The lack of major defections from Venezuela’s armed forces reflects both the power and the perversion of their anti-imperial, developmental, and pro-social role under Hugo Chávez, writes Asa Cusack (LSE Latin America and
The lack of major defections from Venezuela’s armed forces reflects both the power and the perversion of their anti-imperial, developmental, and pro-social role under Hugo Chávez, writes Asa Cusack (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre).
n.b. republished courtesy of Al Jazeera; Creative Commons licence does not apply
Guaidó has unified an opposition prone to fragmentation, received recognition from scores of foreign countries, and gained the support of various international institutions. But despite his offer of an amnesty for military personnel transferring their allegiance to his presidency, only a handful of Venezuela’s thousands of generals have made the switch. Even a major standoff over allowing US aid into the country on February 23 saw only a small number of defections by low-ranking officials.
So what went wrong? In short, Guaidó’s plan to remove Maduro with military help was undermined by his misjudgment of military perceptions of the opposition and the resilience of Venezuela’s decades-old civil-military alliance. But this should not be seen as bad news. Military action of any kind, internal or external, would be fraught with danger in Venezuela’s volatile situation. A negotiated transition towards free elections offers a far better way forward.
Rolling the dice on military mutiny
Guaidó’s first gamble, when declaring himself president on January 23, was that members of the military high command were simply waiting for an opportunity to overthrow Maduro. But the intoxicating mix of newfound unity and foreign support proved misleading, and there were no significant defections.
A month later, Guaidó and the Trump administration orchestrated a standoff at Venezuela’s borders over the entry of humanitarian aid, hoping that military officials would refuse to be directly and publicly complicit in the suffering of their countrymen by blocking aid at the border.
But the assumption that moral pressure and declarations of a possible amnesty would be enough again proved misguided.
The power of Venezuela’s civil-military alliance
The backdrop to any discussion of the Venezuelan military must be its politicisation long before and during the presidency of Hugo Chávez.
Although Chávez is often depicted as having burst on to the public stage out of nowhere, he founded the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 within the military in 1982, some 16 years before his election win in 1998.
By 1992, the movement had grown strong enough to launch a viable coup attempt against President Carlos Andrés Pérez, ultimately landing Chávez in jail and sowing the seeds of the popular support that would later win him the presidency.
In office, Chávez developed this movement into a broader civil-military alliance that emphasised social responsibility, participation in national development, and anti-imperialism.
Today these three pillars of the civil-military alliance play contradictory roles in the ongoing crisis.
Anti-imperialism and the old enemy
Given that their core function is to protect the homeland from foreign invaders, armed forces everywhere already have a natural inclination towards nationalism, but a Bolivarian ideology centred on escaping the oppressor’s yoke only reinforced this tendency in Venezuela. And while for Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar the oppressor was Spain, by the end of the 20th century the United States had come to occupy this role.
This in itself makes the US sponsorship of Guaidó’s bid to unseat Maduro extremely hard to swallow for the military. More fuel was added to the fire by National Security Adviser John Bolton admitting that Venezuelan oil is a motivating factor for US involvement and by Trump assigning the Venezuela portfolio to Elliott Abrams, best known for his role in covering up gruesome atrocities and illegally channeling funds to murderous paramilitary armies in Central America in the 1980s.
Economic and existential threats to the top brass
Participation in national development also meant that over time – and especially as Chávez gradually lost trust in other actors – the military began to play a greater role in the national economy, both licit and illicit.
For those at the top of the tree, privileged and poorly controlled access to anything carrying a state subsidy – most notably food, oil, and dollars – enabled different forms of speculation. Cheap food and oil could be smuggled into Colombia, Brazil, and the Caribbean and sold at a huge mark-up.
Demand for dollars combined with capital controls created a black market whose exchange rate soon soared above the fixed official rate, allowing cheap state dollars to be recycled through the two markets, the difference in prices passing from state coffers into private hands. Control over borders and remote areas of the national territory also facilitated involvement in drug trafficking.
US sanctions against the top brass involved in these activities have proved counterproductive, effectively linking their fate to that of Maduro. His downfall could see them held to account by an incoming opposition government or extradited to the US to face prosecution.
Although Guaidó has proposed an amnesty for military figures who switch sides, this strategy has been gravely undermined by his US allies. John Bolton, for instance, warned that Maduro could yet end up in Guantanamo, whereas “follower of Christ” Senator Marco Rubio hinted at his fate by tweeting i