US wargames played out scenarios for Maduro’s fall. None of them ended well for Venezuela

Original article by Tom Phillips, Latin America correspondent

Nicolás Maduro is chased out of office by a massive popular revolt but the Venezuelan military takes to the streets, turning its guns on the civilians who have brought him down.

A palace coup sends Venezuela’s authoritarian leader into exile, sparking a bloody power struggle between members of his disintegrating regime.

Maduro or a key ally is assassinated by a US “decapitation” strike but – as foreign soldiers commandeer Caracas and key airports and ports – leftwing insurgents tighten their grip on the country’s mineral-rich hinterlands and regime loyalists launch guerrilla-style attacks on oil refineries and pipelines.

These three scenarios were all contemplated six years ago during US government “war games” designed to predict what a post-Maduro Venezuela might look like if the South American dictator was overthrown by an uprising, a palace revolution or a foreign attack. None of them ended well.

“You’d have prolonged chaos … with no clear way out,” said Douglas Farah, a Latin America expert whose national security consulting firm was part of those 2019 strategising efforts.

In all three of the discussion-based simulations, the upheaval triggered a fresh exodus of refugees across Venezuela’s borders with Colombia and Brazil, as citizens fled skirmishes between rival rebel groups or foreign occupiers and loyalist troops.

“Everyone wrestling with this issue [is] sort of hoping that you could wave a magic wand and have a new government [in Venezuela],” said Farah. “I think the reason it hasn’t happened is because people sat down and thought: ‘Wait a minute. What the hell are we getting ourselves into?’”

The Venezuelan politicians battling to end Maduro’s 12-year rule reject claims that his downfall would inevitably thrust their country into a maelstrom of bloodshed and retribution.

María Corina Machado – the Nobel laureate and leader of the political movement widely believed to have beaten Maduro in last year’s presidential election – called claims Maduro’s exit could plunge Venezuela into violence similar to Syria’s civil war “utterly unfounded”.

“Venezuela is a country with a long democratic culture and a society that is set on recovering that democracy,” she told the Guardian in Oslo on Friday after slipping out of her country to receive the peace prize.

Miguel Pizarro, another opposition leader, dismissed the suggestion Venezuela was doomed to become a South American version of Iraq, Libya or Haiti if Maduro was toppled. “The truth is that Venezuelans took their decision [in last year’s election] … it was Venezuela’s greatest ever social consensus.”

Allies of Donald Trump – who has spent recent months ratcheting up the pressure on Maduro with a massive military deployment, deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the seizure of an oil tanker – also play down the dangers of a possible US intervention.

But many experts and South American diplomats are sceptical things will go so smoothly – irrespective of how Maduro’s deposition comes about.

“If there’s a popular uprising, the military is probably gonna be very defensive, very violent and reactionary to the protests on the street. [You’ll have] a lot of people dead,” warned Farah, who thought, in that scenario, it was possible Colombian guerrillas, including the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissident members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) might enter the fray on the side of Venezuela’s nominally leftwing regime.

A coup had the potential to produce “a huge vacuum of power” with rival armed actors battling to fill Maduro’s shoes. “You might have four different folks saying: ‘OK, now I’m in charge,’” Farah said.

If foreign troops were deployed, they would probably be able to take control of big cities and infrastructure such as ports and airports. But they faced the possibility of asymmetric attacks from government loyalists or Colombian rebels and a protracted battle to regain control of gold mining regions already under the influence of the ELN. “[Defeating them is] a long-term proposition that would require a lot of money, a lot troops and probably some casualties,” Farah said.

Whatever happened, Farah feared post-Maduro Venezuela was likely to suffer “a huge mess that would last a while”. “None of this [is] going to be resolved in three weeks. You’re talking years.”

Farah is not the only observer who frets that sudden political change could have dire consequences for the oil-rich South American country.

Last week the chief foreign policy adviser to Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, warned upheaval in Venezuela could transform the region into a Vietnam-style “war zone”.

Juan González, the White House’s top Latin America official under Joe Biden, also said he feared the potential for violent retaliation.

“I have this recurring dream about Venezuela … of Maduro getting dragged through the streets like Benito Mussolini,” González said of the Italian dictator who was captured while trying to flee to Switzerland in 1945 and shot by a firing squad.

“You just never know what the trigger is … [Muammar] Gaddafi was very much in power until he wasn’t,” González added of Libya’s former leader, who also met a grisly end after being captured by his enemies.

González hoped a negotiated solution could still be found despite the escalating tensions.

“Negotiations are long and hard fought and require compromise. But history shows us that they’re the most effective way to actually promote a transition,” he said, warning that toppling Maduro didn’t necessarily mean the situation would improve. “It could actually get worse,” he said, pondering what might happen if a regime hardliner such as interior minister Diosdado Cabello, who runs Venezuela’s repressive security forces, succeeded Maduro.

Farah thought a temporary power-sharing deal might be one way to avoid the “massive fracturing” of Venezuela between rival factions. But for that to happen, difficult choices would have to be made, possibly including letting “massive human rights violators” off the hook and giving Maduro safe passage out of the country and some form of immunity for alleged crimes against humanity.

An indication that the opposition might accept some such compromises came last week when the Washington Post reported that Machado’s opposition believed only a “‘limited’ purge of top Maduro officials would be necessary” once he was gone.

But many of the alternatives were even uglier. If the security situation spiralled out of control post-Maduro, Farah feared Washington’s temptation might be to engage mercenary groups and private military contractors, rather than put US boots on the ground.

“[That] gets you closer to an Iraqi-type scenario, where you have multiple non-state groups doing multiple things on the ground that no one has control over,” Farah warned.

“If things go south, that’s one of the options they will look at,” he predicted, “and that would be very damaging”.

Additional reporting by Camille Rodríguez Montilla in Oslo