000 people, you kill a bunch of people. It wasn’t sustained enough, and it wasn’t broad enough. And when you see where the, so like, the recent opposition protest, large Saturday, was in the eastern part of Caracas, which is a middle class neighborhood. If the protests had led to a mass outpouring of popular protests, some, some popular neighborhoods like Petare protested, but the whole Western part of Caracas is the real stronghold of Chavista support and there wasn’t very much protest going on there.

If there had been really massive outpouring, if it hadn’t only been, you know, predominantly educated middle class people, but if there had been You know, millions of poor Venezuelans just pouring down from the slums and hills and poor neighbors of Caracas into the city center, besieging the presidential palace.

If there had been a real kind of popular assault on the regime, and that had gone on, and then there had been just killing, killing, killing, killing, then you might have seen defection. But, but the regime managed very quickly to contain and suppress the protests and confine them primarily to the middle class areas.

And that is just simply not enough to prompt, um, large scale military defection. 

[00:33:22] Jeremi: Well, that’s a, that’s a very compelling, if sad, uh, answer. Um, Kurt, we like to close every episode with something hopeful. And I think we need that in this case. Um, our, our listeners are, are, are people who like us care about democracy, want to see, um, reform to regimes, um, like the one you’ve described.

Uh, they want to see reform in the United States too. Um, what are the things we can do? What do you as a, as a leading scholar of the region, how do you think about your work and the work of your students and others contributing in some positive way to this terrible situation? 

[00:34:03] Kurt: No, no, you caught me. You caught me on a blank.

I, I, I mean, the only thing you can do is try to support the Venezuelan opposition, you know, um, support the many, many, I mean, hundreds of thousands of people who left Venezuela, went to the United States, somehow or other. I mean, I don’t know. even know what we can do to do that, um, limit the crackdown that will happen.

I mean, what I, what I frankly predict, and I’m sorry that I’m not really providing much optimism, but I predict that in a couple of weeks, the regime will imprison the two opposition politicians that led the challenge. And, you know, then the best we can do is some prisoner exchange or whatever. I mean, I think the perspective is very, very bad negative.

I’m sorry that I can’t follow your, your, um, recommendation to come up with something. The most optimistic thing is that, you know, even Madova at some point has to die. And, I mean, maybe then the succession issue will be solved. 

[00:35:03] Jeremi: No, that’s an honest and compelling answer. 

[00:35:06] Kurt: I’m sorry. It’s a very, I mean, I joked with you before the session.

I mean, you talked about your son’s poem. This will have to be a very sad elegy. 

[00:35:19] Jeremi: What, what do you think U. S. policy should be? Are we, is it appropriate to keep sanctions on Venezuela? Um, are there any, any changes you would recommend in U. S. policy? 

[00:35:30] Kurt: I, I think, I think that the U. S. has tried a number of things.

You know, the Biden administration was involved in a negotiation effort last year and last fall offering easing of sanctions if the regime actually went ahead with honest elections. And as we see now, it didn’t work very well. I’m sorry that I think kind of approximation doesn’t work very much. That regime has negotiated on so many counts, essentially in bad faith, using it as a stalling tactic, get over temporary problems and then just simply cement its hold again.

I think the only option is essentially to sanction the hell out of them. And, you know, from the part of the United States, uh, Um, I, I, I do not think that the US has a lot of options. I mean, it shows in some sense how weak the United States has become internationally, even in its own western hemisphere. I mean, when you think that the United States has been unable to forestall Venezuelans descent into authoritarianism, into brutal dictatorship, into total implosion and destruction of the country, that the United States has not had any real leverage over that process in a country so important, you know, even for the oil supply of the US and the world as Venezuela, it shows you when people talk about us and Germany and us predominance and whatever.

I mean, the Venezuelan case is a striking example, how weak The United States has become evil in the Western Hemisphere. 

[00:37:10] Jeremi: Zachary, what do you think of all this? I mean, as, as someone who cares about democracy, as part of a generation that’s hoping to see, um, more democracy in more countries, uh, this is hard to listen to, right?

