The Brazilian gun lobby's er... dysfunctions

A funny one from my favourite Brazilian magazine, although, unfortunately, gun proliferation in Brazil is a sad, very serious and, literally, deadly problem.

Let me explain this one, because although a bit simplistic, dead on about the whole gun lobby, whether in the US, in Canada, or in Brazil.

The Lula government has recently introduced a decree revising the extremely liberal regime of access to weapons that Bolsonaro had adopted, and which had led to a huge increase in the number of guns in circulation in Brazil. In many ways, it is very little, very late, and it is not even clear that it will survive congressional resistance. Given the government's weakness in congress, what little there is probably as much as can be done. The Congressional Gun Lobby ("a Bancada da Bala") has 267 members, out of 513 deputies in total, and is predictably going to war over this. The government may still win, but they will literally have to buy votes to do so--freeing money for the pet projects of enough deputies.

The key is, most people affected already have guns, piles of them, and in may cases, they have bought a huge number of additional ones under Bolsonaro: the number of registered weapons went from 83,000 to 280,000 between 2018, when he was elected, to 2021, one full year before he was finally thrown out of power.

That's the context.

Now the text itself (revised Google translation):

"To compensate for restrictions in gun ownership, the Gun Lobby is negotiating a decree on penis enlargement

TOMA LÁ GÁ CÁ [A Brazilian expression meaning patronage]– The system of checks and balances of democracy continues to function normally. Dissatisfied with the presidential decree that radically reduced the CACs' right to own and carry weapons [CAC stands for Caçadores, Atiradores e Colecionadores/Hunters, Sharpshooters and Collectors], the Gun Lobby obtained compensation from the federal government. In the next few days, Lula should sign a new decree to provide penis enlargement via SUS [Brazil's public health system], in addition to discounts on Ferraris, Porsches, pickups and SUVs for all CACs.

The solution was celebrated by federal deputy Alberto Fraga, from the PL [Bolsonaro's Liberal Party], who presides over the Bala Bancada. “I had already been complaining that the restriction on the sale of 9mm pistols would cause a crisis in trade and a feeling of deep insecurity in the masculinity of the Brazilian shooter”, explained Fraga. “That consolation will be welcome.”

Taurus [a large Brazilian gun manufacturer] has already announced that it intends to change the production of rifles for that of penis enlargers, projecting a record profit for the next quarter."

https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/herald/2023/07/21/para-compensar-corte-na-posse-de-arma-bancada-da-bala-negocia-decreto-sobre-aumento-peniano/
[About the picture: Sildenafil is the generic version of Viagra, and C.A.C. stands for Hunters, Sharpshooters and Collectors].

Canada's review of its Cannabis legalization policy

 [This short comment marks the return of the Little Crocodile, exceptionally, with Canadian content, but only because it is about drugs and drug policy. I am letting go of administrative responsibilities and will be posting more regularly from now on]

Cannabis legalization was to be reviewed after three years, that is, in 2021. The process was launched a year later and is still underway.

Like many things this government does, it is shrouded in secrecy. What would we do without nosy journalists (in this case from the Marijuana Business Daily)?

The report will be prepared under the direction of Morris Rosenberg, former head of the Trudeau Foundation and author of the recently published report on foreign threats to the 2021 elections, which, to say the least, was thin. 

Here is Andrew Coyne's take on it: "The report on foreign interference in the 2021 election by former Trudeau Foundation CEO Morris Rosenberg was even worse. O'Toole says Rosenberg did not interview any senior Conservative official for his report. Yet the report leaves the strong impression he did... The report says “[t]here was an opportunity to meet with representatives of major political parties” without saying who, refers to “interviews with party representatives” without saying which, even states  “party representatives were pleased with the thoroughness of briefings..."

Is there really no one else available for these things in Ottawa?

Bolsonaro and the Brazilian military

Reacting on Facebook to my recent piece on Lula in Open Canada, Fraser Taylor pointed out that, aside from the Covid situation, the key variable was the role of the military: "the role of the military. I think that a coup is unlikely but who will the military support and what deals will be made."

 

I answered that "the military issue is complicated. Bolsonaro's has strong support among the rank and file, as he does among the states-based "military police," which has its own command in each state, and 50% more members than the federal military. Officers are another story: Bolsonaro has talked the talk and brought several generals in his cabinet--and they have brought other officers in their own cabinets. When he talks about "his" military and disrespect standard rules of promotion, however, the establishment is reminded that he was expelled for violating military discipline as a captain, and they don't like that at all. Lastly: Brazil will be a mess for at least another decade and they may want to leave the management of the mess to civilians..."

