Maduro likely lost Venezuela’s election but refuses to leave. What now?

CARACAS, Venezuela — First, the Biden administration offered Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro carrots. Promise to hold a fair, competitive election and respect the outcome, officials told the authoritarian socialist, and we’ll suspend crippling U.S. sanctions on your state-run oil industry.

Now, it’s beginning to wield sticks. The U.S. Justice Department this week seized a luxury jet used by Maduro. Administration officials are considering adding more names to the already long list of Venezuelans sanctioned by the United States and mulling more visa restrictions for those close to the government.

Still, more than a month after Maduro appears to have lost the election in a landslide, his grip on power seems as sure as ever. It’s the opposition — and its backers in Washington and the international community — who are running out of options.

While independent exit polling and voting machine receipts suggest challenger Edmundo González defeated Maduro by a 2-1 margin, the autocrat has declared himself the winner and unleashed a wave of violent repression that rights advocates say is the worst yet under the socialist state founded 25 years ago by Hugo Chávez.

Maduro boasts of the arrests of more than 2,000 people — mostly political opponents and peaceful protesters he accuses of terrorism. His security forces have rounded up children as young as 13, according to the rights group Foro Penal. They’ve been connected with several killings, Human Rights Watch reports.

Now the crackdown threatens to strengthen: Maduro last week named hard-line ally Diosdado Cabello to oversee the country’s police forces. And on Monday, a Venezuelan judge ordered the arrest of González, who the United States and other countries say clearly beat Maduro in the July 28 election.

“When it is my turn to hand over the command, I will hand it over to a chavista and revolutionary president,” Maduro said in televised remarks this week.

The Biden administration is “considering a range of options to demonstrate to Mr. Maduro and his representatives that their actions in Venezuela will have consequences,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters this week.

The United States has long involved itself in Venezuela’s affairs. The Biden administration sees interests in stemming Venezuelan migration to the U.S. border and securing access to the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

But there appears to be little appetite for stronger measures.

“No one wants to blow up Venezuela with more economic sanctions,” said one person in contact with Biden administration officials who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to divulge details of private conversations. “There’s a lot of frustration. There’s not a lot of optimism or hope at this point that anything is going to work.”

That’s left Washington’s options limited. “Maduro is getting his house in order. He’s giving the Americans a middle finger,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “We’ve already used most of the arrows in our quiver.”

Another person said the “consensus” is to keep Venezuela out of the headlines until November. “The current administration does not want to make this a front-and-center issue going into the elections,” the person said.

U.S. officials have said they’re open to negotiations with Maduro and expressed a willingness to incentivize his exit from government. They’ve supported the effort of the leftist presidents of Colombia, Brazil and Mexico to bring him to the table, but it has not yielded results.

Presidents Gustavo Petro of Colombia, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico have yet to meet with Maduro, but hope to do so within the next two weeks, according to a person familiar with the talks. They want to establish a dialogue between the Venezuelan government and the opposition. Colombia and Brazil want to engage Cuba, a close ally of Venezuela that could, in exchange for U.S. concessions, help bring Maduro to the negotiating table, the person said.

For Maduro, the cost of leaving office is high. He and his allies have been indicted by a U.S. court on charges of narcoterrorism.

“People don’t leave power if they feel they will end up in jail,” said Tamara Taraciuk Broner, who directs a rule-of-law program at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.

Few options left

Going into the election, the opposition viewed the election as its best chance yet to defeat its nemesis. And in fact, everything went about as well as it could. González enjoyed a double-digit lead in polls before the vote; on the day, he appeared to have scored the overwhelming victory that opposition leaders said would force Maduro to negotiate a transition.

Now the opposition is pursuing a strategy of periodic protests and asking the international community for help.

“I certainly think the United States should do much more, and I’ve been very clear to them and to other countries,” María Corina Machado, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, told reporters on Thursday. Machado, Venezuela’s most popular politician, was barred by a court from running against Maduro.

Few sectors of the Venezuelan economy have avoided U.S. sanctions. The Biden administration, wary of causing more damage that could threaten the oil supply and inspire migrants to flee, doesn’t appear to be interested in revoking licenses for oil companies to operate in Venezuela.

Sanctioning individuals allows the administration to claim it’s being tough on Maduro without harming the broader economy.

But the move is largely symbolic. Maduro has treated U.S. sanctions as a badge of honor; he’s hosted ceremonies to award sanctioned Venezuelans with replicas of the sword wielded by national hero Simón Bolívar.

Some U.S. lawmakers, including Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida, have accused the administration of weakness and called for tougher measures.

Caleb McCarry, who worked on Cuba policy under President George W. Bush, has urged the international community to step aside and let Venezuelans negotiate their own way forward.

Outsiders, he said, have underestimated the lengths to which Maduro is willing to go to avoid ceding power to a hard-line opposition, McCarry said. “I don’t think the international community has the tools to force [Venezuelan officials] to accept a government led by their enemies.”

Some say the opposition and its supporters overestimated both the possibility it could sow division within the government and the likelihood Maduro could be pressured to negotiate.

“I think we placed more hope than was warranted in the business community and military,” said Elliott Abrams, who served as special envoy for Venezuela in the Trump administration. “We hoped they might come forward to save the country. They did not.”

Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Denver, credits the opposition’s apparent election victory with taking away any legitimacy Maduro still had. But Machado’s staunch anti-Maduro rhetoric has made a negotiation with the socialist government unlikely.

“There has been too much wishful thinking involved,” a person familiar with discussions among the parties said. “People on all sides are still dazed and asking themselves if this isn’t a dead end and where to go from here.”

Calls for an arrest warrant against Maduro

The United States could lift Maduro’s indictment and forget about the millions of dollars prosecutors say he stole through corruption. But he’s still under investigation for alleged crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court.

Venezuelan organizations and prominent Latin American human rights defenders are demanding action on what some see as a last option. They’re urging the ICC to accelerate its probe and issue arrest warrants.

ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has been investigating claims that Maduro’s security forces arbitrarily detained, tortured and executed his political opponents — crimes that activists say are happening again in the crackdown.

“The ICC is the only institution that can hold Maduro accountable,” said Génesis Dávila, president of the rights group Defend Venezuela.

An arrest warrant could have a “ferocious” impact on Maduro, said Luis Moreno Ocampo, the ICC’s first prosecutor, and an assistant prosecutor in the successful 1985 trial against Argentina’s brutal military junta leaders. “His own people could arrest him.”

The court is facing growing criticism for what some believe is an inappropriately close relationship with the government. Even as Khan probes Maduro, he has established an office in Caracas to help the government improve its own investigating capabilities.

Some critics see what they believe to be a more concerning conflict of interest. Khan’s sister-in-law, the international criminal lawyer Venkateswari Alagendra, has joined the team defending the Venezuelan government before the ICC.

When Alagendra appeared in court for the team in November, she said, no one objected to her role. The team filed a legal appeal of the investigation, she said; Khan “opposed it very strenuously” and “unfortunately, we lost.”

“The composition of the legal team representing Venezuela in the proceedings in which the Office successfully defended its right to assert jurisdiction in this situation is a matter of public record,” Khan’s office said in a statement. “We understand that no objection was raised by any party to the proceedings at the time.”

A code of conduct for the office of the prosecutor directs members to abstain from any conflicts that may arise from “personal interest in the case, including a spousal, parental or other close family, personal or professional relationship with any of the parties.”

Khan’s office said he is “closely monitoring” developments in Venezuela and is “independently and impartially” analyzing alleged crimes.