The Problem With America’s Venezuela Policy
Trump isn’t trying to install democracy. But nor is he succeeding with nation building-lite.
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For several years following the American invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, my academic focus was on the problem of nation building. Washington had caused the collapse of two governments, and its foreign policy objectives could not be met unless it created minimally stable successors. But it was evident that U.S. policymakers had little idea of how to bring this about. This line of research resulted in two books, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century, published in 2004, and an edited volume, Nation-Building: Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq, published in 2006. The bottom line of this research was that both state building and its more ambitious counterpart, nation building, were long and costly efforts that had to be undertaken with substantial buy-in from local populations. Equally important was the fact that the American public typically didn’t have the patience to see these projects through to completion, leaving the target countries broken and unstable.
I stopped working on this issue when it became clear in the aftermath of Iraq that the United States would not likely be engaging in further nation building exercises for the foreseeable future. But here we are, 20 years later, facing a similar kind of project in Venezuela. Donald Trump had campaigned as an isolationist opposed to nation building and “forever wars,” but he has now taken on a new ambitious project, and doesn’t seem to understand the challenges he faces.
Trump for the time being has opted for a strategy of nation building-lite: he has decapitated the Maduro regime and stated a minimal (and utterly cynical) goal of extracting as much oil wealth as possible from Venezuela. He has eschewed the objective of restoring Venezuelan democracy and turned his back on María Corina Machado, a genuinely popular leader of the Venezuelan democratic opposition. Trump has anointed Delcy Rodríguez, a former regime firebrand and now acting president, as his partner, and has started to push American oil companies to re-enter the country and restore its decayed capacity.
This definition of American objectives of course sends a terrible signal to the rest of the world: the United States is back in the game of old-fashioned imperialism where it will use its military might to extract as much wealth for itself as possible. Trump has encased this in a spheres-of-influence rhetoric that virtually gives Russia and China permission to act similarly in their own respective spheres.
Trump seems to think that he can execute such a strategy by remote control from Washington. Though he expressed an openness to putting “boots on the ground,” he has shown little inclination to do so to date. The question facing his administration is whether such a minimalist effort can possibly succeed. One of the hard truths of earlier interventions is the virtual inevitability of mission creep, where unforeseen events will trigger cascading levels of involvement.
There are several reasons for thinking that nation building-lite won’t work.
The first has to do with oil and economics. Trump met with leading oil executives on January 9 and suggested that they plan to invest $100 billion in restoring Venezuela’s oil capacity in the coming years. It is an understatement to say he got a cool reception. Darren Woods, the Exxon Mobil CEO, said that, after two prior expropriations, re-entering would “require some pretty significant changes,” and that at the moment the country was “uninvestable.” Large-scale investments require political stability, and that is something that Trump cannot guarantee.
There are clear reasons why the country will remain unstable for the foreseeable future. Trump has placed his bets on continuing rule by a regime that has amply demonstrated both its unpopularity as well as its massive incompetence and corruption. Because of the U.S. blockade of Venezuelan oil, the country faces a major economic collapse in the short run, and a humanitarian crisis will not be a good look for the United States. The country remains highly polarized between supporters of the Maduro regime and the broader anti-Maduro population. The former are armed and ready to use violence against any anti-regime protest. It is not clear that Delcy Rodríguez can control her own colleagues, who may not quietly accept the role of American proxies and see their rents taken away. She may also be unable to control the armed militias and criminal gangs that rule much of the country. In the longer run, Venezuela cannot begin pumping more oil unless it restores PDVSA, the state oil company, that had been emptied of competent engineers and managers years ago under Hugo Chávez. Competent staff will not return unless they can be assured of their continuing safety and security.
In other words, even the minimalist objective of restoring Venezuela’s oil output cannot be achieved without establishing a more legitimate government, and de-fanging the multitude of groups with guns. All of this could in principle be done with American boots on the ground; it cannot be achieved through diktats from Washington. Democratic legitimacy is not an idealistic luxury that can be overlooked by powerful people; it is itself a component of power.
It is not just PDVSA engineers who need to return. Nearly eight million Venezuelans have left the country since Chávez and Maduro came to power, fleeing economic collapse and repression. This diaspora has placed a huge burden on the whole region, affecting not just neighbors like Colombia and Ecuador, but distant countries like Chile which recently elected a right-wing president who campaigned against immigrants. And of course there is a huge Venezuelan community in the United States, one that Trump himself has falsely inveighed against as a source of drugs and crime. Creating conditions under which these refugees can return is not just a moral imperative; it is necessary if the country is to ever recover economically. That émigré community contains many extremely talented people, but they will not return as long as the regime remains in power.
The need for a stable, legitimate government then suggests a more hopeful path forward. Trump has shown no interest in restoring Venezuelan democracy, and it is probably the case that the United States had no choice in the short run but to work with parts of the Maduro regime. But democratic legitimacy will matter greatly in the medium to longer term. Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, Venezuela has a long and well-established democratic tradition, as evidenced by the massive vote last year for Edmundo González, which was overturned by Maduro and his colleagues. The path to a legitimate government lies in a new election, which even Donald Trump may come to see as necessary at some point. A free and fair election will be resisted fiercely by remnants of the Maduro regime, but here U.S. leverage may make a difference. Even in the absence of boots on the ground, the United States could insist on oversight by the Organization of American States (OAS) or other foreign observers this time around.
That’s a best-case outcome for nation building-lite, and one that is not terribly likely. One clear lesson from prior nation building exercises is that the first priority in any such situation is security, something that takes precedence over democracy in the short run. Venezuela today has one of the highest murder rates in the Western hemisphere. The big threats to security come from the regime itself, and from the criminal gangs and militias that it has fostered. It is hard to see how this problem can be solved by diktat from Washington, which means that there will be mounting pressure for more direct forms of intervention. It is this kind of logic that led to mission creep in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I am not sure that the Trump administration will avoid this any more than its predecessors. Nation building-lite will thus evolve into full-bodied nation building.
I should further note that even if the most optimistic medium-term scenario plays out—that is, there is a new election and a democratic opposition comes to power—the nation building game is not over. Another painful lesson from the past is that opposition groups rooted in civil society often lack the knowledge and skills to govern effectively. Assembling a deep bench of technocrats with real world experience ahead of time will be critical. Many such people exist in the émigré community, but they need to be mobilized ahead of time and be assured of strong continuing support. Whether this will be forthcoming from an administration that has so far focused on undercutting America’s own state capacity remains to be seen.
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is Liberalism and Its Discontents. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column, carried forward from American Purpose, at Persuasion.
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I believe it will be possible for the Trump regime to avoid prolonged involvement or mission creep in Venezuela simply by not caring about the outcome. They don’t need Venezuela’s heavy oil that is difficult to extract and refine. They don’t care for democracy or legitimacy at home, why would they expend energy seeking it elsewhere?
The news headlines and public attention will move on to the next brutal circus and Venezuela will be left to descend further into chaos.
You write: “Democratic legitimacy is not an idealistic luxury that can be overlooked by powerful people; it is itself a component of power.” If only the people in power in Washington fully understood that. If they actively work against democratic legitimacy in their own country, how can they hope to apply its lessons in another land?