Trump’s full-throttle threats suggest no backing down from aims to topple Maduro’s regime | Venezuela

Weeks of sabre-rattling, dark threats and a US military build-up not seen in Latin America since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis led to a phone call on November 21, when, somewhat unexpectedly, Donald Trump called Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan whom he has singled out as his arch-nemesis.

By Trump’s own account, this was more an attempt to escalate the situation by issuing an ultimatum than an attempt to initiate dialogue on the path to a mutually beneficial compromise.

“You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now,” Trump is said to have told a leader he branded a narco-terrorist and falsely accused of emptying his country’s prisons to send the most violent criminals to the United States.

The emergence of that threat this week appeared to dispel any notions that Trump was backing away from decisive action to topple the Maduro regime.

But conflict with Venezuela does not always seem inevitable.

Just months ago, Trump’s special mission envoy, Richard Grenell, appeared to have paved the way for reconciliation with Caracas; He persuaded Maduro to accept repatriation flights of deported immigrants from the United States, while also agreeing to the release of 10 U.S. citizens and legal residents held captive in the United States.

Maduro also raised the possibility of further deals, offering U.S. access to Venezuela’s rich oil and mineral resources.

But instead of more deals, a president whose election appeal rested in part on his promise to end the United States’ alleged dependence on distant foreign war appears on the verge of sparking a conflict in his own hemisphere.

Grenell, who advocated pragmatism, found himself replaced by the more hawkish advocacy of Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and acting national security adviser who has long taken a hard line against Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

One widely accepted explanation for this shift is that Trump fell under the influence of the last person he briefed him on — a role likely played in this case by the increasingly influential Rubio.

However, some observers who follow Trump’s Venezuela policy closely argue that the administration’s chief anti-Maduro hawk is Trump himself.

“I don’t deny that Rubio’s currency is very high right now against the president who thinks he’s doing a good job. But Trump has been a pretty fierce rival of Maduro for a long time. He has much different and more mixed feelings about other dictators and other parts of the world, but he’s been more consistent on Maduro,” said Ryan Berg, future director of the Venezuela initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“In many ways, Venezuela has been unfinished business for Trump since his first presidency. [And] Venezuela really touches on all the issues that are priorities for Trump; drugs in the hemisphere, immigration in the hemisphere and China in the hemisphere.”

Trump’s ultimatum calls raise the possibility that the administration will launch a “decapitation attack” aimed at killing Maduro, Berg said. Despite the inevitable condemnation that would come with the killing of a national leader, the administration believes it would be justified because it does not see Maduro as a legitimate head of state; Pointing to two presidential elections in 2018 and 2024, he is widely believed to have committed theft.

“Maduro and those around him are betting that Trump will back down, and I think they could be very wrong about that,” Berg said. “My sincere belief is that Trump is serious about this and we could see strikes in Venezuela before Christmas.”

But he added: “There’s an effort within the administration to do this in an easier way, which is to give Maduro a chance to leave on his own terms through some sort of negotiation. He can safely transition somewhere else.”

But if Trump is offering Maduro safe passage to leave power — with Qatar, Cuba and even Turkey touted as possible places of exile — there is still little guarantee that the Venezuelan leader will accept.

“Not everyone is motivated by a few hundred million dollars and plane rides,” said a U.S. businessman with long-standing ties to Venezuela and experience doing business with Maduro. “There aren’t many examples of people leaving the country with that much money and living for very long periods of time, so it’s not an appetizing prospect for Maduro.”

Steve Ellner, a former professor at Venezuela’s Universidad de Oriente and a veteran commentator on the country’s politics, argued that Trump’s resort to a threatening phone call may itself have been a response to the Venezuelan armed forces’ refusal to yield in the face of the overwhelming U.S. military presence.

“One of the things Maduro has shown is that there will be resistance,” Ellner said. “If the Venezuelan military were to oust Maduro out of fear of a US invasion, it would have happened by now.”

He added: “If Maduro had not reacted to this situation like this [military] If it were not for the reactions from Latin American leaders, the mobilization [Colombia’s president Gustavo] Peter and [Brazil’s president] Lula and [Mexico’s president Claudia [Sheinbaum] …perhaps military operations could be carried out in Venezuela.”

Ellner argued that Trump used intimidation to get the biggest concessions possible from Maduro by “playing his ears” before deciding on military action.

“The way this happened was not the best scenario for the hawks, and that’s why they haven’t done anything on Venezuelan soil so far,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. It definitely can.”