 

Here is more meat around that bone: As the Thais Oyama suggests, the top brass are doing their best to protect the military from the increasingly broad backlash against Bolsonaro's criminal mismanagement of the COVID crisis.

 

Here is the Google translation of a column on a recent letter by the head of the Military Club and the link to the letter itself:

Thaís Oyama

Pazuello's summons to COVID Parliamentary Commission Inquiry [CPI] irritates the Army and makes the Military Club go wild

04/29/2021 11h52

The president of the Military Club, Reserve Division General Eduardo José Barbosa, published yesterday a text in which he defends the application, by the Executive Power, of the infamous article 142 of the Constitution - the one that talks about the use of the Armed Forces to guarantee "the law and the order "and which is brandished by President Jair Bolsonaro every time he feels run over by the Supreme Court.

In the text, General Barbosa points to the Supreme Federal Court, the National Congress, the press, Minister Gilmar Mendes [a Supreme Court Judge], ex-President Lula and Senators Omar Aziz (PSD) and Renan Calheiros (MDB) - President and CPI rapporteur for Covid. None of the characters was named in the article, entitled "The power of darkness in Brazil". In it, Eduardo José Barbosa also says that the criticized institutions "chickened out" and now want to blame President Jair Bolsonaro "for what they did not let him do".

The general's text needs to be read in perspective.

The Military Club, a bunker for Army reserve officers, is the Force's most strident political voice. There, the generals, free from the restraints of active duty, shout at will against whom and what they want. General Hamilton Mourão presided over the Club when he accepted to be candidate for vice on Bolsonaro's slate, when he called Colonel Brilhante Ustra, a former DOI-CODI [military investigation units during the dictatorship, infamous for their use of torture] chief and the first military man to be recognized by the courts as a torturer, as a hero.

But if General Barbosa's text is one or two shades higher than what even some of his most prominent reserve colleagues would adopt, it is certain that, at some points, it reflects precisely what even active duty officials think.

As one of them says: "It is intolerable to hear someone like Renan [the President of the CPI, a conservative anti-Bolsonaro who happens to be one of the most corrupt members of Congress] wanting to teach a moral lesson and summoning a uniformed general to testify".

Covid's CPI scheduled for next Wednesday the testimony of the former Minister of Health, General Eduardo Pazuello, who is still active and is now in the General Secretariat of the Army, in Brasilia.

Not that Pazuello is very prestigious in the ranks of the Force. The maskless parade he performed in a shopping mall in Manaus last Sunday even angered the Army High Command (those who attended the inauguration ceremony of the new commander, General Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, could see how the members of the institution take the recommendations of the anti-covid manual to the letter: with the exception of Minister Braga Netto [the new Minister of Defense], who took off his mask for a moment when speaking, no one was without it for a second).

Pazuello's display of nonchalance in the mall, therefore, was seen as deserving even of a public reprimand by the Force command, which did not happen.

But it is one thing for a general to suffer internal criticism from his peers and quite another to be "publicly embarrassed by people like Renan", as an active official in the government says.

General Barbosa's text may call attention to the stridency, but it contains a message shared by generals, from active duty and in pajamas: it will be noisy if Covid's CPI, when targeting Pazuello, hits the Army.

Lula is Back

Brazil is going through the worst crisis of its modern history. As of this writing, the pandemic has killed more than 400,000 Brazilians, with 60,000 COVID-related deathsin March alone, and reaching 20,000 per week in April. Mortality is on an explosive growth path as hospitals are running out of oxygen and now of the painkillers needed to intubate patients. Thousands are waiting for admission into intensive care units while people are treated and die on hospital floors. Bodies are piling up in morgues and cemeteries, and funeral homes are running out of caskets. Infection levels are such that the country threatens to turn into the world’s foremost incubator of COVID variants.

Meanwhile, the president who bears much responsibility for the scale of the crisis and the awful government response to it tells Brazilians to stop “whining,” complains Brazil looks like "a country of fags” and publicly mocks people gasping forair.

Incredibly, Jair Bolsonaro’s political prospects were, until recently, not that bad. The opportunism of the centre-right coalition that dominates Congress, the deep divisions that plague the opposition, the relatively good growth expectations for next year (+3.6%), along with incumbency and a still sizable core group of fanatical supporters gave him solid chances to win a second mandate in the fall 2022 presidential elections.

