 Good afternoon, everyone. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Andrew Weiss. I'm Vice President for Studies at Carnegie. I'm delighted to be co-hosting this event today with our friends from the Inter-American Dialogue. Inter-American Dialogue president Michael Schifter has been a really generous partner in putting together today's program. I'll just say one quick word before turning things over to Vianna Goladriga. We, I think, are quite cognizant of the human toll of what's happening in Venezuela. We talk about the geopolitical aspects of this, I think, with some reluctance, because we feel that this is a regional crisis and a crisis with horrible humanitarian implications. But it is, as one of our colleagues, Francisco mentioned, we've reached the horrible stage of the crisis where it becomes very internationalized. And I think today's discussion is very timely in that regard. It's also timely for the past two years here at Carnegie. We've been working on what we call the return of global Russia. And there has been a real focus in our research here at looking at patterns of Russian opportunism and operating on the cheap to insert Russia into various international crises. And I think the situation in Venezuela is very much front and center in that effort. So anyways, I'll turn things over to our other good friend, Vianna Goladriga, to take it from here. Thank you all, and welcome to Carnegie. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, everyone. And great to be with you this afternoon. I think Andrew is right. We should, at the front of this discussion, acknowledge the human tragedy that is what has become of Venezuela today and the score of people that have died, the 3 million refugees. We're going to get to that. But a big crux of this discussion is going to be about how we got here and the proxies that are at play. I'm with CNN, and I want to introduce the panel before we begin. So to my right, we have Rebecca Bilchavez. She is the non-resident senior fellow of the Inter-American Dialogue and the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs. And to her right, Alexander Sasha Kovlev is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Michael Schifter is the president of the Inter-American Dialogue. And Francisco Toro is the founder of the Caracas Chronicles and a global opinion columnist for the Washington Post. Welcome all of you. So Francisco, I want to begin with you because you talk about Venezuela today compared to Venezuela 50 years ago. And one of your pieces for foreign affairs is entitled, Venezuela's Suicide. And you talk about a tale of two different countries. One was a thriving model of democracy, one of the richest countries in the world. Fast forward to what we see of Venezuela today. And so many asked, what happened? How did we get to this place? Why do we now have a failed state that we're talking about? You say a lot of this ties to Cuba and Venezuela's dependence on Cuba going back to Hugo Chavez. Can you tell us more about that relationship because so many people wonder how could this small island have such an impact? Yeah, and I think it goes against the grain of sort of what your gut says most of the time to think that such a small poor country where it can't even really feed its own people could have such an outsize influence. And we sort of understand that Cuba punches above its weight, but because they're so secretive, I think it's hard for people to understand really how pivotal the Cubans have been to Venezuela, to the Chavisa regime's revival. You often have to start it, well, you could start in 1961 when they tried to invade for the first time, but we'll start in 2002 when there was a 48-hour abortive coup against Chavez. There's a moment there where for Chavez, the lesson from those 48 hours was a lesson that the Cubans at Fidel also tried to teach Salvador Allende in 1973, which was you can't trust the armed forces. You need to arm your civilian supporters, and this is like your real guarantee that you're going to be able to stay in power. Chavez had a moment of understanding, oh, the only people who really know how to have an eternal left-wing dictatorship in Latin America as the Cubans. They're the guys who can help me do it. And for the Cubans, this became the greatest intelligence coup in the history of the world, as far as I can tell. I cannot think of another example of a small, weak, broke four nation in effect colonizing a much richer, much bigger neighbor like this. And colonizing is a strong word, but what we've seen over the last 20 years is that Venezuela's state affairs are a range for the benefit of Cuba to a really extraordinary degree. I have to think about how Nicolas Maduro reaches the presidency. He which obviously is sick, he trusts the Cubans for his treatment when he's dying of cancer, he gets whisked off to Havana. He isn't seen for weeks and weeks and weeks, but decrees are coming out of Havana with his signature on it. Somebody's writing those decrees, somebody's signing them, we're not sure whom. And then the person who comes out of that period as president of Venezuela is a guy who has been a hard line Fidelista, like true believer, his entire adult life, longer than his entire adult life. I think Maduro joined La Liga Socialista, this small, fringy, left-wing pro-Cuban party in Venezuela when he was 16 years old. He wasn't even an adult yet. People say he didn't go to university, no, but he went to the school of Calderas in Havana for two years where he learned how the Cuban ways of statecraft, that was his university. People, there's this mythology built around him being a bus driver, he wasn't really a bus driver, he was sent to infiltrate the bus driver's unions by Havana, right? So here's a guy who has organized his entire political imagination around devotion to the Cuban cause. And