What role will Kamala Harris or Donald Trump have against Venezuela if they win the US presidency?

The president of the United States who is elected next month, whether it is the current Democratic vice president Kamala Harris or the former Republican president Donald Trump, will probably adopt a pragmatic strategy, agreed with other governments and guided by North American bipartisanship on Venezuela, according to experts .

Harris and Trump will star in the November 5 presidential election without a clear favorite, although recent polls give a slight advantage to President Joe Biden’s right-hand manwhile in Venezuela expectations increase about the role of the United States in an eventual democratic transition and a turn to the acute political and human rights crisis that the country is suffering.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro aspires to be sworn in in January after having officially won the electionswhile his opponents invoke greater pressure from the international community, with Washington at the helm, to demonstrate their presumed victory and initiate the change towards the presidency of their former candidate Edmundo González.

Tamara Taraciuk Broner, director of the Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, estimates that the political situation in Venezuela will not be a priority for the United States.

“It is difficult to know what the position of a government in the United States is going to be, be it Democrat or Republican, mainly because Latin America is not a priority, there is a lot of competition in the world with other crises that attract attention,” he told the VOA the leader of the project that analyzes democracy, human rights, anti-corruption practices and citizen security on the continent.

However, he notes, whoever wins the November election must understand that Latin America – and Venezuela in particular, due to its electoral political crisis – have a connection with the internal issues that will take precedence in their decision-making.

“If there is no solution (in Venezuela), there will be an impact on migration and also on security in the region, because it would mean the consolidation of an abusive regime with clear links to organized crime in South America,” he says. Taraciuk Broner.

“None is good for their neighbors, nor for the United States,” he insists.

According to the pollster Poder y Economía, one in 4 Venezuelans plans to emigrate due to the political and human rights crisis derived from the controversial presidential election in July. The opposition He says he has proof of having won it comfortablywhile the government represses and detains hundreds of dissidents.

According to the Inter-American Dialogue analyst, the White House will approach foreign policy issues with pragmatism and with greater preparation of its work team, whatever the case may be, since it will be the second government in which either Harris or Trump will participate.

A bipartisan approach

The United States and Venezuela broke diplomatic relations in 2019, amid prolonged tensions between Caracas and Washington. For years, Chavismo has denounced alleged violent conspiracies to remove it from power and the White House has criticized undemocratic practices and the alleged complicity of the South American government with organized crime.

Among Venezuelans, today there is “a lot of interest” in the development of the November elections in the United States, says retired diplomat and former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations, Milos Alcalay.

For South Americans, he emphasizes, there is no clear favorite for the US presidency, but it is key that there is a common strategy on Venezuela that both Republicans and Democrats support. That is, it should be a bipartisan cause, he emphasizes.

“For us, it is important to maintain a bipartisan relationship so that any of the two who reach the highest position can develop state diplomacy to carry out the principles and values ​​of democracy and freedom,” says Alcalay.

Harris’ continuity

None of the United States presidential candidates has detailed their possible lines of political action towards Venezuela or their programmatic approaches, insists international relations specialist and retired professor from the Central University of Venezuela, Elsa Cardozo.

Harris, being vice president of the current administration of President Joe Biden, has published some comments on the political-electoral crisis in the South American country in recent weeks. In August, he sent a letter to opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González, whom anti-Chavismo identifies as the elected president of Venezuela.

In it, he pledged to support “a respectful and peaceful handover of power” after the controversial election results, which declared Maduro the winner. The document was sent before González Urrutia he went into exile to MadridSpain.

If Harris wins, “continuity” of the White House policies towards Venezuela of the last 4 years is expected, Cardozo believes. One of its characteristics will be “the political use of economic sanctions in a persuasive manner” against the ruling party, he explains.

The maintenance of economic sanctions and the relaxation of some of them have been managed with the objective of persuading the Venezuelan government to adopt “certain political behaviors”, which favored the signing of the Barbados Agreements, in October 2023, and that there would be presidential elections in July, the analyst maintains.

“Some sanctions were imposed, others were removed, important concessions were made. That international pressure played an important role,” he comments to the VOA.

Another feature of the Biden-Harris administration has been to articulate United States policy with that of other actors, such as the European Union and Latin America, he indicates.

If she wins, Harris would reinforce the so-called “reconstruction of the transatlantic link” on the part of the United States, he points out. The White House and Europe have moved “at the same pace” before and after the controversial election in Venezuela, jointly demanding the detailed publication of the electoral results and without recognizing Maduro as the winner, he points out.

The third point that Harris would continue, according to Cardozo, would be the maintenance of direct negotiations with the Venezuelan government, as evidenced in the exchanges of detainees and in matters of energy interest for both nations and Europe.

Trump’s questions

A victory for Donald Trump would raise “a few questions” regarding his actions towards Venezuela, Cardozo believes.

According to analysts, Trump, who governed the United States between 2016 and 2020, led a policy of maximum pressure to force Maduro out of power by reinforcing sanctions on institutions and the Venezuelan energy industry, between 2017 and 2019.

The energy conditions of the American and European region are no longer the same as then, Cardozo highlights. “The immigration issue will also weigh heavily on the decisions made about the Venezuelan case,” he warns.

It is estimated that nearly 8 million Venezuelans have emigrated from their country in recent years. Hundreds of thousands of them have moved to the United States to request political asylum. Last month, Trump said that if elected in November, he would carry out “the largest deportation” of immigrants in his nation’s history.

“We are going to get those people out. “We are going to take her back to Venezuela,” he said at a press conference in California in September.

In July, upon accepting the Republican nomination, Trump indicated that crime rates in Venezuela had decreased because its criminals had been sent to the United States. Experts in the criminal area in the South American country refuted that statement.

During the only debate between the two, the former president said that if Harris won he would turn the United States into “a Venezuela on steroids,” alluding to his crisis.

If he regains power in Washington, Trump would exhibit “less confrontation” with Caracas than there was during his first term, Cardozo estimates.

Trump would be so “unpredictable” that he could maintain the same policy of easing sanctions as the Biden administration and the communication channels with Caracas to seek agreements with the Maduro government, if he does not admit that he could have lost the July election and swear to another presidential term in January 2025, he says.

The former US president had “very big frictions and big rifts” with many Latin American countries and the European Union during his government, Cardozo assesses. “If his policy ends up being confrontational with Latin America and Europe, the possibility of articulating alternatives would be broken” to resolve the crisis in Venezuela,” he warns.

Less than a month before the election in the United States, no analyst inside or outside the United States has a crystal ball to anticipate the decisions of Harris or Trump regarding Venezuela and Latin America in general, warns Taraciuk Broner, for his part.

He agrees, however, that the White House will have the opportunity to offer “carrots and sticks” to achieve a solution to the Venezuelan crisis, together with its neighbors.

“Due to the history of anti-imperialist language in the region, it is not advisable to do it unilaterally,” he points out. “It is more beneficial for the cause to do it in coordination with other governments,” he concludes.

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