On March 8, however, a Supreme Court judge nullified the criminal conviction of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, ruling that the tribunal that condemned him did not have the jurisdiction to do so. His decision was endorsed in April by the full Court, which also ruled the judge who presided his trial, SergioMoro, had been partial and decisions he made during the proceedings were tainted. A new trial will take years to complete. In the meantime, the 76-year-old da Silva is free to face off against Bolsonaro next year.

Lula, as he is universally known, is by far Brazil’s most popular politician of the last 50 years. He ended his second mandate in 2011 with an 80 per cent rate ofapproval, though corruption allegations have tarnished his reputation since. He was president when billions of dollars of public monies were diverted to political parties and intermediaries in exchange for their support for hispolicies. Evidence that he benefitted financially is evaporating by the day, but the scale of the scandals and the involvement of several of his closest advisors make his claims to be the victim of a full-fledged conspiracy difficult to swallow.

However, out of resignation or cynicism, Brazilian voters tend to see corruption as an inherent part of their national politics, especially if it is tempered with meaningful action or change. And on this front, Lula is untouchable.

Helped by the explosive increase in China’s demand for natural resources in the early 2000, he presided over the fastest period of growth since the mid-1960s and, crucially, the largest and broadest reduction of poverty in the history of the country. While his progressive outlook doesn’t make him the first choice of the business sector, he has proven to be remarkably pragmatic and credible rumours already signal his interest in recruiting a centrist business person as candidate for vice-president. Brazil’s economic elites would not fear a radical turn to the left in the country’s economic policies were Lula to return to the presidency.

For all these reasons, he is Bolsonaro’s worst nightmare. Polls show Lula and Bolsonaro neck-and-neck when it comes to Brazilians’ voting intentions — and this is without any campaigning by Lula, or even a formally declared candidacy.

* * *

Interesting, you might say, but why should the prospect of an electoral victory by Lula more than 18 months from now matter to Brazil, the Americas and Canada?

Lula’s return matters in Brazil because it changes the calculations of all political forces in the country. On the Left, presidential hopefuls must now know that they have to wait until at least 2026 to even think of winning, because their current supporters will most likely vote for Lula in a polarized 2022 contest,.

Things are more complicated on the right. The Brazilian Congress is fragmented, with 24 parties dividing up 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and 81 in the Senate. The government’s core coalition is made up of only 150 deputies and 12 senators, while the opposition has 170 deputies and 18 senators. The balance of power is held by the so called “Fat Centre.” Members of this group have no well-defined ideology and are almost purely opportunistic. For them, their families, friends and financial backers, bargaining every one of their votes, and getting re-elected to keep doing it, is all that counts. With Lula in the picture, the price of their support for Bolsonaro’s policies will increase and he will need to demonstrate that supporting him in 2022, instead of Lula, will increase their chances of winning.

All this has shaken up President Bolsonaro’s life and weakened his electoral prospects. He’s panicking, and it shows on several fronts. One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, he’s finally announced the creation of a committee to fight it. He’s replaced several of his ministers. He’s tried — and failed — to increase his own executive power while reducing that of Congress. He’s also tried to get the explicit support of the military hierarchy for his opposition to the restrictive COVID-19 measures imposed by some governors and mayors and in his fights with the Supreme Court. These efforts backfired, however, when the commanders of the army, navy and air force resigned following the dismissal of the Minister of Defense, himself a four-star general, who was resisting Bolsonaro’s pressure to involve the military in the politics of pandemic management.

The long-term domestic effect of Lula’s return would obviously depend on how he does in the presidential elections. Were he to win, it is easy to see a period of Joe Biden-like calmness and moderately progressive policies that would help stabilize the country. Lula’s Worker’s Party doesn’t have a great reputation for competent economic management. Party member Dilma Rousseff, who succeeded Lula as president in 2011, squandered much that Lula had achieved. Still, it is difficult to imagine anything worse for the country than the utterly anachronic hyper-liberalism of Paulo Guedes, Bolsonaro’s current finance minister, whose narrow obsession with privatization comes straight out of the 1980s.