suddenly when the Cubans have, very literally have dying Hugo Chavez in their hands, it emerges that he is anointed successor. So the Cubans are at the center of what has happened. The Cubans have understood how you control a country indefinitely by impoverishing it. And the Cubans have understood how you use opacity and use infiltration of the military and the institutions to ensure that no cohesive challenge can be built against your power. Yeah, you even note, and I was surprised by this, the daily intelligence briefs that Maduro receives today are produced not by the Venezuelans, but by the Cubans. So that power from Havana still exists, didn't it? The raw intelligence is collected by Venezuela and security and intelligence agents, but those get kicked up to a sala operacional where they're collated and they're turned into a brief for Maduro by Cubans and then sent to Havana and other Venezuelans don't see them. So when we say that Havana understands the dynamic inside the Venezuelan military better than the Venezuelan military, that's not a metaphor. That's just how it is. And Michael, you don't have to be an economist to come to the conclusion that whatever the Cubans were advising the Venezuelans didn't work. You go from being one of the top 20 richest countries in the world to a failed state today. As of today, we've had about three attempts at uprisings and to overthrow Maduro by Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader. Are you surprised that given the state of destitude and crisis in the country, that Maduro is still the de facto leader? Well, first of all, I want to thank Andrew in collaboration with the Carnegie Endowment. It's wonderful to partner again on this issue and it's great to share the panel with a lot of friends and colleagues. I guess I'm not as surprised, frankly, that he's still there because he has, from all accounts, continues to have the support of the Capres beyond forces. That's what, without that, he's finished. He would collapse and he would no longer be there. But he's been able to maintain it, I think, for a variety of reasons that we can go into. A lot of them have a lot of interest at stake. They don't trust the opposition. They're also part of a revolution that, whether with Chavez, with Fidel, with Chavez alone, sort of. And so, you know, the armed forces have the power. And I was always skeptical of the notion that was pretty common in the opposition and also here in the US government that somehow mobilizing lots of people in the streets was going to make the Capres flip and turn over. It always seemed to me an unrealistic sort of expectation. I would have been the first to celebrate if that had happened because this is an awful regime and I would like to see it end. But I just didn't think that that would happen. I just thought that that was a misreading of the situation and underestimating the resilience of Bacurdo. And I think not, the Cuban, I think, is a factor, but I think there are also Venezuelan factors that also account for his ability to survive. So I guess I wasn't that surprised, however. And of course, a lot of the people who are terrible, as we've said, destitute are leaving the country. Which is, you know. So that's three and a half million people. So that leaves some pressure in some ways. A lot of the people who would normally be committed to trying to end the regime have said, you know, we're frustrated, nothing has worked. So we either try to survive in this terrible country or we try to get out and survive in Colombia or Brazil or somewhere else. So that was the choice people were facing. So that doesn't weaken the regime. And the economy could collapse and Maduro could still survive. The end of the collapse of the economy doesn't mean the end for Maduro, necessarily. And we'll talk about the pressure that the neighboring countries are now taking on with these refugees coming in and masses. You talk about the military brass. And we should note, you talk about a top heavy military. There's some 2,000 generals, quote unquote generals, in Venezuela. So Maduro knew what he was doing in the sense of whose pockets he was filling. Right, and so it's not just amnesty as Guaido had offered many of these generals to turn. It's a certain lifestyle, right, that they've grown accustomed to. Is there anything that can be done, and I'm just gonna ask the panel to jump in, whoever wants to answer, is there anything that can be done to turn those generals against Maduro, aside from just amnesty? Well, if I could just briefly. I mean, I think we're at a point now that I think the idea of the notion of negotiation is getting a lot more support and there's more convergence among these disparate groups that have been working on Venezuela. And I think what we're moving towards is not that we make a speech or make a threat from Washington and saying, if you don't flip next week, we're gonna do this or appeal to them to say, if you'd flipped, then we're gonna let you off. I don't think that's the way it's done. I think that the way it's done is to come up with a proposal for the military as an institution, as a corporatist entity. And what that looks like exactly, I don't know, but it's some sort of temporary power sharing arrangement or some other formula that would enable the transition to move ahead, a democratic transition, move ahead smoothly. It's not making a speech and saying, if you turn to my side, I'll let you off and I won't bring you to trial. I think it's a more of a institutional proposal that my sense is that that's what's moving towards. Is there any guarantee that's gonna work? I don't know. I mean, nothing's worked so far, but my sense is that that's where we're heading. And it's sort of outlier move for this administration in the US to have joined a coalition and now there are some 50 countries around the world