Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (center) holds hands with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega (left) and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa (right) on June 2, 2009. Ortega and Chavez created authoritarian states that have resisted or rolled back the democratization of their countries. (Shutterstock/Harold Escalona)

What Nicaragua Can Teach Venezuela About Democratic Transitions

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Leaving former Maduro regime officials in power will increase the odds of a return to dictatorship in Venezuela.

Venezuela finds itself in an uncertain situation. The Trump administration, having ousted Nicolás Maduro and taken control of crucial oil exports, has promised democratic governance; however, it has not said how or when this transition would take place. In the meantime, it is amicably dealing with the remaining elements of the regime that has held power since Hugo Chávez first took office 27 years ago, and is focusing on encouraging US investment in the country’s dilapidated petroleum industry.

There may be room for skepticism as to whether the United States will, in fact, use its vast power to insist on a genuine democratic transition. But even if one takes President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at their word, the task that they, as well as Venezuela’s opposition, will face will be formidable as they seek to overcome decades of chavista rule. Prior to Maduro’s seizure, there were no signs that the Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela, together with the police and security service, were interested in any such transition.

This was very different from, for instance, the situation in the Southern Cone countries of Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, where in the late 1980s and early 1990s military regimes, knowing that they had lost the support of both civilian elites and the general public, and feeling that they had successfully achieved their goals, were prepared, albeit reluctantly, to return to the barracks in managed transitions.

Unlike the US interventions in Grenada (1983) and Panama (1990), which simply swept out authoritarian rulers and replaced them with democratically oriented leaders. Instead, the United States has sought to affect events through the use of extreme pressure without maintaining a “boots on the ground” military presence. In that regard, the most analogous situation may be that of Nicaragua, where initial success in orchestrating a transition ultimately failed.

Nicaragua’s Temporary Return to Democracy

In Nicaragua, the United States both imposed a full-scale trade embargo and supported an insurgency (the so-called “contras”), which ultimately forced the Liberación Nacional (FSLN) regime, headed by Daniel Ortega, to hold elections and led to its replacement by a series of democratically elected presidents who governed for 17 years beginning in 1990.

However, in 2007, Ortega and the FSLN returned to power, and he, together with his wife, has turned the country into a brutal, personalist dictatorship. His return to power provides a cautionary tale for Venezuela, should it too pass through its own transition.

After he lost in 1990, Daniel Ortega insisted that the Sandinistas would........

© The National Interest