Lula’s return clearly matters for South America. In the short term, Brazil’s numerous neighbours are bound to benefit from a more rational pandemic policy born out of Bolsonaro’s growing fear that someone will capitalize on his mismanagement of the COVID crisis. In the mid- and long-term, the prospects of Lula’s regaining power would be encouraging in a region where Venezuela remains the epicenter of the worst refugee crisis in the America’s history, where democratic crises are multiplying and where an experienced diplomatic bridge-builder is sorely needed. Over his eight years in power, he was the linchpin of a golden age of pragmatic regional problem-solving through presidential diplomacy, and the face of a Left as committed to democracy as it is to social justice.

Canada should also root for Lula. Ottawa’s attempts to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to hold open elections and stop violating human rights, along with similar efforts directed at President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, are hampered by the presence on its side of a Brazil led by] Bolsonaro, an authoritarian and overt apologist of military rule. While Lula’s diplomacy never quite aligned with Canada’s core strategic interests, its pragmatism, its support for multilateral diplomacy and its commitment to a humane world order certainly accorded well with Canadians’ values and international outlook. Conversely, the re-election of Bolsonaro or, worse, a coup in the face of probable defeat, would definitely plunge South America as a whole into a period of instability and democratic decay, an outcome clearly at odds with both Canadian interests and values.

[This piece was first published in Open Canada]

Thinking clearly about Amazon protection

The world has suddenly rediscovered the Amazon. After a summer of record heat waves in Europe and North America, thousands of fires and a climate-sceptic, obnoxious, sexist, racist and proudly authoritarian Brazilian president have put the Amazon and its protection on the global to-do list and, more pointedly, on this past week’s G7 Summit agenda.

This is great. The Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest and its largest reserve of biodiversity. It plays an important role in the planet’s carbon cycle and its destruction would have a massively negative impact on climate change. And yet, a fast-growing part of it is being destroyed on President Jair Bolsonaro’s watch.

Over the last two weeks, as demonstrations were taking place the world over, a huge wave of aid offers, threats and advice have flooded the media, and the usual clique of universal experts and global spotlight grabbers — from Stephen Walt and Leonardo DiCaprio to our very own Lloyd Axworthy — have jumped in the fray. Most of the suggestions, however, seem to assume that the development of the region can still be largely stopped while others have been frankly counter-productive — for instance, sending "multilateral green helmets [...] across the Brazilian border."

For the current energy not to evaporate as the rainy season starts in the Amazon and as temperatures drop in the Global North, it may be useful to drop those views and consider a few basic things that any serious endeavour to save as much of the forest as possible should take into account.

First, and most importantly, the Amazon is huge: larger than Western Europe and, at 5.5 million square kilometres, as large as Canada’s 10 provinces together. Depending on how one defines it, between 20 and 30 million people live in the 60 percent of the Amazon that lies in Brazil, and millions more in the Colombian, Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon. Most of those people are poor and, with very few exceptions, their current livelihood and long-term life prospects are not consistent with the transformation of the Amazon into a huge forest reserve.

The protection of forest thus calls for the creation of options for those people. This will be costly, and it will take time. Consider for instance that the US$20 million G7 aid offer represents less than a dollar per capita for Amazonians — or less than the carbon tax on 20 litres of gasoline that many Canadians are loath to pay. It also probably means that, even in the best of cases, a substantial portion of the forest will be destroyed in the meantime.

Being serious about the Amazon means being ready to invest massive amounts of money into the long-term and necessarily slow and muddled re-engineering of its economic development. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, who managed Brazil’s Amazon policy from 2007 to 2009, speaks for instance of a knowledge-based economy for the region, an appealing prospect, but one that is also not realistic in the short or medium term.

Third, the G7 countries’ track record on climate change commitment is patchy at best: Germany’s main source of electricity is still coal; Canada is building pipelines to export thick and dirty oil; the gilets jaunes movement in France was driven in part by opposition to a carbon tax; the Trump administration is doing its very best to keep the country’s energy matrix as dirty as possible; and so on.

In other words, a serious attempt at tackling the problem calls for a long-term outlook, a willingness to invest large sums of money, a sizable degree of humility and the recognition that the main players will be Amazonian countries themselves. Now, with a man like Bolsonaro in charge of the largest chunk of the forest, some prodding will obviously be needed too, but the latter must be cleverly applied.

This means leveraging the will and interests of local players. Brazilians are proud and protective of the Amazon and, as Robbert Muggah recently noted, most are shocked and ashamed at the current government’s policies and actions. The governors of Amazonian states and significant sectors of the Brazilian Congress are pushing the central government to fight the fire and enforce existing regulations, and they want to prevent Bolsonaro from weakening the latter. Powerful counter-forces must obviously be tackled — the large and powerful congressional “cattle caucus” for instance — and for this, sensitive pressure points must be exploited.

