Venezuela: denunciada pela esquerda e pela direita (WP)

Left and right have denounced Venezuela’s Maduro. Not the authoritarians

After the strongman claimed reelection Sunday, even leftist allies distanced themselves. Russia, China, Iran and Cuba continue to stand by their man.

By Terrence McCoy

WP, August 3, 2024

In Nicolás Maduro, the United States and its allies see a tyrant: an authoritarian socialist who has brought economic ruin to oil-rich Venezuela, persecuted and imprisoned political opponents, grown rich on narcoterrorism, and repeatedly and brazenly stolen elections.

Russia, China, Iran and Cuba see their type of guy.

In return for a strategic foothold in the Western Hemisphere, Maduro’s closest allies have sent him weapons and oil-refining technology, provided his government with billions of dollars in loans and backed him in each of his confrontations with the West — including now.

Washington and its European partners are questioning the strongman’s claim that he won reelection Sunday. Exit polling and, according to the opposition, the government’s records indicate challenger Edmundo González trounced him. Even his leftist allies in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico are reserving judgment.

But Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Havana were all quick to congratulate Maduro.

The divided response to Maduro’s election claim has made Venezuela the latest battlefield in an emerging global ideological conflict that’s not between left and right so much as authoritarianism and democracy.

From Ukraine to Taiwan, Yemen to Syria, the authoritarian bloc is upending global norms, working to hinder the advance of democracy and transforming what in other times might have been isolated regional disputes into protracted proxy struggles between the liberal and illiberal worlds.

“It used to be that you could get together a few interested parties and manage a crisis,” said Eric Farnsworth, a senior analyst at the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society. “But Russia, Iran and Cuba complicate everything. Their interests are not to manage the crisis, but disrupt the system, to make the management more difficult.”

Their support of Maduro has undermined the international community’s efforts to force Maduro’s exit through diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions. The strongman, the handpicked successor of Hugo Chávez, the founder of Venezuela’s socialist state, has ruled Venezuela for more than a decade, despite widespread belief that he stole the 2018 election.

“Maduro is largely immune from Western pressure,” said Oliver Stuenkel, a political analyst at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Brazil. “He doesn’t depend much on friendly relations with them.”

Some of the support is rhetorical. Iran, North Korea and Nicaragua have offered solidarity, forming a de facto support circle among what might otherwise be isolated pariah states. Venezuela and North Korea, Maduro’s Foreign Ministry says, will forge a “new world order.” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, hosting Maduro in Tehran in 2022, said the countries were “friends in difficult times” who were “resisting cruel imperialism.” (Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash in May.)

Others have offered more than words. Russia, for instance, pledged $5 billion to improveVenezuela’s oil refineries, $1 billion for its gold mining industry — and firepower. Moscow — long one of Venezuela’s biggest arms suppliers — has sold it armored vehicles, tanks, air-defense systems and helicopters, a group of Colombian researchers reported last year in the International Social Science Journal.

At Maduro’s most critical moments, when his grip on power appeared most at risk, Moscow has sent additional military aid. In 2019, when the Trump administration declared him a usurper and recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader, the Kremlin dispatched military planescarrying military equipment and roughly 100 “military technicians.” In the lead-up to the presidential election Sunday, Russia twice sent warships into Caribbean waters — once to dock at a Venezuelan port.

Other support has been less public. In 2019, the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary firm then closely tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin, sent hundreds of contractorsinto Venezuela to beef up Maduro’s security forces, Reuters reported at the time.

This week, video spread on social mediasuggesting the group’s return to Venezuela. A man wearing what appears to be a Wagner arm patch is shown among Maduro’s security forces.

“One of the reasons Maduro is surviving is because of Russian support,” said Vladimir Rouvinski, a Russian political scientist at Colombia’s Icesi University. “Russia sees itself as a great constructor of a new world order, and they need Maduro.”

Cuba is also believed to have providedsignificant military support. Chávez, who brought socialism to Venezuela in 1999, enjoyed closed ties with Fidel and Raúl Castro; the communist island remains Venezuela’s closest ideological ally.

In 2019, exiled former Venezuelan general Antonio Rivero told Diálogo Américas, a publication of U.S. Southern Command, that the countries had signed several agreements to promote the “Cubanization” of Venezuela’s armed forces. Maduro’s personal security force is reportedly staffed largely by Cubans. In 2019, when Guaidó led an attempted uprising against Maduro, then-White House national security adviser John Bolton accused Cuba of having dispatched more than 20,000 security agents to Venezuela.

But most crucial to Maduro’s survival has been Chinese patronage.

Beijing has long been Venezuela’s economic benefactor, its principal creditor and largest oil purchaser. Venezuela has been the largest recipient in Latin America of Chinese loans — an estimated $60 billion, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

When U.S.-led sanctions threatened to maim Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy, China evaded the restrictions by trading through third parties.

It’s difficult to know China’s ambitions in Venezuela. It could be that they want to cultivate and bolster a friend who can help undermine Western interests in South America, a continent rich in natural resources sought by both China and the United States. Or they might just want to make sure they can collect on their loans.

“ It’s very difficult to disentangle how much of this is a financial strategy versus geopolitical in nature,” said Stephen Kaplan, a political economist at George Washington University.

Other analysts see clear political motives. Several say Russia, China and others are pursuing a campaign of political reciprocity in Venezuela to retaliate against the United States for its support of their adversaries inUkraine, Taiwan and other countries.

“This needs to be seen through the prism of a superpower conflict between the U.S., Russia and China, and a complete eroding of the world order,” said Ulf Thoene, a political scientist at La Sabana University in Colombia. “What’s happening in Venezuela is a fight between a candidate clearly backed by Russia, China and Iran — and an opposition that is obviously supported by the United States and Europe.”

That dynamic, he said, has fueled violent quagmires around the world, complicating efforts to usher authoritarian leaders to the exits.

Syrian President “Bashar al-Assad is still in power,” he said. “We were promised he would be gone in weeks, but he’s actually stronger now than he was years ago.”

The same, Thoene fears, could happen in Venezuela.

“With every passing day,” he said, “the likelihood grows that Maduro will remain in power.”

By Terrence McCoy

Terrence McCoy is The Washington Post's Rio de Janeiro Bureau Chief. He has twice won the George Polk Award and was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2023.