that have recognized Juan Guaido as the legitimate leader. Russia is not one of them and China is not one of them. And Sasha, let me ask you about Russia specifically because during the most recent uprising, there was an interesting statement out of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on CNN where he said that it appeared Maduro was ready to get on a plane, I assume to Cuba, when he was dissuaded and talked out of it by the Russians. What do we know about that? Did that in fact occur? And talk about the role Russia is playing in the Venezuelan crisis right now. We don't know about that for a fact, but what we know is that this statement of Mr. Pompeo really plays into Putin's game of portraying Russia as really pivotal, like a 10 feet tall giant out there in Western hemisphere because of 120 military personnel they send and because of the small and really inexpensive tools that Russia has at its disposal out there in Venezuela. But by playing this smartly, Russia is getting what it wants, which is really Washington's attention. It's that we insert ourselves there, look at what we've done in Syria, and like we are here, so you need to talk to us. And I think that this really misweeds a lot of facts because if you try to disentangle what Russia really has in terms of assets and influence in Venezuela, it's not that much. And I think that Russia plays its cards in a very kind of risky manner and it's on purpose. It flies its military personnel by daylight, allows them to be photographed. To be seen. To be seen. And it's by design. It's very much in your face manner on confrontation to show that we are here, we put a flag, and we are a player there. The explanation for this is that on some layer for Russia, it's really about geopolitics and it's about we can do in your backyard America what you are doing to us in places like Ukraine or Georgia with all of these color revolutions or Moldova. Like that's what we do. And like if you want us to get out of Venezuela, let's talk about Ukraine, let's talk about other stuff. That's very much the game. And then another layer is that if you're actually trying to see how much skin in the game Russia really has, it's close to zero. Because Venezuela and Pedevesa own Russia some three billion U.S. Same amount is owned to Rossnaut. And it's pinnets if you look at Rossnaut's obligation and it's pinnets for the Russian budget. City of Moscow spends more on payments and new parks every year than total debt of Venezuela. So it's nothing. And if the whole house burns down, Russia is not there to lose anything. So it's very different from China, for example, which is really a huge owner of Venezuela. Well that's Venezuela's biggest market. And that's why China is reaching out and talking to opposition. Russia doesn't want to talk. Russia has a strategy to support Maduro and double down on Maduro's support and then gets Washington's attention and try to enter into a serious conversation. If the regime is out and the whole house burns down, it's even better for Russia because frankly nobody expects that Russia has the resources to keep Maduro in power out there. It's not serious, a very different situation. But Russia at least tried and that sends the signal to all dictators in the world that Russia will be very loyal. It will fight to the last bullet to support you. So that's why you should stick with Russia, buy Russian arms and do much more with Russia than you probably would. How much of this is Putin who obviously comes into this with the weakest hand but comes out the greatest, at least, optic victor at this point right now. How much of this is him seeing what happened to Gaddafi, seeing what could potentially happen with Maduro and wondering if that could one day happen to him? I think that Putin is definitely worried about this but in trying to prevent his own downfall, he has far better of cards to play and he's actually very small in fortifying this fortress Russia. So you have a very, you have a petro state like Venezuela but you have a very different fiscal, financial exchange rate policy. Like if you are looking for an A team in Russia, that's the A team, that's the central bank administrator of finance and that's not the kind of advice that Maduro was taking from the Russians. So it's a very different stage. And then in Venezuela, you try to prevent this kind of outcome without really much hope that you have these cards or tools at disposal. Like if you would have a better organized US administration, it would definitely be over long time ago. But they play on incompetence and they play on just our ability to project this image by playing a very risky game and people take them very, very seriously. So a play on incompetence, is that incompetence coming from the US? Sure. And so on that note, I'll turn to Rebecca and ask you about in our conversation last week, you talked about the optimism and surprise you felt when the administration joined the coalition initially back in January in support of Juan Guaido. You seem to have turned a bit south now in the months after, why? Well, I was frankly surprised that, I mean, I think we did the right thing by kind of letting the Lima group take the lead, working, you know, kind of ushering these 54 countries to recognize Juan Guaido. But since then, I see that we're, or I fear that we are, we risk kind of unraveling this hard fought consensus with our labor rattling, for example. I think it's the EU, the Lima group countries, they've all, they've stated their unequivocal opposition to any sort of US unilateral military intervention. And I feel like we're losing credibility with that sort of talk. It's not a credible threat for one thing. And secondly, military intervention for a number of reasons would be a disaster. It would require up to 150,000 troops for a long period of time. And we could