New reparations model makes Kremlin kleptocracy pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction - Democracy Digest

New reparations model makes Kremlin kleptocracy pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction

Democracy Digest

October 31, 2022

https://www.demdigest.org/new-reparations-model-makes-kremlin-kleptocracy-pay-for-ukraines-reconstruction/

Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction should be financed by funds sanctioned from the Kremlin’s kleptocrats, argues Azeem Ibrahim, Director of Special Initiatives at the New Lines Institute of Strategy and Policy. 

In thirteen legal conclusions, new Multilateral Action Plan on Reparations spells out an international legal process to identify, collect, and distribute sanctioned Russian money, for the benefit of Ukraine, he writes for New Europe:

• Our legal analysis envisages the creation of a new fund and compensation commission, drawing on the precedent of the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) established to compensate Kuwait in the face of Iraq’s invasion in 1990.
• Signatories of this agreement would commit to seize Russian assets within their jurisdiction, in accordance with their national and constitutional requirements, and place them into the fund, for subsequent distribution by the new compensation commission.
• Ukrainians and the Ukrainian state could petition a commission for reconstruction and reparation funds. Once evidence of necessity was produced, the commission could draw on funds gathered by these methods and disburse the money.

  Karen Dawisha’s book Putin’s Kleptocracy noted that hundreds of billions of dollars are paid to regime affiliates in bribery money alone, Ibrahim adds. A creative treaty regime could render those assets available for the fund.

In combination with several U.N. resolutions and a ruling from the International Court of Justice that have found that Russia has waged a war of aggression, the International Law Commission’s Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts establish the international legal basis for transferring Russia’s reserves to Ukraine, adds Robert Zoellick, a former U.S. trade representative, deputy U.S. secretary of state and World Bank president.

In doing so, the U.S. and allied countries wouldn’t be taking Russian reserves for themselves; they would transfer them to an international fund for compensation. The U.S. should also propose to the U.N. that frozen Russian reserves could finance a U.N. claims commission to compensate low-income countries victimized by Russia’s shock to food supplies, he writes for the Wall Street Journal.

How do we build a truly comprehensive international response to stymie kleptocratic regimes like Russia? asks Ryan Arick, Assistant Program Officer at the International Forum for Democratic Studies.

“Sustaining the Momentum: Countering Kleptocracy in Russia and Beyond” was the focus of a recent event at which experts and practitioners discussed democracies’ collaborative efforts to increase transparency in the financial sector, leverage sanctions against malign actors, and connect anti-kleptocracy actors across sectors. But more needs to be done, not just related to the war in Ukraine, but also in the broader global context where kleptocratic networks can thrive, he writes:

• USAID Executive Director of the Anti-Corruption Task Force Shannon N. Green (@ShannonNGreen1) outlined USAID’s current efforts to meet this challenge, which include the launch of a “de-kleptification guide” and a global support fund for independent journalists.
• Nate Sibley (@NateSibley) advocated for a democratic, global economy founded on “friend-shoring,” or increasing coalitions among like-minded countries, to protect vital institutions and reduce vulnerabilities to malign influence.
• As for the professional enabling industries, the U.S. Helsinki Commission’s Paul Massaro (@apmassaro3) urged, if we “can clean those sectors up, we can effectively defang our adversaries.”
• Publish lists of targeted assets, or appoint commissioners to oversee anti-corruption work and serve as points of contact for civil society and others focused on the fight against kleptocracy, said Nikita Kulachenkov (@nekulachenkov).

Last year, the Biden Administration released a presidential memorandum identifying corruption as a core national security threat; the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Anti-Corruption Task Force; and several pieces of legislation have been introduced to target professions in open societies that enable kleptocrats to hide their illicit funds, Arick adds. RTWT

For the past several years, Oliver Bullough, a former Russia correspondent, has guided “kleptocracy tours” around London, explaining how dirty money from abroad has transformed the city, the New Yorker adds. His book, Butler to the World – one of the best of 2022 – argues that the UK actively solicited such corrupting influences, by letting “some of the worst people in existence” know that it was open for business.

