What did Trump and Maduro talk about?: The background of the ultimatum that increases pressure on Venezuela

LOOK: The strategists behind the siege of Maduro in Venezuela: Who directs the US naval and diplomatic offensive in the Caribbean?

When asked by journalists about the subject, the tycoon said: “I don’t want to comment on that, the answer is yes.” “I wouldn’t say it went well or badly. It was a phone call”. He made no further comments.

Later, the Republican senator Markwayne Mullin He told CNN that Washington proposed to Maduro to leave Venezuela.

“We gave Maduro a chance to leave. We told him he could go Russia or that I could go to another country,” Mullin declared.

The newspaper El Nuevo Herald gave more details of the conversation. He reported that his sources confirmed that Trump guaranteed Maduro safe passage for himself, his wife Cilia Flores and their son if he agreed to resign immediately.

A source told El Nuevo Herald that The call stalled for three reasons. “First, Ripe asked for one global amnesty for any crimes committed by him and his group, and that was rejected. Second, they asked to maintain control of the Armed Forces and in exchange, they would allow free elections.”

The third point of friction was the calendar: Washington insisted that Ripe He had to resign immediately, and Caracas refused, said El Nuevo Herald. There was no more direct contact.

According to Herald, after the Trump’s Saturday announcement to close Venezuelan airspacethe Maduro regime tried to communicate with Washington again, but received no response.

Officially, The United States has maintained that the military deployment in the Caribbean is for drug interdiction efforts.

Since September 1st, The United States carried out attacks against twenty boats suspected of drug trafficking in the Caribbean and the Pacific, with a death toll of at least 83.

Besides, Washington accuses Maduro of leading the Cartel of the Suns, an alleged Venezuelan mafia included in its list of terrorist organizations and which it accuses of flooding the United States with drugs.

A point of no return

The Venezuelan political scientist Luis Nunes manifests to The Commerce that the response of Ripe to the ultimatum of trump translated into a series of demands: remain in power for up to 18 more monthsthat the tokens of Chavismo are not removed and guarantee the continuity of Chavista control of the Armed Forces. Requests that, in the logic of a negotiation, respond to the “ask for more to give less” strategy.

However, the response from Washington would have been blunt. On the recommendation of the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio —who would also have participated in the exchange—, Trump rejected each of the conditions. His message was unequivocal, says Nunes: there will be no concessions or gradual negotiation. The alternative proposed was simple and extreme: leave the country immediately or face harsher consequences.

For the analyst, The result was a conversation “that ended very badly.” and that could mark a point of no return. From that moment on, he maintains, the possibility of a negotiated exit is considerably reduced and opens the way to a climbing scenerather than a freezing of the conflict. “What they had to talk about, they talked about,” summarize.

The fact that the call had been requested by the man himself Ripe —and not because trump— is also key. For some sectors of US politics, this contact generated criticism, as it was a government that Washington has classified as linked to terrorism. Even so, Trump would have agreed in line with his speech of avoiding new conflicts and, in his narrative, try to resolve the crisis without starting another war, says Nunes.

At the Venezuelan internal level, the panorama seems increasingly fragile for Ripe. Nunes assures that his absence at a recent official military event would not have been coincidental, but rather a reflection of the growing mistrust within the military ranks. He also points out, movements of officers who would have left the country and a structure of loyalties sustained more by incentives than by conviction.

Nunes emphasizes that Maduro’s future does not depend only on him. The analyst says that the Chavista leader will not make decisions alone. Rather, responds to a power structure in which Cuba would play a central roleeven above actors like China or Russia. “He does not decide for himself; he receives instructions,” he concludes.

In this context, the options are narrowed: a negotiated exit under imposed conditions, a forced fall or a final entrenchment that further increases tension. And everything indicates that time, as he warned trump on that call, it’s running out, Nunes concludes.

Francesco Tucciprofessor of Political Science and International Relations at the Peruvian University of Applied Sciences (UPC), tells The Commerce that the leak about the call suggests a head-on clash between two logics of power: Washington seeks a “surrender with a safe exit” and Maduro tries to negotiate a transition that preserves the heart of the regime, that is, Chavista control over the Armed Forces and broad guarantees of impunity.

“In that narrow margin is where short-term scenarios open up and where the calculation of the military leadership and hard Chavismo is played out”says the analyst.

Add that Trump’s ultimatum seeks to force a quick “dictator into exile” type exitminimizing the costs of a prolonged military operation and sending a deterrent signal to other regimes.

Tucci maintains that The formula offered by Maduro, an exit scheme inspired by the Nicaraguan case of 1990, aims to guarantee real continuity of the regime beneath the institutional façade.maintaining the military-economic structure that supports Chavismo, and reducing the risk of internal and external persecution for human rights violations, corruption and drug trafficking.

As for what can happen now, Tucci sees three possibilities: Persistence of the negotiated route under high pressurewhich may be accompanied by negotiation windows to offer “exits” to sectors of the regime. An escalation of the conflict which can translate into intensification of operations against drug trafficking networks linked to the regime, selective maritime blockades, cyber operations and eventually “surgical” strikes, rather than a conventional invasion, which would have very high political and regional costs. And a prolonged freeze and “managed” crisiswhere the regime resists, toughens repression and internal control, while the international community manages the humanitarian and migration crisis without managing to fundamentally alter the correlation of forces.

In parallel, Tucci maintains, the role of the Armed Forces emerges as one of the decisive factors. Chavismo, he says, has for years built a civil-military model in which the high command not only supports the government, but is also a structural part of power. Active and retired officers occupy key positions in ministries, state companies and strategic sectors, forming a network of loyalties based on benefits, promotions and complicities.

According to Tucci, the calculation of this dome would respond mainly to two variables. The first is personal and collective survival: For many commanders, the permanence of the regime is seen as their only shield against possible judicial proceedings or extraditions. Any transition without extremely solid guarantees represents, in their perception, an existential risk.

The second is the evaluation of the correlation of forces. As long as they perceive the opposition to be fragmented, the international community lacking the will to intervene directly, and the external allies of Chavismo still willing to support it, the dominant tendency will be to close ranks with Maduro. Only a combination of overwhelming external pressure and credible guarantees could open cracks in that bloc.

“Until now, public gestures have been ones of reaffirmation of loyalty to Maduro.”accompanied by internal purges and arrests of figures suspected of dissidence. This points to continued support in the short term, rather than an imminent breakout. However, in regimes of this type, fractures are not usually announced: they occur when a sector of power concludes that sacrificing the leader is the necessary price to save the system,” Tucci finishes.