When the United States arranged an exchange of prisoners with President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela last week — sending home two nephews of Mr. Maduro’s wife who had been convicted of drug trafficking in a swap for seven Americans held in Venezuelan jails — it exposed the incoherence of U.S. policy toward Venezuela.
Even as it negotiates with Mr. Maduro, the White House continues to insist that Juan Guaidó, an opposition politician, is the real president of Venezuela. The United States has no formal diplomatic relations with the Maduro government, and the embassy in Caracas has been closed since early 2019, shortly after President Donald Trump recognized Mr. Guaidó as president in an unsuccessful, long-shot bid to force Mr. Maduro from power.
It is time for the Biden administration to accept that the Guaidó gambit has failed and that most Venezuelans, and most of the international community, have moved on. The White House needs a Venezuela policy based on fact, not fiction. And the fact is that Mr. Maduro is president of Venezuela and Mr. Guaidó is not.
Accepting reality will have many potential benefits — not least to the Venezuelan opposition, which is in the midst of a turbulent effort to remake itself.
After Mr. Trump announced his support for Mr. Guaidó in January 2019, dozens of other countries followed Washington’s lead. But today, only a dwindling handful continue to recognize Mr. Guaidó as Venezuela’s president, and, like the United States, eschew direct diplomatic ties with Mr. Maduro’s government.
And that list is getting shorter.
Gustavo Petro, the newly elected leftist president of Colombia, moved quickly after taking office in August to abandon his country’s recognition of Mr. Guaidó and reopen its embassy in Caracas. That change is crucial because Colombia has long been Washington’s most important ally in South America and a key supporter of Mr. Guaidó.
Brazil, another powerful backer of Mr. Guaidó, could be next, if Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva retakes the presidency in a runoff election later this month.
Mr. Guaidó was always president in name only — he had no government and no power to act inside Venezuela. He showed courage when he defied Mr. Maduro’s repressive regime, but he never had a viable plan, beyond vague hopes for a military coup or for U.S. intervention. And he was wedded to Mr. Trump’s sanctions-heavy approach, which exacerbated Venezuela’s economic crisis.
Mr. Guaidó’s claim to an alternate presidency rested on his role as head of the National Assembly, but his legislative term ended last year, and at that point many of his supporters inside and outside of Venezuela gave up on the notion.
Today, Mr. Maduro is stronger than he was three years ago, and the opposition is in disarray.
Dropping the pretense that Mr. Guaidó is president would set U.S. policy on a rational foundation but would not be an endorsement of Mr. Maduro. It could facilitate talks with Mr. Maduro over key areas, including the wave of Venezuelan refugees entering the United States and possible changes to economic sanctions related to oil exports. A resumption of consular activities would make it possible for citizens to obtain or renew visas and passports.
One of the greatest beneficiaries could be the Venezuelan opposition, which is in a turbulent, and necessary, state of flux. The opposition has been harshly repressed by a Maduro government committed at all costs to staying in power; while the opposition has made many missteps, it is the primary political force in the country committed to democracy and the defense of human rights, and it is therefore critical to finding a solution to the country’s crisis.
Over the last two years, most mainstream Venezuelan opposition parties have been thrown into crisis, hemorrhaging activists, splitting apart in leadership squabbles or watching once-loyal voters defect.
The government has frequently stepped in to stir the pot, using the courts or electoral authorities to order the takeover of parties by substitute leadership that is considered suspect by the rest of the opposition. But in most cases, the divisions were there to be exploited.
Venezuelans are fed up with opposition parties that often seem more interested in fighting with each other than in improving the country’s fortunes.
At the same time, new parties have emerged, organizing around new leaders.
The political changes were evident in elections held last November. The opposition won a third of the mayorships around the country, after previously holding fewer than one in ten. And although the opposition won just four governorships out of 23, it received a majority of votes in all but a few states. The reason it didn’t win more governorships was that multiple opposition candidates split the vote, essentially handing victory to candidates allied with Mr. Maduro.
The lessons of November were powerful. The election showed that Venezuelans still see the ballot box as a way out of the nation’s troubles. It unmasked the weakness of the government party among voters. It demonstrated, once again, that lack of unity is the opposition’s Achilles’ heel.
And it revealed gains for the nontraditional opposition, with about half of total opposition votes going to candidates outside the coalition led by the four mainstream parties, according to Eugenio Martínez, a journalist who specializes in election analysis.
Venezuelan politics are now aimed at a presidential election that will take place in 2024.
Will the opposition come together to choose a single candidate, or will it remain divided? The United States has urged Mr. Maduro and the opposition to resume negotiations that could lead to improved electoral conditions. But who will sit across the table from Mr. Maduro’s negotiators?
So far, Washington has thrown its weight behind the Unitary Platform, a rebranded coalition led by Mr. Guaidó and the traditional parties, which is seeking to steer the choice of a 2024 candidate and which controls the team that would negotiate conditions with Mr. Maduro.
But by continuing to uphold the fiction that Mr. Guaidó is president of Venezuela, the administration makes it harder for the opposition to go through the necessary process of reforming itself. The United States must acknowledge reality — as it relates to who actually governs in Venezuela and the need for Venezuelans to fashion the opposition that they choose. That is the only way that Washington can play a constructive role in solving Venezuela’s crisis.
William Neuman is a former New York Times reporter and Andes region bureau chief, and the author of “Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela.”
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