U.S. image ‘plummets’ in leading democracies - Democracy Digest

 

U.S. image ‘plummets’ in leading democracies

Dalibor Roháč

Democracy Digest, September 2020

Opinion of the United States keeps falling in 13 advanced democracies, including staunch American allies, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center, The Post reports.

“In several countries, the share of the public with a favorable view of the U.S. is as low as it has been at any point since the Center began polling on this topic nearly two decades ago,” Pew noted. Those surveyed, on the whole, placed less confidence in the U.S. doing “the right thing regarding global affairs” than authoritarian leaders like Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Eighty-five percent of people in other wealthy democracies believe the United States handled the coronavirus pandemic poorly.

“In at least seven nations, including key allies like Britain and Japan, approval ratings for the United States plunged to record lows,” The Post’s Adam Taylor observed. “In Germany, just 26 percent of the respondents held a positive view of the United States — the lowest rating since 2003, the year of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.”

The U.S. failure to address the Covid pandemic is a major factor in the decline in the country’s global standing.

“Despite the trillions of dollars the United States has spent on national security in the past two decades, it was not prepared to combat this wholly predictable threat,” wrote Rozlyn Engel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Its emergency response was challenged by a heavy reliance on foreign medical equipment and highly interdependent supply chains,” she observed in a recent study. The pandemic may now leave American middle-class households more disillusioned with globalization and less willing to pick up the costs of military and diplomatic engagements, obligations to international organizations, and new trade and investment deals.”

The US handling of Covid-19 does not make it a ‘failed state’ or a complete outlier, says analyst 

The number of per capita deaths in the US is lower than in the UK and on a par with Sweden’s – hardly a success story in the current pandemic but arguably a country at more-than-decent levels of economic development and governance. The US case fatality ratio (a somewhat tricky metric when the true number of cases is unknown) is close to global average, just below Germany’s. Death rates recorded in Belgium, Spain, the UK and Italy are worse than in the US.

The picture is by no means a flattering one. But in no other country has the pandemic been portrayed to the same extent as a fatal indictment of its social contract and system of government as in the US, he writes for The Critic.  

A survey of U.S. voters published this week by the Eurasia Group Foundation found majorities favored restoring international pacts like the Paris climate accords. More than twice as many  — 56 percent compared to 23 percent — sought to increase engagement with the world compared to those who wanted less.

A pandemia estimula autoritários a expandir seu poder - Democracy Digest

Covid-19’s latest victim: Hungary’s democracy

Democracy Digest, March 25, 2020

https://www.demdigest.org/covid-19s-latest-victim-hungarys-democracy/

Covid-19 is about to claim a new victim: Hungary’s democracy, argues Dalibor Rohac, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

The country’s parliament is set to adopt a new law that will give the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban a legal mandate to rule by decree, without any sunset clause and without parliamentary oversight. The government initially sought to fast-track the legislation and adopt it already on March 24, but it lacked the supermajority needed to accelerate the proceedings. The party, however, does not lack the votes to ensure that the legislation is passed through the normal legislative process a few days later, he writes for The Washington Post.

The brazenness of Orban’s power grab is without parallel in recent European history, Rohac adds.

Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are leading practitioners of the art of political imitation, the subject of a recent book.

Russia’s political development since the end of the Cold War is central to Ivan Krastev and

Stephen Holmes’s insightful and important The Light That Failed, which examines the rise of authoritarianism and the decline of liberal democracy, notes Aryeh Neier, president emeritus of the Open Society Foundations and author of The International Human Rights Movement: A History.

Russian officials often attributed major responsibility for color revolutions in countries of the former Soviet Union to U.S.-government–funded institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute. (He also blamed my institution, the Open Society Foundations, for contributing to these developments), he writes for The New Republic:

Putin saw support that these bodies had provided to like-minded organizations in these countries as thwarting his efforts to reconstitute the Soviet Union, at least as a unified bloc under Kremlin leadership. Russian legislation adopted in 2012 required nongovernmental organizations that accepted foreign funds to declare themselves to be “foreign agents,” delegitimizing them. Additional legislation adopted subsequently imposed further restrictions on Russian organizations conducting “political activities”—broadly defined—that received funds from the United States and other foreign donors. Putin has called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century. As he believed that American institutions played a part in frustrating his efforts to reverse that catastrophe, he had ample incentive to engage in imitative reprisals.