The most obvious of them is Brazil’s sizable dependence on foreign agricultural markets. Brazil is the world’s top exporter of sugar, coffee, soy, orange juice and chicken, and it ranks third for beef and eighth for cotton. Credible threats of boycotts could thus in theory work wonders. The agro-business lobby in Brazil understands this and is already pushing the government to enhance the monitoring of illegal logging and enforce existing regulations.

To have any hope of success, however, such pressure needs to be completely de-linked from any challenge to Brazil’s sovereignty, and tied to a credible and substantive offer of cooperation.

A very promising avenue is being opened by Colombia and Peru’s call for a summit of Amazon countries on September 6. The G7 summit may be now over, but if leaders of those countries are serious about action on the Amazon, they should engage with this effort, commit to supporting effective action with significant resources, and make it clear that, while the effort must be led by Amazon countries themselves, inaction or worse could have real economic consequences.

[This post was first published on the Open Canada website]

Lava Jato: beware throwing the baby with the bathwater

The trove of documents that The Intercept is posting online shows increasingly clearly that Lava Jato Judge Moro and key prosecutors were targeting Lula to make sure that he would not run in 2016, thus opening the way for a victory of the Right.
Those who denounced the impeachment of Dilma and the arrest of Lula as a coup--among whom I was not--look increasingly right. The whole affair, well beyond clownish, violent and vulgar Bolsonaro, points to deep flaws in the country's institutional make-up and to strict limits to its supposedly democratic status.
It would be tempting, therefore, to dismiss Lava Jato as a scheme, as the pure artefact of an attempt by the Right to get back to power, which would be a mistake.
Let's indeed not through the baby with the bathwater: though the proof against him personally look increasingly fraught, corruption was rife under the governments of Lula and his chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff (against whom nothing has been found) government.
As the latest issue of David Fleischer's Brazil Focus (August 17-23) reminds us, the scale of those scandals is just mind boggling. In one of the latest instalments of the investigation, two of the PT's finance ministers are targeted: Antonio Palocci, who is already in prison and collaborating with the police, and Guido Mantega, "the longest-serving finance Minister in the history of Brazil," still free.
The latter is accused by Palocci of having received $R50 million Reais (about US$15 million) from Odebrecht, the big engineering firm that was at the core of the scandal. As Palocci is clearly trying to save his skin, this may or not be true, but in the meantime, judges and the Swiss authorities, on the request of Brazil, have frozen the bank accounts of Mantega: $R 50 million in Brazil, and $US 50 million in Switzerland, for a total of about US $65 million dollars.
Mantega should obviously be considered innocent until proven guilty, but this guy is the foreign-born son of Italian immigrants, he has a BA in Economics and a PhD in Sociology from the University of São Paulo. He has been close to Lula since the 1990s, he has taught in universities, worked for think tanks, and he was, for a while, an advisor in the PT administration of the City of São Paulo. His only real claim to fame is this long stint as Finance Minister for Lula and Dilma. And now, no doubt among many other assets, he has US$50 million in a Swiss bank account?
As the evidence piles up, of Moro's scheming and of engineering firms, banks and PT operators' getting immensely rich, Lula--and possibly Dilma too--looks increasingly like a pathetic tool cleverly used by a cynical mafia of conservative political entrepreneurs and long-time "friends" and "collaborators."
It is to cry.

A military intervention in Venezuela?

February 23 marked the failure of two gambles against the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

First, the opposition bet that Venezuela’s military would abandon Maduro and let a peaceful caravan of food and medicine cross the country’s borders from neighbouring countries; instead, it ended in tear gas, fire and death. Second, the Lima Group and most European countries bet that the recognition of Juan Guaido as interim president would lead to a peaceful collapse of the regime; instead, it ended in the embarrassed denunciation of violence that was always highly probable.

Dreams of a tropical Berlin Wall bash were replaced by opposition demands for military action.

The Lima Group is desperately looking for another path and is having a hard time finding one. At its meeting in Bogota on Monday, the alliance took a firm stand against military action, denounced Maduro’s use of violence to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid and reaffirmed its support for Guaido. It repeated its call for the military, and now the judiciary, to recognizeGuaido as interim president. The group also announced a series of diplomatic initiatives already under way at the International Criminal Court, the UN Human Rights Council and Human Rights Commission, and the OAS Permanent Council – in particular the recognition of Guaido’s envoys as legitimate representatives of Venezuela.