This is a really difficult story and, and, you know, and in some ways it is in our backyard. How do you react to this? 

[00:37:30] Zachary: I think, uh, it’s a very sad story, certainly. I think at the very least, this discussion should be a reminder not to Look at, uh, the politics of our neighbors in Latin America as some sort of caricature to really engage with the conditions on the ground and to listen to what people are saying.

I think it’s very easy for Venezuela to become either a sort of punching bag of the right in the United States, a sort of like, this is what socialism looks like, sort of, uh, lie. Or a caricature on the left, uh, that is obviously also opposed to the truth. I think it’s a reminder of how important it is to engage with and reckon with the real conditions on the ground, at the very least.

I 

[00:38:11] Jeremi: agree. And I think, uh, Kurt has quite brilliantly laid out for us in his work and in the discussion here. Uh, an important research agenda, a research agenda, not just for scholars like Kurt and myself, but for, for all kinds of citizens, which is thinking through, uh, what are the options, what are the things the international community can and cannot do?

And I would just highlight a point that Kurt made, which is that, uh, in some ways, the efforts to hold appropriately leaders accountable for their crimes. And in theory, I’m certainly for that, but that effort often makes it harder to get them to leave power. And if our goal as supporters of democracy in a broad sense is about getting dictators out and non dictators in and building institutions, uh, it’s probably time we think through a little more.

in a more sophisticated way, how to do that. It seems as if the dictators are ahead of us in our thinking about international democracy and international democratic procedures. Is that a fair note to close on, Kurt? Do you agree with that? 

[00:39:17] Kurt: No, I absolutely agree. I think the international community has to face up to that terrible paradox that this legalization of international affairs has this unintended side effect.

And I do not know what could be done. to, you know, I mean, I make the joke about St. Helena, there would have to be some kind of international safe haven, some way of sort of emergency amnesty, whatever, and they would have to be credible and enforced by the international community, unfortunately limiting that international regime of prosecuting violators of human rights and other norms in order to I mean, not only induce, but allow them to step down from power.

I mean, and how to do that, man, that is a very, very difficult, how to build an international regime in a world that is so divided between the democratic forces that are on the defensive now and, uh, sort of ascendant authoritarian forces of China and Russia and Iran, whatever. I do not know how that could be done, but it’s an urgent agenda.

[00:40:21] Jeremi: Yes, and of course even your joke about St. Helena points to another problem. When Napoleon was sent to St. Helena, first of all, he wasn’t happy to be there and then in the end he was poisoned because they were fearful European states that he would come back again, which is always the concern if you if you let these people go to a St.

Helena. That they’ll just return. Kurt Whelan, thank you so much for, uh, joining us today, for sharing, uh, really, I think, compelling, if quite depressing, uh, insights into, uh, Venezuela, and, and I think the larger challenge. of, uh, dictatorship and coup proofing regimes, uh, in, in various places around the world.

Venezuela is just one of the worst examples, but there are many others. I encourage our listeners to, uh, read Kurt’s work. Uh, it’s really eye opening in its depth and its comparative, uh, breadth. Uh, so thank you, Kurt, for joining us today. 

[00:41:18] Kurt: Yeah. Thank you for having me. And I’m sorry that I had to provide such a bleak 

[00:41:21] Jeremi: picture, but to 

[00:41:22] Kurt: know as scholars, we have to face the facts.

And unfortunately, the facts in Venezuela are very dark. 

[00:41:27] Jeremi: That’s right. We, we have to pursue the truth. And, uh, and for activists who care about democracy, we have to stare the reality in the face. We can’t dream up futures that, that don’t match the world that we’re in. Zachary, thank you for your inspiring poem and excellent questions as always.

And thank you to our loyal listeners and subscribers to our sub stack for joining us. For this discussion of this is democracy.

[00:41:59] Outro: This podcast is produced by the liberal arts ITS development studio and the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris Codini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find this is democracy on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. See you next time.