Of course, the manner in which Russia intervened in U.S. elections in 2016 differed from the role played by bodies such as the National Endowment for Democracy in elections in the former Soviet Union, Neier adds. It is one thing to fund a program for the training of election observers; it is quite another to establish fake social media accounts to disseminate false rumors and smear particular candidates.

Authoritarian leaders are constantly searching for scapegoats, working to rile up the fears of their populace, and trying to tighten their grips, note the Atlantic Council’s Melinda Haring and Doug Klain.

To them, the coronavirus pandemic is a bonanza—the liberal democracies that would typically call them out for their violence, repression, and racism are distracted, with the necessities of stopping the virus in their home countries, they write for The National Interest. If these strongmen go unchecked, the COVID crisis may end with all of us emerging to find a world in which authoritarianism triumphs. More political prisoners, more presidents-for-life, and more despotism.

As we witness democratic backsliding around the world, Lawfare is releasing a two-part podcast series on the state of global democracy, notes Jen Patja Howell. In the first segment, Benjamin Wittes interviews Alina Polyakova and Torrey Taussig about “The Democracy Playbook” and strategies for fighting illiberal political movements. 

For this episode, David Priess spoke with Michael Abramowitz and Sarah Repucci of Freedom House. 

RTWT

Estados Autoritários: a principal batalha é a de ideias - Democracy Digest

China launches counteroffensive in the war of ideas

Calder Walton

Democracy Digest, February 23, 2020

For China’s one party-state, the West’s promotion of liberal democracy is part of an ideological struggle led by an adversary that is still vastly superior, a situation that Chinese strategists describe as xiqiang woruo (“the West is strong, while China is weak”). The hostile forces are  liberal democratic ideals and their corollaries – constitutional democracy, universal values, individual rights, economic liberalism, free media – which have been identified by the CCP as deadly “perils,” says analyst Nadege Rolland.

In the battle for influence, the power discrepancy is not so much technological as it is about an imbalance in “discourse power”. In China’s evolving strategic lexicon, this term refers to the ability not only to articulate attractive ideas, but also to be listened to, to influence others’ perceptions, and eventually to shape the international conversation [employing what the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] calls ‘sharp power‘], she writes for the Lowy Institute’s The Interpreter:

Beijing believes the West has used its power in this domain to dominate the international system and the world order. Words are not merely instruments of communication used to facilitate exchanges and discussions; they convey concepts, ideals, and values that are the foundation for the norms on which the international architecture is constructed and thus determine how the world order is run. In sum: Whoever rules the words rules the world. In the eyes of the CCP, the West’s superior discourse power is an existential threat more imminent than the remote possibility of a foreign military invasion. RTWT

As Russia and China’s sharp power push continues to gnaw away at our societies, institutions, and alliances, Western responses are often defeatist, notes CEPA’s Edward Lucas who encountered this at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February when he presented a report – Firming up Democracy’s Soft Underbelly: Authoritarian Influence and Media Vulnerability[PDF].

“I had some specific practical ideas about how to protect our information system. But many people in the audience thought I was aiming too low. The real, essential issue was surely regulating Facebook? My response is that we need to do both,” he writes:

We certainly need big-picture, high-level responses. They come slowly, but even talking about them has a deterrent effect. We also need to take specific steps wherever we can, even at the most micro-level. For example, highlighting information attacks whenever they occur alerts other people and helps make these stunts less effective next time. Setting benchmarks for good practice gives others examples to copy.

Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, has reconstituted and updated the KGB’s old Cold War playbook for the new digital age, analyst writes in Spies, Election Meddling, and Disinformation: Past and Present, an article for the Brown Journal of World Affairs. His paper, an exercise of applied history, has two aims: first, to understand the history of Soviet disinformation, and second, to make sense of Western efforts to counter it during the Cold War. Doing so provides policy-relevant conclusions from history about countering disinformation produced by Russia and other authoritarian regimes today.