Broad smiles and hugging aside, this is unlikely to satisfy Guaido. On Sunday, he echoed an earlier statement of U.S. President Donald Trump. He called on the international community to "consider every option to free this homeland.” Guaido is almost certainly worried that the current mobilization, already more than a month long, could lose its momentum – as has happened repeatedly in the past. Worse still, cracks have appeared in his ranks, and the familiar spectre of disarray again threatens the opposition.

In this new phase, the United States takes centre stage, because from the beginning, Mr. Trump was adamant not to exclude the use of military force. The legality of foreign military interference in Venezuela would be on shaky grounds, but an “invitation” by Guaido – recognized broadly as the legitimate interim president of the country – could probably give the intervention some legal cover.

Ultimately, the success or failure of such a move will rest on the nature and scale of the endeavour. In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Francisco Toro examines the challenges of such an intervention, noting the collateral dangers of a large operation and the difficulty of dealing with the criminal organizations – including Colombian National Liberation Army guerrillas – that control much of the country’s territory. He argues that Venezuela’s generals would quickly fold in the face of a credible threat and that its army should be spared to give the new regime a tool to reassert control over the country. Doing otherwise would turn it into a “Libya of the Caribbean.” His analysis looks sound, though the “credible threat” he favours looks a bit like another gamble. At a minimum, limited commando operations or targeted missile attacks may be needed to do the trick, while avoiding large-scale loss of life and the complete dismantling of the army. History reminds us, however, that such “surgical” operations can quickly get out of hand.

Unsurprisingly, Europe, Canada and the Lima Group will have none of this. Even Brazil, whose President is openly nostalgic of the old days of his country’s military regime, has made it clear that it would not join a military operation against Venezuela or even let U.S. troops on its territory. Given the opposition’s growing desperation, however, this unfolding scenario risks leaving Canada and its allies on the sideline.

Their bet on hardball diplomacy is coming back to haunt them: recognizing governments that enjoy no territorial or administrative control, and letting their leaders blatantly politicize humanitarian aid leads one down a slippery slope. Here, it could end up opening the way to an aggressive U.S. foreign policy that cares little for democracy but, if successful, will nonetheless reap much of the credit for toppling a heartless dictatorship. Were a Libya scenario to develop, Canada and its allies would find themselves forced to choose between owning something they didn’t break, or washing their hands and watching the disaster unfold from the outside. Whatever the outcome, I am not sure it shores up Canada’s claim to represent a bulwark of the global liberal order or a shield for the international rule of law.

[Originally published on February 26 in The Globe and Mail, under the title "Why U.S. military intervention in Venezuela would be a risky gamble"]

Who has skin in the Venezuela game?

[Originally published by Open Canada on February 11]

The crisis in Venezuela obviously matters most for Venezuelans. On top of years of economic crisis, political repression, decaying infrastructure, withering education and social services, hollowed-out administrative capabilities, revolting corruption and stratospheric levels of criminality, they now confront the possibility of chaos and violence in an uncertain and likely drawn-out process of regime transition. At the same time, this very uncertainty holds the promise of a new economic beginning, with the prospect, dim but genuine, of a broadly legitimate political regime and of a rational economic policy.

Venezuela’s current troubles also have significant ripple effects. Canada’s media and commentators have mostly focused on the wisdom and implications of Ottawa’s recognition of Juan Guaidó, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, as interim president of the country, and of its call, along with Lima Group allies, for the Venezuelan military to switch allegiance and abandon the current head of state, Nicolás Maduro.

The reality, however, is that Canada has very little at stake in this crisis. It could enjoy a moment of glory at the vanguard of global democracy promotion, if Maduro resigns. But whether he does or not, Canada’s long-standing reputation as a diplomatic honest broker will suffer from its quick siding with Guaidó. The Trudeau government will also have to face an inevitable reckoning when it becomes clear that consistently applying this new “Freeland Doctrine” of forceful democracy promotion, in a world where dubious electoral processes and broad-based challenges of the governments they produce are common, is simply not possible (think of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, just last December). For Canada’s diplomacy and the credibility of its foreign policy, this is far from irrelevant, but a number of other countries have much more at stake than mere reputation or self-image.