get, we'll get into military intervention and thoughts on that later on, but just from the perspective of what a US administration could do without military intervention, what is that? And did we miss that window of opportunity? No, I think there is still opportunity. I think we should pursue a very forceful multilateral strategy. I agree with Michael about the importance of, I think that we're at a new sort of era of negotiation. I think that's really important. I think for example, the targeted sanctions that we've placed on specific afters in Venezuela, it's really important to multilateralize those to work with our EU partners, for example, so that they'll do the same. Unilateral sanctions don't work. So I think that's one thing we can do. I also think it's worth reaching out to not just our partners, but to the countries that we're talking about today, Cuba, Russia, and China. It's gonna be hard, I know, especially with the Russia, and I think Cuba, we've actually made it harder for ourselves to have a productive engagement with Cuba by Trump's recent policy shift, the activating Title III of Helmsburton, camping, remittances, restricting US travel to Cuba. I think that's gonna make it much more difficult for us to engage in a productive dialogue with Cuba. I think China is probably the best bet, and we should really elevate Venezuela and all of our discussions with China, all engagements with China. China to me seems like it's the most pragmatic of the three. It's primary interests in Venezuela are economic. It's lent. China wants its money. China wants its money. Venezuela owns, owes China $20 billion. China lent, starting in 2007 when Hugo Chavez was still in power between 2007 and 2017, they lent $60 billion, and they want that money back. They want that $20 billion back, and so you referenced why those outreach to the Chinese and this idea of providing assurances that yes, we'll respect these legitimate agreements that we made prior. Yeah, and I think that could help. The opposition has really good relationships with China. They have not reached out to Russia. They have reached out. They offered the same. They have reached out to Russia. The problem is that at some layer of the Russian state, and there is a very powerful player, Igor Sechin, the CEO of Rosneff, is basically blocking this conversation. And if it goes up in the chain of the embassy and minister of foreign affairs, at some level it's blocked by Sechin's people, and then the default option is again, we double down on Maduro, we don't talk to the other side because there is no plan B. Sechin's chairman of Rosneff and a very close Putin ally, they go way back to the... Yeah, and he's a Latin America specialist because when he was in the KGB, he was military interpreter with Portuguese and Spanish. And as he was appointed the deputy prime minister when Putin was prime minister for four years and Medvedev was the president, Sechin really clenched a lot of powers by reaching out to Latin America state and that was Chavez, that was Fidel when he was still alive, and that was Nicaragua. And one very pivotal moment in this outreach was war in Georgia in 2008, and the need to recognize South of Asia and opposes independent state. So Sechin embarked on a trip to Latin America and secured a lot of recognitions, including in 2009, the recognition by Venezuela. And that's where it was a lot of stuff going on between him and Chavez and later on, Maduro. It was a very deep personal bond. And now he is presenting himself to Mr. Putin as the most senior Latin America expert. He's the Latin American whisperer. He is the Latin American whisperer and actually the Tsar on the Latin America policy in Russia. Francisco, I saw you react to the conversation about U.S. current policy now towards Cuba and sort of tightening the screws and stilling further sanctions. I'm wondering if you think that is the appropriate route that the U.S. should be taking? I know that the Canadians, like their foreign minister, Christia Freeland was recently in Cuba for discussions as well. Is this a coordinated approach towards Cuba from this coalition? I really don't know. I think there's clear scope for sort of a good cop-bad cop routine with the Maduro regime. The Trump administration has unique credentials in the bad cop territory and the Lima group can play sort of the other role. It seems to me that if you apply these sections of Helms-Burden, you're giving yourself something to give back in return for you're giving yourself chips for a negotiation. So it's not obvious to me that that's the wrong way to go about it. The problem is that Cuba won everything in Venezuela. They won control of the country. It's very hard to think how you can improve that offer. That is something that I've never really understood, but I do wanna pick up if I make something that Michael said earlier about the brass supporting the regime. I really think that's sort of the wrong way to put it. I don't think a brass supports the regime. I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning and thinks, well, this is the best thing for Venezuela or the best thing even for me. I think the situation where military intelligence cover of the Venezuelan military is so pervasive. These guys have so little room to do anything without Cuban military intelligence finding out that it's impossible for them to cordy. Okay, it's impossible for them to have a conversation that doesn't get given away. I think there's like, most likely if you ask right now these 2000 generals, I'm sure 90% of them are not sue, but they see this as a disaster or they see this as unsustainable and they wish they could do something different, but there's a coordination problem. The first person to step forward gets thrown in jail and tortured and their family gets thrown in jail and tortured. So it's impossible