Why Did US Quietly Reverse Its Decision to Unilaterally Recognise Venezuela’s Opposition Candidate As President?

“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States… that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election.” But it was only clear for four days. 

Almost two weeks after holding still-disputed general elections, the situation in Venezuela remains volatile and unclear. Violence is rising on both sides. It is still far from clear who actually won the elections. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has still not publicly released the tally sheets confirming Maduro’s victory though it has handed them to the Supreme Court. As I noted in my piece, Groundhog Day in Venezuela, Maduro has a clear motive as well as probably the means to commit wide-scale electoral fraud.

But for the moment there is no conclusive evidence showing that he did.* It is also clear from day one that the strategy of the main opposition forces was to discredit the results if they didn’t win. Hardly helping matters is the fact that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a press release on August 1 congratulating, without definitive proof, the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, on his “overwhelming victory” and calling for a “respectful, peaceful transition,” which right now appears to be the last thing on the cards:

[T]he democratic opposition has published more than 80 percent of the tally sheets received directly from polling stations throughout Venezuela. Those tally sheets indicate that Edmundo González Urrutia received the most votes in this election by an insurmountable margin.  Independent observers have corroborated these facts, and this outcome was also supported by election day exit polls and quick counts. In the days since the election, we have consulted widely with partners and allies around the world, and while countries have taken different approaches in responding, none have concluded that Nicolás Maduro received the most votes this election.

Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election.

The statement also criticises Venezuela’s electoral system, the voting day processes, and the way in which results have been released by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), as if the US were a shining beacon of electoral integrity and transparency. As Plutonium Kim noted in the comments section to yesterday’s links, “the Venezuelan system has always been acknowledged as one of the best in the world when it comes to eliminating fraud — certainly better than the US system.”

The State Department’s unilateral declaration of González’s victory was lambasted by other governments, political analysts, and social movements. They accused the US of attempting to resurrect its failed “Guaidó plan,” in which the Trump administration unilaterally hand-picked a member of Venezuela’s National Assembly, declaring him constitutional president of Venezuela, while at the same time imposing crippling sanctions on the country, beginning a slapstick but deadly farce that would last for most than three years.

Needless to say, the US’s latest attempt to impose its will on Venezuela was quickly relayed, uncritically, by English and Spanish-speaking media:

• CBS News: “US Recognizes Opposition’s Edmundo González As Winner in Venezuela Election”;
• New York Times: “U.S. Recognizes Maduro’s Rival as Winner of Venezuelan Election”;
• Financial Times: “US Declares Opposition Candidate Winner of Venezuela’s Disputed Election”
• El País (translated from Spanish): US Recognises Edmundo González as Winner of Venezuela’s Election

Clearly, the US government was trying to set the narrative. As the El País article notes, “After four days of Washington calling for the publication of the official electoral tallies which, according to the ruling party in Caracas, give victory to Nicolás Maduro, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has gone a step further.”

A handful of US-aligned countries in the region quickly followed suit. On Monday, González and his handler, María Corina Machado issued a statement on Monday unilaterally declaring González as “president-elect” and calling on the police and armed forces to follow his orders, to apparently little avail. But on the same day, the US government took a big step back. And then made a 180-degree turn. In a press conference, State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller clarified that the US still does not consider González as president of Venezuela:

We are not at that point yet (of recognizing him as president). We are in close contact with our partners in the region, especially Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, to find a way forward.

As far as I can tell, this clarification was not reported nearly as widely as the statement it was meant to clarify.

As I noted in my Goundhog Day piece, the moderately left-of-centre governments of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are likely to play a key role in determining how this crisis evolves, and whether or not a negotiated outcome is possible. Unlike most countries, they have adopted a more neutral stance by neither rejecting nor celebrating when Venezuela’s electoral authorities declared Maduro the winner at the ballot box.

Since then, the three countries have issued a joint statement urging Venezuela’s electoral authorities to release tens of thousands of vote tally sheets, considered the ultimate proof of results — something the authorities are still yet to do. The three nations, whose current presidents are Maduro allies, are also holding regular conversations with both sides, according to a senior Mexican official cited by The Associated Press.

For its part, the EU Commission’s diplomatic service has cast doubt on the official electoral results while tentatively suggesting that González “would appear to be the winner… by a significant majority.” Besides the US, six other countries on the American continent have so far recognised Gonzalez’s “victory”: Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Panama.

Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino even offered to host a regional summit of presidents to address the crisis in Venezuela. Coincidentally (or not), Mulina made the proposal on the same day that he met up with the commander of US Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, to renew a memorandum of understanding for air, maritime and ground domain awareness between the US and Panama.

#SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Laura Richardson & Panamanian Minister of Security Frank Alexis Ábrego signed a Cooperative Situational Information Integration (CSII) agreement today in Panama. The Memorandum of Understanding for Air, Maritime, & Ground Domain Awareness between the U.S.… pic.twitter.com/clXbJ46nIc

— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) August 6, 2024

Unsurprisingly, many countries in the region rejected Mulino’s proposal point blank.

“No country has the right to ‘foment actions’ that are not within the framework of respect for the self-determination of peoples,” said the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, or ALBA, whose members include Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela. In a statement, the organisation described Panama’s proposal as “interventionist,” with the aim of destabilising Venezuela or even fomenting a coup in the country.

Crucially, as Venezuela Analysis reports, the presidents of Brazil (Lula de Silva) Colombia (Gustavo Petro) and Mexico (Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) “have all rejected foreign interference and emphasized Venezuelan sovereignty, as well as the need for all parties to pursue a Venezuelan-led solution to the dispute. At the same time, they have demanded greater transparency regarding the results.”

Even Argentina’s Milei government, which was one of the first in the region to cast aspersions on the official results, also appeared to suffer pangs of doubt earlier this week. On Tuesday, the presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni clarified that the Argentine government “is not in a position to proclaim any winner” of the presidential elections in Venezuela, until the situation of alleged electoral fraud is clarified. From La Voce d’Italia:

“We are not in a position to declare a winner because we are waiting to have all the necessary elements to be able to do so. We have asylum seekers there (…) we have to be very careful,” he said at a press conference.

Adorni, when asked why Edmundo González is not being proclaimed, responded that they should wait for the situation to progress and “be very cautious about what happens in Venezuela.” He also added that Argentina has asylum seekers in the custody of other nations and they should be “careful.”

A day later, the country’s Foreign Minister set the record straight (again), reaffirming that it had indeed recognised Edmundo González as president, which would seem to suggest that Argentina’s foreign ministry isn’t, after all, concerned about the aforementioned asylum seekers. They were simply a pretext for taking a brief step back.

Nonetheless, all of this flip-flopping invites the question: why did the US — and to a lesser extent, Argentina — have second thoughts about recognising González?

Could it be that whoever is still running policy in the White House suddenly realised that further chaos and possibly even civil war in Venezuela could hinder efforts to keep a careful lid on oil prices in the months leading up to November’s US elections? While Venezuela’s oil production is a shadow of its former self, in part due to decades of under-investment and mismanagement but also because of US-imposed sanctions, the partial lifting of those sanctions led to a recovery of sorts in 2023.

Or perhaps it was the realisation that another failed intervention in Venezuela could further erode US influence in the region. And perhaps it would enjoy less support than even Plan Guaidó did.

The Guaidó plan was an unmitigated diplomatic disaster for the US and its closest allies, a slapstick spectacle that began with 60 governments around the world recognising his imaginary government and ended with him being deported from Colombia after gate crashing a conference there. By late 2022, allegations of widespread corruption by his “shadow government” had become impossible to ignore and only a handful of countries still recognised his claim to the presidency. Of course, they included the US and the UK, which has continued to hold on to Venezuela’s gold long after Guaidó’s retirement to Florida.

Another possible explanation is that the White House realised that trying to topple the Maduro government could merely serve to fast track the country’s membership of BRICS-plus? It is certainly coincidental that on August 2, Putin, three days before the US walked back its recognition of González, Vladimir Putin invited Maduro to the next BRICS conference, to be held on October 23-24. Venezuela’s foreign minister posted a copy of the invitation on his twitter account which included the following words:

“I am sure that your personal participation will enrich the upcoming discussion, help identify promising areas of multilateral cooperation for the benefit of the world majority and will undoubtedly contribute to further progressive development of Russian-Venezuelan relations.”

A day later (Aug 3), Maduro issued a threat to the Collective West. In a televised address, he said that if the US government and its “partners in the world make “the mistake of their lives” — presumably in reference to their recognition of the opposition coalition’s victory in the election — Venezuela would give the oil and gas blocks that have already been signed over to US and other Western companies “to our allies in the BRICS.”

The BRICS nations already account for the lion’s share of investments in Venezuela’s oil and gas sectors already, Maduro said, adding that the grouping also boasts a “portfolio of interesting opportunities” for  the Caribbean country.