Colombia
Colombia has suffered the brunt of the crisis, absorbing most of the three million or so refugees that have fled Venezuela’s economic and political collapse. The massive inflow of refugees has hit Colombia as it confronts a tricky stage of its peace process, with millions of internally displaced people to resettle, tens of thousands of coca farmers to bring back into the legal economy and thousands of former guerrillas to reintegrate into civilian life. While public opinion and the government have proven to be admirably open and generous towards Venezuelans, uncertainty and discontent are growing as the country continues to face severe public security challenges and still partial and unequal social service provisions.

The flip side is that regime change in Caracas could both stem the flow of refugees and restart an economy that has long been a natural partner of Colombia’s. In the short-term, the fall of Maduro would put an end to the use of Venezuela’s territory by the National Liberation Army, significantly weakening the last guerrilla group that still refuses to demobilize and that has claimed the recent bombing that killed 20 people in Bogotá. For Colombia’s president, Ivan Duque, Maduro’s fall would be a great help.

Cuba
Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s former president, saw himself as an heir to Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and relations between the two countries have remained extremely close since Chávez’s death in 2013. Cuban advisors surround Maduro, as they did Chávez, Cuban doctors staff many of the regime’s “missions” among Venezuela’s poor, and Cuban military personnel support Venezuela’s security and intelligence apparatus.

In exchange, Venezuela took over from Russia the transfer to Cuba of large amounts of heavily subsidized oil, which helped Havana keep its economy afloat.

Crucially, in the face of the Trump administration’s aggressive stance towards the remaining “Leftist” governments of the Americas (Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela), and of the right turn of several previously sympathetic countries (Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador), Venezuela gave “strategic depth” to Cuba’s diplomatic and military defence arrangement. Losing both the oil — which admittedly had been diminishing quickly — and a key buffer would represent a major strategic setback for Havana. For Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and the still-influential Raul Castro, Maduro’s fall would be a costly loss.

China
Until now, China has refused to recognize Guaidó and made it clear that it would block any US attempt to use the United Nations Security Council to pressure Venezuela, for instance by suspending its membership in the multilateral body. Beyond that, however, the Chinese government has remained largely quiet, its media defending a peaceful political settlement and giving pride of place to negotiation efforts by the UN Secretary-General. That moderation could well be related to the Venezuelan government’s debt to China, estimated at $13 billion. The idea has been floated that China — and Russia — could decide to jump in to defend Maduro and take control of what many refer to as the largest oil reserves in the world. Notwithstanding the fact that much of that oil is probably not recoverable, the global oil glut, the sorry state of Venezuela’s production infrastructure and the poor quality of its heavy, sour crude oil, such a bet would make little economic and even strategic sense. China has a lot of money currently sunk in what looks like a bottomless pit and internationally-supported guarantees of repayment by Guaidó could perhaps make Beijing reconsider its current position. Keeping a hard line, by contrast, could put its sizable investment in jeopardy.

Russia
Vladimir Putin’s Russia has also lent money to Venezuela, and Russia’s Rosneft oil company has a collateral claim to half of Venezuela’s US-based refinery, Citgo (the US government is now preventing Citgo from remitting its revenues to Maduro’s government). The amounts involved — $2 billion to $3 billion — are relatively small, but Russia does not have the financial leeway of China. Venezuela has also bought sizable amounts of weapons from Russia, though the extent to which they have already been paid for is unclear. Altogether, Moscow’s economic stakes nonetheless appear to be relatively limited. Venezuela probably matters more to Putin as a piece of the chicken game he is playing with at least part of the Trump administration. Maduro’s fall would be a loss, but Venezuela is not equal to Syria or Ukraine on Moscow’s strategic board, and the shock would have little strategic impact on Russia’s position.

The United States
The Trump administration was the first to recognize Guaidó. It has also undercut attempts by the Lima Group — and now Europe — to frame the international pressure as a peaceful initiative by insisting that military intervention remain an option. The fall of Maduro’s fragile regime would be a boon to an administration that boasts of machismo but has in fact been retreating globally in the face of Russia’s and China’s increasingly assertive policies beyond the Americas. Another easy win could be in the offing in Nicaragua — another member, along with Cuba, of what John Bolton has called Latin America’s “Troika of Tyranny” — where President Daniel Ortega also confronts massive popular opposition. The first domino, however, absolutely has to fall, and Washington really can’t afford to lose such an easy play.

