The eyes of autocrats and despots all over the world are on Venezuela, for no other reason than they want to see the collective West’s resolve tested. As it stands, the Maduro regime looks to be getting away with stealing yet another election and damning the people of Venezuela to yet more time under the grips of an autocratic, socialist regime.
As we write these words, the Maduro regime has already killed over a dozen people. Over 2,000 people have been arrested, and pro-government militias are spreading fear throughout the country. There have even been reports stating the presence of the Russian Wagner Group and Cuban mercenary groups on the streets supporting the regime.
While protestors are working hard to push for change, the reality is that the current political leadership in the West is not doing enough to support the Venezuelan people. Several countries are asking Maduro to provide proof of his alleged victory. Some braver leaders like Giorgia Meloni and Javier Milei have gone as far as to declare the election illegitimate. And in the case of the United States, the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken considers the opposition as the true winners of the election.
And yet, if nothing else is done by the Venezuelan opposition and the international community, Maduro will continue ruling the country, repressing the people, and turning Venezuela into a hub for other autocracies like Iran, Russia, and China. Iran expects its commercial relations with Venezuela to grow to $20 billion per year. Russia continues to sign military agreements in Venezuela. And China now buys most of Venezuela’s oil.
Yet more strikingly, a failure of the collective West to act decisively will set a bad precedent for other would-be autocrats and dictatorships around the world.
In Georgia in the South Caucasus for example, the ruling Georgian Dream Party are particularly keen to see how much the Maduro regime can get away with ahead of elections in October. For the last few months, the Georgian Dream government has been systematically cracking down on opposition movements, including passing controversial new laws targeting civil society groups.
This democratic backsliding has been compared to the situation in Russia in 2012, when similar legislation was passed to suppress was the government described as ‘foreign agents’. As a result, mass protests have taken place across the country – and the opposition has attempted to rally around a joint list for the parliamentary elections to remove Georgian Dream.
Inside the EU, the pro-Russian left-wing populist government of Robert Fico has also taken steps to crack down on civil society and the free media. Once again, the legislation seeks to copy that of Russia in 2012. Fico, like Maduro, has also sought to use the media to discredit his political opponents, blaming many liberal and center-right politicians for an attempted assassination in June 2024.
This wave of democratic backsliding is in part a result of the collective West’s failure to act much more robustly in support of the Venezuelan opposition in 2019 after recognising Juan Guaidó as the legitimate winner following another contested election. His legitimacy ran out when the Biden administration failed to maintain support and instead chose to lift sanctions on Venezuela.
Likewise, the West’s attempts to support Belarusian leader in exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya have been token at best. Whilst she is treated as a legitimate leader of the free Belarus movement, the West could easily have gone further in sanctioning the Lukashekno regime – a regime that has since weaponised migration on the EU’s Eastern flank and acted as a staging ground for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The West cannot waste the opportunity to offer support to the Venezuelan opposition. This may be the best chance in a generation to finally free the Venezuelan people from the prison of a socialist regime that has starved its own people, arrested political opponents, and driven the economy into the ground. Perhaps more importantly, by removing the Maduro regime, Venezuela will no longer be a base for China, Russia, Iran, and their proxies – who for many years have used the country to launch hybrid attacks against the West and its allies.
Ultimately, the Venezuelan case study provides the following lessons for EU policymakers:
The people of Venezuela have spoken. Their desire for a democratic transition cannot be denied. The EU has to send a clear message to autocrats all over the world. Like the Sword of Damocles, international means of pressure should hang above the heads of all dictators as a threat to respect the dignity of ordinary people and the international norms of the rules-based world order.
