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interesting times

The former envoy Elliott Abrams says the administration should push harder for regime change.

Hosted by Ross Douthat

Produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Victoria Chamberlin

Mr. Douthat is a columnist and the host of the “Interesting Times” podcast.

What is actually happening in Venezuela? Is it a real regime change? A cynical attempt to replace one dictatorship with another? An even more cynical grab for oil revenue? A Trumpian break with past U.S. policymaking, or just Yankee imperialism as usual?

My guest this week helped make U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America under three different Republican presidents: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump in his first term. He’s intimately familiar with coups and civil wars and successful transitions to democracy, and he’s long been an advocate of overthrowing Nicolás Maduro, but maybe not overthrowing him this way.

Below is an edited transcript of an episode of “Interesting Times.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ross Douthat: Elliott Abrams, welcome to “Interesting Times.”

Elliott Abrams: Thank you.

Douthat: Last November, you wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs with the very-much-of-the-moment title “How to Topple Maduro: And Why Regime Change Is the Only Way Forward in Venezuela.” Congratulations, he has been toppled. Is this the policy — to the extent that we know what the policy is — that you wanted and argued for then?

Abrams: No. I was arguing for a policy of regime change, and we don’t seem to have that policy. The regime is still in place in Caracas fully. Um, and the, if you will, the frontman, Delcy Rodríguez is being accepted by the United States. She is surrounded by indicted drug trafficking criminals who are still in place.

So I would like to hear more from the administration about how we move from this moment to democracy in Venezuela. We have heard the word “elections” from the president, from the secretary of state, but we’ve heard nothing about how and why they think this bunch of criminals is going to commit suicide by leading to a democratic transition.

Douthat: So, stepping back for a second, and we’ll dig into the situation on the ground, but just walk me through the basic argument for why regime change in Venezuela should be a priority for the United States — what the benefits of actually changing the regime, not just changing the frontman, are supposed to be.

Abrams: Sure. Venezuela was at one time just about the leading democracy in Latin America, in a very prosperous country. Under Chávez and Maduro, they’ve ruined all that. It’s now a brutal dictatorship that, first of all, has immiserated the people of Venezuela, has led to the greatest refugee flow in the history of Latin America.

Eight million Venezuelans, about a fourth of the population, have moved out, which creates obvious difficulties for all of their neighbors, including us. With that high a migration flow, they have invited into Venezuela Cuban thugs, and Hezbollah and Iran, as well as Russia and China. So, it’s a security issue for the whole region, again, including for the United States.

There’s also the oil question, which I frankly think is marginal, given world oil markets. I think the president is exaggerating that pretty wildly. But they do have a lot of oil. They also have some critical minerals, some rare-earth minerals that should be investigated further for the benefit of Venezuela and us as well.

And Venezuela is one of the reasons that the regime in Cuba remains in place, because it gives a substantial amount of subsidized or free oil to Cuba, which is propping up that vicious regime. So a transition to democracy in Venezuela would benefit, first of all, the people of Venezuela, but everyone else in the Caribbean and Latin American region and us.

Douthat: Can you just talk for a minute more about the geopolitical component? When you say the regime in Venezuela has invited in Hezbollah or invited in Russia or China, just make that concrete. What are we talking about in terms of both presence and advantages for our adversaries in having a friendly regime in Caracas?

Abrams: For Hezbollah, for example, and Iran, we know that the Maduro regime gave them blank passports so that agents of Iran and Hezbollah could be moving around Latin America and elsewhere under false identities. We know that Iran has helped not only give drones to the Venezuelan military, but helped them learn how to build drones.

We know from the Israeli experience with Iran, drones can go a very long distance now. We’re talking about drones that can hit not only Puerto Rico, but hit the continental United States. When I was in the State Department doing this about five years ago, Iran was contemplating giving intermediate-range missiles, which could reach the United States, to the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

So this is an actual security threat in Latin America and to us.

Douthat: And on the drug side of things, the Trump administration has been talking about drug trafficking, obviously. The charges against the dictator Maduro are related to drug trafficking. At the same time, Venezuela has never been seen as a central node for fentanyl.

You know, for the aspects of the drug trade that Americans are most concerned about, that have killed most Americans. What is Venezuela’s role in the drug trafficking networks right now, in your estimation?