Venezuela boasts the world’s largest oil reserves, though much of it is heavy by international standards, and as a result must be processed by specialised domestic and international refineries. US-based Chevron is currently working in partnership with state-owned PDVSA on five onshore and offshore production projects, including the Orinoco Oil Belt in the east of the South American nation, which has the largest proven oil reserves.

In November 2022, the US granted Chevron a license to resume operations in Venezuela, which experts say has contributed to the increase in Venezuelan oil production, which averaged 904,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the second quarter of this year. Although Washington resumed its sanctions against Caracas last April, after six months of relief, it has issued licenses to international companies to operate in Venezuela. Those licenses could be offered on a platter to the US’ main strategic rivals, China and Russia, if Washington continues with its overt regime-change tactics.

But is this all a bluff on the part of Putin? It is hard to tell. Venezuela has been seeking membership of the BRICS grouping since at least 2015, and when the time finally came to expand BRICS membership early this year, Venezuela’s application was passed over in favour of Argentina, only for the Milei government to reject the invitation.

That said, China and Russia, arguably the two senior BRICS members, were among the first countries to congratulate Maduro on his alleged electoral victory — for obvious reasons. Beijing has made significant investments in Venezuela over the years and there is a not insignificant chance chance that a González/Corrina Machado government not only would not honour those investments but would probably refuse to pay back Venezuela’s debts to China, no doubt citing Beijing’s odious debt trap diplomacy — with US connivance of course.

For its part, Russia has a long-standing military partnership with Venezuela. As a reminder of this, the Smolny training ship of the Russian Baltic Fleet docked in Venezuela’s La Guaira port on Tuesday as part of a what is being dubbed a “working visit”. According to local media, the arrival of the Smolny is part of an effort to strengthen bilateral relations between Venezuela and Russia , which includes areas such as energy, economy, culture, tourism and agriculture.

The ship’s crew is expected to participate in several events , including a wreath-laying ceremony at the Bolívar-Chávez Plaza. They will also visit the governor’s office and take a tour of the historic center of La Guaira. The visit comes just weeks after two Russian military ships, including the Admiral Gorshkov, the most advanced frigate in the Russian fleet, anchored for four days at La Guaira. The visit was intended to strengthen “ military-technical cooperation” between Caracas and Moscow, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said at the time.

There are also (as yet unconfirmed) reports of Wagner units offering support to the local police and army. A few days ago, Zelensky denounced the alleged presence of Russian mercenaries in Venezuela, accusing the Wagner Group of bringing only death and destabilisation wherever it goes. As for Putin, he would presumably like nothing more than to put the US on alert in its own “back yard.”

Lest we forget, Venezuela is the world’s heavyweight champion when it comes to oil reserves. Meanwhile, fellow ABLA member, Bolivia, is home to the world’s largest lithium reserves, and, coincidentally or not, was recently the centre of a failed coup d’état. Was that an expression of the US government’s desire to “box out” its main strategic rivals, China and Russia, from the American hemisphere’s strategic resources? It is not clear.

What is clear is that the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia want to join BRICS+, which is probably the last thing the US wants. China and Russia appear to be willing to open the membership books — they just have to convince the other three founding members, Brazil, India and South Africa, that it is in their best interest, which will be no easy task. As we have been warning since August 2022, Latin America is back on the grand chessboard, as the race for strategic resources and influence intensifies in the new Cold War.

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* Yesterday, the Carter Center’s observation mission confirmed figures that gave the opposition candidate a victory. It also rejected the government’s claims that Venezuela’s electoral system was the target of a cyberattack during the elections last month. This is potentially quite damning given that Venezuela’s Chavista government has traditionally trusted the Carter Center, which until this year’s elections has found little, if anything, to fault with previous elections.

But concerns have been raised that the Carter Center may not be quite as independent an electoral observer as it once seemingly was. One possible reason for this is that its current CEO, Paige Alexander, who was appointed in 2020 — i.e., after Venezuela’s previous election but before this one — has spent the lion’s share of her career working for USAID, the CIA’s soft-power arm. She has also served on the board of the Free Russia Foundation.

If that doesn’t raise enough flags, there’s also the Carter Center’s list of donors to take into account. The highest bracket of sponsors ($1 MILLION+) includes the US State Department, which already declared Venezuela’s opposition candidate as electoral victor before backtracking, USAID, Belgium, the UK Development Office, Pfizer, Open Society, Coca Cola, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Turner Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Foundation, to name just a few. It really is quite an impressive list, which you can see in all its glory here (pages 33-63).

Also, as Bn and William Beyer point out in the comments below, there were many other independent observers and witnesses on the ground from all over the world, lots of whom have described the elections as fair and transparent.