From oil and cooperation on drug trafficking to his own head: What could Maduro offer to appease Trump?
The announcement that the US president is willing to talk with the Venezuelan leader offers an uncertain window of opportunity for a negotiated solution to the crisis between the two countries
One question is currently hanging over Washington — on pause for the Thanksgiving holiday — and Caracas, tense with the prospect of the United States carrying out its threat of military intervention in Venezuela: will Presidents Donald Trump and Nicolás Maduro talk, as the former hinted at in statements to the press on Tuesday? And while that question remains unanswered, another arises: What could Maduro offer the Republican in order to change his mind?
“I think there’s only one thing that could achieve that goal: for him to say he’s going to leave. The problem? That’s precisely the one thing Maduro isn’t going to offer,” says Phil Gunson, a British Crisis Group expert who has lived in Venezuela for 26 years. “He’s already put many things on the negotiating table, regarding energy and other natural resources, and they didn’t work,” Gunson recalls, referring to rounds of talks prior to Secretary of State Marco Rubio taking the reins of the negotiations. “And we already know Rubio’s approach, which is very ideological: for the United States, Maduro is the head of this supposed Cartel of the Suns. He has to go. It’s non-negotiable. Anything else will be interpreted as a failure for him, and who knows, it might even mean the end of his tenure as head of the State Department.”
However, the Venezuelan president has more options at his disposal. Immigration, for example. He could also commit to doing more to curb drug trafficking, a pretext Washington is using in its campaign of extrajudicial killings in international waters in the Caribbean, despite evidence showing that Venezuela’s role in fentanyl trafficking is nonexistent, and negligible in the case of cocaine.
“Given that Trump’s presidency is built on reality TV, it is possible that Maduro could succeed in convincing him to accept more public and numerous deportations of Venezuelan migrants than currently,” warns Christopher Sabatini, senior research fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
The expert recalls that the then-Republican candidate presented Venezuela during his presidential campaign as “a matter of national interest,” arguing that Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang that originated in the South American country, had taken over Aurora, Colorado — which wasn’t true — and that Maduro had emptied his prisons to fill the United States with criminals. “Trump needs something that allows him to say he has fixed those two problems — illegal immigration and drug trafficking — so he can declare victory,” he adds.
Sabatini does not rule out a third option: that the Venezuelan president offers — if not his own — “some heads” of high-ranking Chavista officials whom U.S. authorities consider to be at the head of the Cartel of the Suns, “such as Diosdado Cabello or the siblings [Jorge and Delcy] Rodríguez.”
Economist Víctor Álvarez, who served as Minister of Basic Industries and Mining under Hugo Chávez between 2004 and 2006, believes that the Venezuelan president has reached this point with no real possibility of demonstrating strength: after years of sanctions, isolation, and pressure, his survival has depended more on political astuteness than military power. What remains for him then? “Offering the oil industry to U.S. companies to ensure a stable supply of crude and limiting the scope of Venezuela’s agreements with Russia, China, Iran, and other geopolitical rivals of the United States,” says Álvarez, a longtime critic of the Maduro government.
Ask for a lot, settle for less
“Plan A was always to increase the military presence in the Caribbean, and with that, force Maduro out under unbearable pressure,” says David Smilde, a professor at Tulane University, in a telephone conversation from New Orleans. He ventures that the Venezuelan president could offer that access to natural resources to “stay in power, maybe a couple more years, and call early elections.” “Although the Biden administration already burned its bridges with those unfulfilled promises,” he adds.
So far, that Plan A hasn’t worked, Smilde insists, so now Trump might accept concessions that didn’t work for him months ago. “That’s Trump’s negotiating style, for whom Venezuela is an unresolved issue, one he couldn’t settle during his first administration: making maximalist demands and then settling for much less, as long as he can pass it off as a victory,” the analyst says. “He’s done it, for example, with China and the tariffs.”
What seems clear is that an intervention in Venezuela could cause Trump problems at home. Recent polls show 70% opposition in the United States to such a military adventure, and his base of supporters, the MAGA movement, doesn’t want to hear about anything other than a focus on American problems. “That’s why Trump wants to talk to Maduro,” Sabatini believes, “because he’s not at all sure about the wisdom of his military plans, and given that the attacks on the boats and the unprecedented military deployment haven’t worked. That’s why, because he likes to think he can talk to anyone, be believes he’s capable of convincing any criminal autocrat,” he adds.
In Washington, memories have resurfaced of the script the U.S. president followed with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un during his first term. After months of teetering on the brink of a conflict with unpredictable consequences, the two declared the crisis over with a face-to-face meeting in Singapore, the first in history between a U.S. president and a leader of the Pyongyang regime. Beyond a theatrical display of appeasement for the world, little else came of it.
But while Trump, then and now, likes to sell himself as a born negotiator, “an expert at presenting failure as success,” Gunson points out, Maduro comes to the call with little room for maneuver, according to Venezuelan political scientist Benigno Alarcón, a professor and specialist in conflict analysis and negotiation at the Andrés Bello Catholic University of Caracas.
The reputation the Chavista regime gained in previous negotiations is severely damaged, following multiple broken agreements, he warns. “Washington knows that any benefit Maduro promises can be obtained with more guarantees and better conditions under a democratic government. The problem is that the United States does not recognize Maduro and will always prefer to negotiate with a legitimate government,” Alarcón argues. “Venezuela will only change course when it perceives a collision as imminent. Until then, and as long as it believes it is possible that the United States will back down again as it has in the past, it will continue to resist.”
And if that patience finally runs out, Maduro will always have an escape route from the country, although he himself knows it won’t be easy in a world in which autocrats no longer live in gilded exile, their money safely tucked away in secret Swiss bank accounts. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to go to Cuba,” warns Sabatini, who, along with other experts consulted for this report, agrees that his best option would be Russia. There, they add, he could join forces — under the protection of President Vladimir Putin — with Bashar al-Assad, the deposed dictator of Syria.
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