Abrams: Well, I think the fentanyl issue is completely phony. But the cocaine issue is not phony. The coca comes from Colombia and moves east into Venezuela and is trafficked out of Venezuela — or at least was until the last couple of months — by air and by sea. Some of it — much of it, I think — goes toward Europe.

But some of it comes to the United States. It is not an accident that the E.L.N., the guerrilla group that’s heavily engaged in drug trafficking now, is mostly in western Venezuela, having been driven out — substantially driven out — of Colombia by the cooperation between the U.S. and the governments of Colombia over the years.

Venezuela is a keynote in the trafficking of Colombian cocaine.

Douthat: What do you think the administration is actually thinking at the moment in terms of — from what you can see? You were in the first Trump administration. You’re obviously not in the second Trump administration, but what is their calculus, based on what we know after, you know, three or four days?

Abrams: It is not entirely clear to me. But ——

Douthat: Nor to me.

Abrams: But let me do the best I can. The Trump administration has reached the conclusion that an immediate transition to democracy, to a government run by Edmundo González, who was elected president a year and a half ago, and María Corina Machado is not possible, instantly.

And therefore we have to work on a transition, and for the transition you have to work with the guys who are in there now. So what you do is, you begin to make demands. And we will make demands, we’ll make demands about the oil industry, we’ll make demands about getting the Iranians, Hezbollah, Cubans, et cetera out.

I’d like to think we’ll make demands about politics and human rights. So far, we haven’t. But this is a process. It’ll take some time, but we’ll get there, and we’ll get to free elections, and we’ve got to work with the people who are there. But we can make this work for the benefit of the Venezuelans and, of course, for our benefit.

I mean, I think that’s the administration view.

Douthat: Do you think that that’s naïve, unrealistic? What do you think is likely to happen if that is the plan? What would you expect?

Abrams: I think the problem with that plan is that we are relying on a bunch of criminals to drive themselves from power willingly, to commit suicide. In the Latin American cases, with which I’m familiar from my time in the Reagan administration, we did a lot of transitions in Latin America, in South America. There’s always a negotiation with the army.

There is always a process. It does take time. There was always an amnesty. In those cases — Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile — we were talking about generals. These people are not generals. These people are just criminals. And they face a very difficult fate if and when they leave power, and they don’t want to leave power.

So we are relying on them to conduct a reform program. Or, I hope we are. Otherwise, you’ll never get to democratization and free elections. I will give you a concrete example. It was fairly shocking to me that in all the appearances the administration made over the weekend — Secretary Rubio, I think, did every Sunday show — he did not demand the immediate release of all political prisoners. Why not?

I can understand that there are things that you think Delcy Rodríguez can’t do. She can’t fire the strongmen of the regime. The minister of defense, Vladimir Padrino López, or the minister of interior, Diosdado Cabello, maybe. But if she can’t free political prisoners, then she has no power at all, and we’re dealing with the wrong person.

So I think this is the fundamental problem with the way the administration has set this up. Our interests do not coincide with the interests of the people in this regime still running the country — unless we are perfectly happy with endless dictatorship, brutal dictatorship in Venezuela, which, by the way, will only increase the flow of migrants out of Venezuela.

Douthat: So let’s take that possibility, because I think certainly there are probably people inside the Trump administration who are indifferent to the question of democracy in Venezuela. I’m doubtful that Secretary Rubio is one of them, but I think some people would be, who might say that some of the things that you listed earlier that the United States could want from Venezuela, a change above all in its relationship to hostile actors, to Iran, Russia, and China, are perfectly possible in a world where some kind of dictatorship remains in power.

And essentially then from an America-first perspective that the president likes to talk about, you can have a world where effectively you take the regime and flip its geopolitics and say: “OK, you’re still a dictatorship, but guess what? Now you’re America aligned. Our oil companies are coming back in. Maybe we want your help toppling the Cuban regime. Who knows? But we don’t care one way or another about democracy.”

What else do you see, abstracting away from moral considerations to the extent that you can, what else do you see as wrong with that view of what the administration might be thinking?

Abrams: Point 1: This regime, which again, remains in place, is thoroughly corrupt. I do not think you will have the economic revival that we want, that the United States wants, with this corrupt group in........

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