Will Venezuela Change Trump’s Approach to War? |
Every year, FP runs an essay titled “10 Conflicts to Watch” in partnership with the International Crisis Group, an independent body that raises the alarm about war. This year’s article lists many of the usual hot spots, including Israel and Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, and a few lesser-known conflicts such as the ones in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Myanmar.
On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with one of the essay’s co-authors, Comfort Ero, the CEO and president of the Crisis Group. We began by discussing the fast-moving developments in Venezuela after the United States captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on Jan. 3 and brought them to New York, raising questions not only about the future of Venezuela but also about the legality of the operation and the future of international law. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page. What follows here is a lightly edited transcript.
Every year, FP runs an essay titled “10 Conflicts to Watch” in partnership with the International Crisis Group, an independent body that raises the alarm about war. This year’s article lists many of the usual hot spots, including Israel and Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, and a few lesser-known conflicts such as the ones in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Myanmar.
On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with one of the essay’s co-authors, Comfort Ero, the CEO and president of the Crisis Group. We began by discussing the fast-moving developments in Venezuela after the United States captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on Jan. 3 and brought them to New York, raising questions not only about the future of Venezuela but also about the legality of the operation and the future of international law. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page. What follows here is a lightly edited transcript.
Ravi Agrawal: We have to start with Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro is gone. His vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, is now interim president. What’s your reading of how stable the situation is in Caracas?
Comfort Ero: First, it was quite a dramatic, clinical snatch-and-grab extraction to bring him to the United States to face various charges that the government has set against him. Right now, it’s a Maduro-less Chavista government still in Caracas, so it’s not a full regime change. And it was also a deliberate choice of language by the U.S. government to show that they were dealing with an illegitimate leader who they didn’t believe won the elections in 2024. I think everybody agrees with that.
But we’ve also seen repression and a state of emergency in the country. Of course, Venezuelans are still feeling their way through this change. It’s also important to acknowledge that an overall majority of Venezuelans are happy to see the decline of Maduro. Whether they wanted it this way, to have your leader to be extracted by night in this manner, the jury is still out. But most of them have been frustrated by the backsliding of democracy, and a number of other countries also felt that pressure as well.
There are still lots of questions to ask. When [U.S. President Donald] Trump says we’re “going to run” the country, is he looking for a pliant, obedient government run by Rodríguez? And what should we expect from the rest of the regime behind her?
RA: Well put. There are certainly more questions than answers at this stage. For all the critiques of how and why this was done, it is hard to disagree that Maduro was an awful leader. He ruined Venezuela’s economy. He was incredibly repressive. But, of course, there are many such leaders in many countries around the world. And Trump, in his televised remarks on Saturday, didn’t even mention Edmundo González, the actual winner of the 2024 election. What happens in the longer term to democracy in Venezuela?
CE: For the opposition, who to a certain extent threw their lot behind the idea of external assistance to remove Maduro, it’s now a point of reflection. “What does this mean for us as the opposition? What does it mean for democracy?” And clearly the opposition sees they are not on the same page of the agenda that they thought that they shared with Trump.
RA: Let’s jump for a moment to a bigger-picture question. I looked back at previous iterations of “10 Conflicts.” For the 2022 edition, for example, you wrote that “the number of major wars has also descended from a recent peak.” You also said that “states rarely go to war with one........