Many other countries have dipped into the Venezuela stew: Brazil, most members of the EU, Mexico, Norway and Bolivia, among others. Like Canada, however, they have little at stake: they are to a large extent “disinterested.” This gives them freedom but also makes them less likely to remain engaged or to throw in significant political or economic capital. Hopefully, it should also make them wary of pushing for “solutions” whose consequences are immaterial for them but all too concrete for Venezuelans.

Venezuela: The opposition's dangerous "humanitarian" gamble

An aid caravan organized by the opposition and supported mainly by the United States and Colombia will try to cross the border against the will of the Maduro government. Military and largely criminalized militia units have been massed at the border to prevent them from doing so.

In the words of Francisco Toro, one of the keenest observer of Venezuela and a critic of Maduro: "It’s clear that the opposition leaders lined up behind Juan Guaidó are using humanitarian aid chiefly as a political tool – one aimed squarely at Venezuela’s military establishment for the purpose of getting them to turn on President Nicolás Maduro’s government."

In an interview with PBS,  Guaidó himself sees the humanitarian caravan as a political endeavour and the possibility of violence as a risk worth taking:

"Nadja Drost: If the military doesn't allow the aid to cross over the border, there is a possibility of a violent confrontation. Is that cost worth it in order to be able to bring some temporary relief to a small number of Venezuelans in proportion to how many Venezuelans need long-term humanitarian aid? Are you willing to take that risk in order to bring humanitarian aid across the border?

Juan Guaido: It is worth it. It's good for millions of children who are in need. Besides, we need to muster the strength for this situation to stop. This has been years in the making, years of mobilizations of political persecution of more than 1,000 political prisoners. Persecutions and asylees and the exiled, ask them if their sacrifice has been worth it. It has been worth it."

Clearly, he sees the caravans less as a way to address short-term humanitarian needs and as a tactic meant to further corner the regime.

So, what is likely to happen tomorrow?

Assuming there is no support for the caravan from Brazilian, Colombian or American military personnel (I will go back to this later) I see three main possible scenarios:

1) The caravan's participants chicken out in the face of the government's military units and retreat in clouds of tear gas but without victims. We are back to square one from their standpoint and both the opposition and its international ally have to look for a new plan while the economic and humanitarian situation of the country continues to deteriorate.

2) The military chickens out and let the caravan in. Fraternization scenes take place, relayed all over the world, other demonstrations follow in Caracas and Maracaibo, and Maduro and his clique rush to the airport with as much gold and cash as they can carry. This is what the opposition hopes and what the regime fears the most. Indeed, this is probably why Maduro did NOT send military units to prevent the public demonstration of January 23rd, where Juan Guaido took oath as interim president: he feared fraternization. This is also probably why he is likely to do his best to prevent it from happening, in particular, bringing in his most radical militia followers, as well as the foreign fighters (Colombian ELN guerrillas who have everything at stake here, along with Cuban and possibly Nicaraguan "volunteers"). 

3) The military (or whoever "mans" the border for Maduro) fires on the caravan and people are killed possibly a large number. This meets with international condemnation and opens the door to the explicit threat of a Colombia-US intervention. The corrupt and disorganized Venezuelan military partly liquefies in the face of such a challenge, with top officers running away. Militias and foreign fighters resist but the some hold firm, and while they leave major cities, they take refuge in South and West of the country and live out of drug trafficking and smuggling for a long while. This is the bloodiest scenario.

The possibility of military support to the caravan by Brazil and Colombia was mentioned by Jorge Castaneda, Mexico’s former foreign minister, in a recent op-ed in the New York Times.  While the Brazilian government said clearly that it would make the aid available at the frontier, its military leaders oppose the use of force to deliver it,  leaving Colombia and the US as the only two possible countries to support that option. Such support will embolden the opposition and make scenario 1 unlikely.

At this point, I think that scenarios 2 and 3 are most probable, with scenario 2 obviously the most preferable.

For the international community, though, even such a "success" would come at a heavy cost, as the episode would represent a most blatant case of aid politicization. Francisco Toro puts it best: "[T]he humanitarian community can never be seen to violate its principle of political neutrality: even if the opposition tactic does prove effective (which is a long way from a given), for the aid sector to back it would set a precedent that stores up any amount of trouble for the future." This is highly problematic for a country like Canada, particularly given the Trudeau-Freeland loud proclamations in favour of the international rule of law.