China is ‘unlikely to simply collapse’ - Democracy Digest

A União Soviética era algo como uma "aldeia Potemkim", ou seja, uma grande farsa, um castelo de cartas, ou de areia, esperando a derrocada final, tantos eram os absurdos acumulados em setenta anos de bolchevismo irracional, ineficiente, inoperável.
A China é diferente, como alerta esta matéria de Democracy Digest: é uma grande civilização, que já era um Estado avançado muitos séculos atrás, que decaiu durante dois ou três séculos, mas que vem se recompondo, como a maior ditadura burocrática existente em todos os tempos. Um Estado orwelliano, diferente do stalinismo idiota dos bolcheviques.
Essa situação precisa ser reconhecida pelos pesquisadores.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Adversary or enemy? China is ‘unlikely to simply collapse’

The Soviet Union and its satellites were an apparatus of state terror, resting on an ideology of class hatred, foisted on nations that wanted no part of either. It was always a house of cards, says analyst Bret Stephens. China is not like that. It’s a regime, but it’s also a nation and a civilization, and the three are tightly woven. It will evolve one way or another, but it’s unlikely to simply collapse, he writes for The New York Times:

Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China has behaved in increasingly nefarious ways. Domestically, it has shifted from one-party to one-man rule and become a surveillance state that locks up innocent people by the hundreds of thousands in concentration camps. Abroad, it snoops, steals, kidnaps, cheats, pollutes, undermines, corrupts, proliferates, and bullies. …China also poses an underappreciated danger. By many measures, it has already peaked. Its economy is sliding; its debt is exploding; its population is aging; its workforce is shrinking; and its most successful citizens are leaving. Rising powers can bide their time. Declining ones — at least authoritarian ones — tend to take their chances. 

And yet, Stephens adds…… As the Canadian scholar Michael Ignatieff once pointed out (in a different context), there’s a difference between adversaries and enemies — between those whose designs “you want to defeat” and those whose very existence “you have to destroy.”

Xi is now engaged in ideological competition with liberal democracy, invoking cultural diversity as a pretext for asserting Beijing’s sharp power, reports suggest.

Although information is increasingly globalized and internet access is spreading, China and other authoritarian states have managed to reassert control over the realm of ideas,  Christopher Walker, Vice President at the National Endowment for Democracy, told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on China’s emerging digital authoritarianism and global influence operations (above).

For its part, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its associated institutes have set in motion a response to this multifaceted challenge, he added:

NED’s programmatic approach to addressing China’s influence around the world that threatens democratic norms, standards and institutions is anchored in three interrelated components: developing and accelerating the capacity of think tanks, civil society and journalists to study and analyze Chinese influence in politics, the economy and society; strengthening the ability of these actors, including those working in the civic technology space, to respond appropriately and strategically; and linking efforts at the country level with counterparts engaged in similar work around the world.

On Thursday, May 16 at 9 am, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence addressed China’s emerging digital authoritarianism and global influence operations targeting the United States and its partners (above):

Under President Xi Jinping’s leadership, China is deploying on an unprecedented scale a pervasive surveillance network that harness advances in emerging technologies – including artificial intelligence and machine learning – to eliminate domestic political dissent and optimize the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) political control. Alarmingly, China is exporting this model of technology-driven social control to countries throughout the world, contributing to an international resurgence in and slide towards authoritarianism in many emerging democracies.

In addition to the NED’s Walker, the Committee has invited the following witnesses to attend:

• Dr. Samantha Hoffman – Non-Resident Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre
• Peter Mattis – Research Fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
• Dr. Jessica Chen Weiss – Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University

Among other issues, the Committee will seek testimony about:

• China’s adoption and exportation of invasive surveillance measures designed to optimize political control, including the social credit system and Huawei’s “Safe City” solution;
• China’s overseas influence operationstargeting the U.S. and Five Eyes governments, including the activities directed by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front Work Department; and
• The Chinese Communist Party’s return to a personalistic dictatorship model, rising nationalist sentiment within China, and the implications of Beijing’s efforts to challenge the international order.

A Hungria de Orban: um regime iliberal reacionario - Democracy Digest

Os amigos do chantecler na Europa são esses mesmos da extrema direita: Salvini, Orban e outros.
Não se trata de regimes simplesmente conservadores, ou liberais de direita.
Como indicado na matéria, se trata de regimes iliberais, ou seja reacionários.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

‘Hungary is lost’: Orban presses on with illiberal democracy

Beda Magyar

Democracy Digest, April 10, 2019

Viktor Orbán is destroying Hungary’s democracy. The institutions, the legal system and the social fabric are nothing but a pile of rubble. And the EU let it happen, argues , a Hungarian academic, formerly with Central European University (CEU) in Budapest.

