An Exit Plan for Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela
Maximum military pressure, safe passage for Maduro, amnesty for those without crimes against humanity, and a government led by Edmundo González.
By Andres Oppenheimer (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – Now that President Donald Trump has deployed the largest US warship in the Caribbean and the Venezuelan regime fears an imminent attack, it is the perfect moment to offer dictator Nicolas Maduro an exit strategy.
It’s true that the international community and the Venezuelan opposition have offered Maduro a negotiated exit several times in the past, and he has always used those negotiations to buy time, later breaking all of his promises.
But this time may be different, as more and more experts point out. Unlike in the past, there is now a credible threat of military intervention by the United States.
Jose Morales-Arilla, a professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico, who holds a doctorate from Harvard University, wrote an article on November 18 in Caracas Chronicles arguing that the time has come for Trump “to offer smart exit alternatives in Venezuela.” According to Morales-Arilla, current military pressure, combined with offers of amnesty to some officials, could break apart Maduro’s ruling coalition.
When I asked him what he meant by “smart exit alternatives,” Morales-Arilla told me that—coordinating with Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado—Trump should propose a two-track exit plan to top Venezuelan officials.
Maduro and other officials responsible for crimes against humanity should be offered safe passage to a country where they feel secure.
Without that, they will never leave peacefully, because they know that sooner or later they will be prosecuted, regardless of whatever promises are made to them today, he said.
But there is a second group of Venezuelan officials who are not directly responsible for serious human rights violations. To them, Trump should offer amnesty, to encourage them to break with Maduro, Morales-Arilla noted.
These are people connected to the regime who have been corrupt or committed serious crimes, but whose actions do not reach the moral and legal gravity of those who personally ordered massacres or oversaw torture centers.
Obviously, for the victims of Maduro’s brutal regime—which has been accused of thousands of extrajudicial executions—seeing images of Maduro sipping mojitos in Cuba or dining in a luxurious restaurant in Turkey would be hard to swallow.
But an even worse alternative would be for Maduro to remain in power for the coming years, many analysts say. That could happen if Trump decides not to attack, or if he limits military action to secondary targets—such as drug labs or a military base in some remote location—without posing a direct threat to the regime, they argue.
Trump might decide not to pursue regime change in Venezuela out of concern that it would drag him into a prolonged conflict that would be unpopular in the United States.
Some experts suggest that Trump offer Maduro exit options even more generous than a plane ticket to Cuba or Turkey.
Francisco Rodríguez, a researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in the United States, wrote in Foreign Affairs on November 17 that Trump should seek a deal to establish a power-sharing government between Maduro and the opposition.
“Short of an invasion—a measure with little domestic support and for which the current mobilization is insufficient—a show of force is unlikely to topple Maduro’s regime,” Rodríguez wrote. “Airstrikes alone have never succeeded in ousting a head of state.”
In practice, “this would mean that representatives of the regime would have to agree to allocate quotas to the opposition in key branches of government,” Rodriguez wrote.
I fear it is too late to negotiate a power-sharing government. This was attempted several times before, and Maduro did not keep his side of the deal. There is only one legitimate government in Venezuela, and it is led by Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the exiled opposition leader backed by Machado, who won last year’s elections by a wide margin.
Instead of seeking a shared government, the international community should offer safe passage for Maduro and his inner circle, and amnesty for other officials not directly implicated in crimes against humanity. That, along with current military pressure, could fracture the unity of the Venezuelan dictatorship.
Published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.