Humanitarian aid has become the latest flashpoint in the ongoing standoff between Nicolas Maduro and Juan Guaido. The delivery of aid to Venezuela has proven to be a key area of contention between the two men who see themselves as the country’s leader. That split has Venezuela polarized with anti-government protests and counter-protests daily, as backers and opponents in Venezuela and beyond choose who to side with.
The US and other countries sent aid to Colombia and Brazil in hopes of providing relief to the impoverished and malnourished nation. Maduro, however, has ordered Venezuela’s border with Brazil closed, and broke diplomatic relations with Colombia. He also ordered his forces to block the aid, saying that the assistance is tantamount to foreign intervention. He’s denied that Venezuela is facing a crisis in the first place. It is, though, and Maduro has been woefully unsuccessful in overcoming it. Yet he hangs on to power. Meantime, by proclaiming himself interim president, Guaido has created a political and constitutional crisis, thus forcing the situation in Venezuela to grow more and more untenable by the day.
Russia, China, Turkey, and North Korea back Maduro while the US and around 15 EU countries have recognized Guaido the interim president. As the superpowers line up on either side, Venezuela is in danger of becoming a pawn in their hands. The US and Russia have been playing cat and mouse since the end of the Cold War. Tensions surface between them sporadically, and almost always these tensions occur on foreign soil.
At any other time, US support for Guaido’s action anointing himself president might have been construed as support for a coup against an incumbent leader, as it has done elsewhere. However, it has chosen to back Guaido to undermine the presence of both China and Russia in the world’s No 1 energy market. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, beating the Arabian Gulf, the US and others.
At the same time, however, even though US support has strengthened Guaido’s position, it has escalated the divisiveness further. US sanctions are ironically crippling the country even more.
Despite the oil reserves, however, or perhaps because of them, Venezuela has suffered one of the worst economic crises in modern history. The mismanagement of oil wealth, US economic sanctions, and the historically low oil prices after 2014 have caused Venezuela’s currency to plummet at a startling pace. Inflation in the country now hovers above a million percent, and could reach 10 million percent this year.
It’s unclear where things will go from here. There are many Venezuelans willing to risk their lives to stand up to Maduro; some have already been killed. But if the standoff drags on, the fear is that this positive energy that has revived Maduro’s critics will wane, as will the interest of the international community, which is what Guaido needs to achieve regime change.
Guaido’s push to bring aid into the country is a clear strategy, one aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the people. But it’s certainly not the solution. The solution won’t come without political change in Venezuela, no easy task when the Venezuelan military is behind Maduro who, consequently, needs no Plan B. Venezuelans instead want to know whether Guaido has a Plan B. If not, the hope will soon turn to despair.
The country is currently in the throes of an extreme economic crisis and humanitarian disaster and much of it is due to the leadership of Maduro. But he won’t step down from power without a fight and there is potential for the violence to get worse.
As the opposition tries to bring aid into Venezuela and Maduro vows to keep it out, there is no doubt that aid has become a political issue and is being used for political ends. For political reasons, people are dying in that country.