Instead of simply believing that Hungary is a democracy, the time has come to look for evidence to prove that it is not a dictatorship, she writes in a must-read analysis for Die Zeit (in English):

Instead of the EU or its member states believing that democracy defends itself, the time has come to realize that it is the most fragile of all forms of government, since anybody can make a bid for power. Yet it is exactly this feature that gives democracy its greatest strength: that of relatively quick self-correction. But the tipping point toward self-destruction is visible only in hindsight.

A government spokesman said (HT: Foreign Policy) Hungary will not allow flexibility on its rules for international universities, meaning the Central European University founded by George Soros will likely continue its move to Austria later in the year.

Many of Orban’s domestic policies have been straight out of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s playbook, says Peter Kreko, an analyst at Political Capital, a Budapest-based think tank.* “Orbán has imposed his will on state media and much of the private-sector media has been bought up by pro-government oligarchs turning them into mouthpieces of the government. That’s similar to what has happened in Putin’s Russia,” he says. Russia has also been a “role model in terms of how to deal with NGOs,” he tells VOA.

“Of course, Orbán can’t go as far as Putin can with Hungary being a member of the EU. I wouldn’t want to say that Hungary is like Russia these days. Russia is a full-fledged authoritarian state, an electoral autocracy where elections are rigged. I think Hungary is becoming a hybrid regime but it is still a place where elections matter. But by the time you arrive at elections, the game has been twisted,” he says.

This year Freedom House deemed Hungary only “partly free,” the first time in its history an EU member state has been denied the designation “free.”

Kreko and other analysts say that Orbán’s attraction to the governance of Vladimir Putin and even China’s Xi Jinping is dictated partly by his critique of Western Europe, VOA adds. “He see Western Europe as less dynamic,” says Julius Horvath, an economic professor at the Sorus-funded Central European University.

“You know the growth rates of Italy and some other European countries are much lower than Hungary’s. The Hungarian government is in a certain way very pro-business and is happy to attract business wherever it comes from with low taxes or longer working hours,” he adds.

But on the issue of authoritarianism, he adds, the opposition has a mountain to climb, Kreko tells VOA.

“There’s pushback on Orbán here in Budapest among liberals and progressives, but it is not an issue outside Budapest for ordinary people. Orbán really understands the mindset of Hungarian voters: he plays the role of the freedom fighter and his regime delivers. We’ve had considerable economic growth for more than five years now.”

*A partner of the National Endowment for Democracy.

China: o modelo capitalista autoritario e os limites da autocracia meritocratica - The Economist

‘Claws of the Panda’: China model going backwards?

Democracy Digest, February 25, 2019

Chen Tianyong, a Chinese real estate developer in Shanghai, boarded a flight to Malta last month with no plans to return anytime soon. After landing, Mr. Chen, a former judge and lawyer, shared on social media a 28-page article explaining himself. “Why I Left China,” read the headline, “An Entrepreneur’s Farewell Admonition,” the New York Times reports:

Many members of the business elite are unhappy that the leadership’s economic policies favor state-owned enterprises even though the private sector drives growth. They are angry that the party is trying to put a Mao-era ideological straitjacket on an economy driven by private enterprises and young consumers. They are upset that the party eliminated term limits last year, raising the prospect that Mr. Xi could become president for life.

“The most important cause of their pessimism is bad policy and bad leadership,” said Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College [and contributor to the NED’s Journal of Democracy]  who is in frequent contact with business figures. “It’s clear to the private businesspeople that the moment the government doesn’t need them, it’ll slaughter them like pigs. This is not a government that respects the law. It can change on a dime,” he told the Times.

Since Mr Xi took power in 2013, China has in some ways gone backwards, the Economist observes:

As our essay this week explains, two decades ago it was possible, even sensible, to imagine that China would gradually free markets and entrepreneurs to play a bigger role. Instead, since 2013 the state has tightened its grip. Government-owned firms’ share of new bank loans has risen from 30% to 70%. The exuberant private sector has been stifled; its share of output has stagnated, and firms must establish party cells which then may have a say over vital hiring and investment decisions.

There is mounting concern generally about China’s influence campaigns in countries like Canada, much of it executed through the United Front Work Department, a secretive offshoot of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) known to work with ethnic Chinese organizations overseas, the Calgary Herald adds:

According to its website, the Vancouver-based United Association of Women and Children has 1,500 members, branches in several provinces and a focus on equal treatment and work opportunities for women — but it lists no contact information. Two B.C. leaders of the non-profit sector dedicated to helping women in business — Laurel Douglas of the Women’s Enterprise Centre and Lisa Niemetscheck of WebAlliance — told the National Post they had never heard of it.

The group seems to have “all the hallmarks” of a front organization to further Beijing’s interests, says Jonathan Manthorpe, whose just-published book, Claws of the Panda, documents China’s influence campaigns.

“Establishing fake civil society NGOs is an established modus operandi” of the United Front, said Charles Burton, a Brock University professor and former Canadian diplomat in Beijing.

Thanks to blockchain, internet users have achieved some victories in the fight against China’s strict internet censorship, notes Nir Kshetri, Professor of Management at the University of North Carolina – Greensboro. A historic moment occurred when Peking University‘s former student, Yue Xin, penned a letter detailing the university’s attempts to hide sexual misconduct. The case involved a student, Gao Yan, who committed suicide in 1998 after a professor sexually assaulted and then harassed her, he writes for the Conversation:

The letter was blocked by Chinese social networking websites, but an anonymous user posted it on the Ethereum blockchain. In another case, in July, Chinese citizens used blockchain to preserve an investigative story which condemned inferior vaccines being given to Chinese babies. …A blockchain is a secure database that’s stored in a distributed set of computers. Every addition to the database must be digitally signed, making clear who’s changing what and when.

Increasing Chinese leadership in the Middle East is served by a growing interest among the region’s states to pursue the “China Model” at the expense of the “Washington Consensus” that has traditionally defined foreign economic presence in the region, analyst Nicholas Lyall writes for the Diplomat:

The China Model – characterized by a strictly controlled political arena, as well as state control of the economy’s commanding heights, accompanying market capitalism – resonates significantly with Middle Eastern governments. Despite the fact that Middle Eastern regimes have largely proven incapable of achieving the state capacity, industrialization, and institutional structures imperative to the success of the China Model, the appeal of Beijing’s economic alternative is likely to remain a source of Chinese soft power that consolidates its economic influence vis-à-vis the US in the Middle East.

Venezuela: um Estado mafioso – Democracy Digest

Venezuela: Why is this moment different?

Democracy Digest, February 22, 2019

https://www.demdigest.org/venezuela-why-is-this-moment-different/

Venezuelan soldiers opened fire on a group of civilians attempting to keep open a segment of the southern border with Brazil for deliveries of humanitarian aid, leading to multiple injuries and the first fatality of a massive opposition operation meant to deliver international relief to this devastated South American country, according to eyewitnesses and community leaders, the Washington Post’s Anthony Faiola  reports.

Venezuela has seen major protests before. Why is this moment different? The LA Times asks. The humanitarian crisis and Nicolas Maduro’s reelection last May, widely denounced as fraudulent, have helped mobilize international opposition, said David Smilde, a Venezuela expert at Tulane University.

“That claim rang hollow internationally,” he said. “Of course, the U.S. has always supported the opposition, but there was not the widespread international support in Europe and the region supporting the opposition movement.”

A shift in strategy towards institutional or constitutional politics is a key element, analyst Javier Corrales tells Freedom House. 

Opposition demographics are another factor making Venezuela more conducive to change.

The recent protests involve a broader segment of the population, including poor neighborhoods that traditionally supported Chavez and Maduro’s socialist policies and benefited from subsidized housing and food, said Manuel Felipe Sierra, a journalist and political analyst. People perceive Guaido not as a representative of a political party but rather a leader representing a response to the humanitarian crisis.

“The social and economic crisis is so great that what you see on the street is not only from the political opposition,” he said.

A former intelligence chief in Venezuela who is one of the government’s most prominent figures turned against President Nicolás Maduro on Thursday, calling him a dictator with a corrupt inner circle that has engaged in drug trafficking and courted the militant group Hezbollah, the New York Times reports:

In interviews with the Times, the former intelligence chief, Hugo Carvajal, 58, who is a congressman in the governing Socialist Party, urged the military to break with the president ahead of a showdown with the opposition on Saturday over Mr. Maduro’s blockade of aid shipments on the country’s borders.

“It has been more than enough,” Mr. Carvajal said in a statement, which was also released in a video online on Thursday and addressed to Mr. Maduro. “You have killed hundreds of young people in the streets for trying to claim the rights you stole. This without even counting the dead for lack of medicines and security.”

There have been more than 48,900 anti-government protests since 2013, mostly consisting of large groups of neighbors, public workers and university students, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict. The human rights group reports that protests in 2018 surpassed the two previous largest waves during 2014 and 2017, the LA Times adds.

Prospects of transition hinge heavily on shifting the military’s allegiance to Maduro, observers suggest.

“You can inoculate a few top level military commanders, but not the rank and file and not the PdVSVA workers,” says one analyst. “Repression and targeted rental and corruption income is a not a viable strategy for Maduro to remain in office.”

One leading analyst is “a little bit skeptical” that U.S. rhetoric will prompt the military to “flip and support Guaidó.”  Nevertheless, “I think president Maduro does have his days numbered,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue.

“The opposition is more united than ever, the pressure is very intense, both within this hemisphere and the major European countries, and so there needs to be a negotiation of some sort to give some protections or some guarantees to the armed forces who are guilty of human rights violations and other criminal activities,” he told the BBC. “That is all going to be complicated and it will take a lot of time as we have seen in other transitions.”

A Venezuela free of the influences of the Russian autocracy and the Cuban dictatorship is an objective that the world’s democracies should support, arguesMoisés Naím, a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Cuba: a parasitic state

Cuba is going to dig in to protect Maduro in the weeks ahead, but not the Russians and surely not the Chinese, says Vanessa Neumann, who founded the political risk firm Asymmetrica.

“He is a Cuban puppet, educated and raised in part in Cuba,” she says, adding that by Venezuelan law, Maduro should not have taken over after Chavez’s death before finishing his term. The National Assembly leader at the time was next in line, not him.

“Chavez anointed him from Havana, with Cuban recommendations is my guess,” she says. “They are a parasitic state. They milked the USSR. They sponsored the FARC in Colombia. They milked Venezuela. Watch out, Mexico, because I think you’re next.”

Venezuela is the perfect target for Russian intervention. With geopolitical influence and financial investments at stake, Putin has his eyes on Washington’s backyard. But the mounting chaos in Caracas could derail Russia’s renewed global ambitions, adds Naím, a former National Endowment for Democracy board member.

Our research, reflected in two recently published Wilson Center reports, examines differences in China-Venezuelan and Russian-Venezuelan economic relations. For China, oil ties mean Beijing has to be pragmatic about nonintervention, but Russia has geo-political aspirations, say analysts Stephen B. Kaplan and Michael Penfold.

Previously, the cornerstone of the Russia-Venezuelan relationship had been military ties, with Venezuela buying more than $4 billion in Russian arms and military equipment. ….But Moscow appears to be learning from China’s Venezuelan hedge by diversifying its strategic hand beyond the geopolitical card, they write for the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog:

Facing mounting financial arrears, vulnerable supply chains, U.S. court battles over Citgo shares used as loan collateral, and U.S. sanctions on the Rosneft CEO, there are limits to how far Rosneft can extend its financial exposure in Venezuela. ….The guiding principles of Russia’s involvement in the oil and gas sectors are also mostly political rather than commercial. In a recent Wilson Center report, analyst Vladimir Rouvinski suggests that Russian political elites “sincerely believe there is an opportunity to improve the situation sometime in the future with Chavistas still in control of Venezuela.”

The EU has taken constructive steps to address the crisis in Venezuela, but the lack of a common European position could threaten progress towards a peaceful transition of power, says European Council on Foreign Relations analyst Pawel Zerka. Europe should do better on Venezuela, he states.