to coordinate. And I think we need to think of it in those terms. This is a coordination problem. And how do you? Why is that? Why can't it entail a group of generals as opposed to one? Because if any two or three, any small group of generals tries to communicate, their communications are picked up and they're thrown in jail. So they can't coordinate. And this is what, so you end up with a situation where you have 2000 generals, they're all eyeing at each other. They're all probably guessing what the other is thinking, but they all know that they can't say it first because they don't trust one another to keep their secrets because those secrets are not keeping. So what you end up with is an institution, the Venezuelan military doesn't operate, can't do anything. It can't operate, it's not cohesive enough to operate because they cannot communicate with one another about anything in a kind of free and fluid way. And this situation has been engineered carefully by people who are trained in the ultimate instance by the KGB. They know exactly what they're doing. It's just the outcome of like a carefully calculated plan that has been rolled out over many years to ensure that the government can't be overthrown by its own military. And Maduro has calculated to shut off the media as well. Right, so you create this climate of opacity and then on the side, you also arm civilian groups so that if somehow that breaks down, then they don't have a monopoly on arms. Are they arming that to the next one? Are they arming civilian? Oh yeah, oh yeah. And then publicly, not secret. No, I would just say though that I think that's kind of a combination of the two. I think it's the sticks that you're mentioning. I mean, I think ever since the 2002 coup attempt when Chavez, he basically purged the military of anyone who thought to be a threat and the Cubans of course helped with that process. But the military, those 2,000 generals, I don't know what number of that 2,000, they're in, I mean, they benefited. They're in, I mean, they are. I mean, he gave them control over the refute distribution which is an extremely profitable black market. So it's not just that they're scared, they're also, I mean, a lot of them are not good guys and they have a lot to lose. So I think it's both. I would put it that they wanna protect themselves. They wanna protect themselves. They don't wanna, you know, they don't like Maduro. They stick with Maduro because they're objective of to protect themselves. And I think that unless, you know, unless they can be reassured in some ways, you know, that they're going to be okay if things go forward, they're just gonna continue to dig in. And Michael, I wanna pick up on what we talked about earlier with the Secretary of State Pompeo mentioning that the Russians were convincing Maduro to stay. You say that along with comments from Bolton about how their defense minister was going to turn and then ultimately did not, that that is ultimately not helpful to the situation. Talk about why, because it seems that the US approach would be to shame that I'm just interpreting why they're doing that and that's sort of the shame to call them out to show the world that see something is working and then it just happened last minute to stop. You say it has the opposite effect, why? Yeah, I don't think those, first of all, if there was an agreement with Padrino and others just to happen, you know, these were part of sensitive negotiations to say that publicly is probably not gonna be very helpful in terms of any kind of future negotiations at the United States. The United States is gonna play a constructive role and join in some sort of negotiations. If it has negotiations with the future then it sort of basically spills the beans and says who they've been talking to and make it a public event. I think people are gonna be much less inclined to join that effort. So I don't think that that's, you know, I don't think that that's helpful. The other thing is I think that this shouldn't be, I think the problem in Venezuela is largely Venezuelan, you know, I think you can explain that that in Cuba plays a role and others play a role. But I think the solution is now obviously a global player solution. And I'll think you can have a solution without anticipation of China and with Russia, Cuba, the United States. That's just, because that's the current reality of the situation in Venezuela. And so aside from Bolton, I think that was a few months ago walking out of a meeting where he had written down for the 5,000 troops for the public to cameras to see 5,000 troops to Venezuela. Aside from that, it seems that there is a consensus that nobody wants to send troops to intervene. So what is the next step? Because as we've mentioned, this continues to be a humanitarian crisis. People dying by the day, by the hundred, by the thousands. It's not gonna get any better. It's only gonna get worse. So what is that next step entail before these generals start turning? Well, I think the next step is what's being pursued now by the contact group. And I think there's more of a convergence than there was before between the contact group of European countries and some Latin American countries, as well as the Lima Group, which is all the Latin American countries that have supported Guaidó. There had been some distance between them. My sense is that they're moving together, although they have very different functions. And Venezuela and Guaidó has a representative to the Lima Group, an ambassador to Lima Group. And of course, it's not part of the international contact group. But I think they're moving towards a position towards trying to work out a deal. And what that deal is gonna look like and what are the terms are gonna be, I think it's not gonna be easy, but I think there's a sense that you mentioned the 5,000 troops that John Bolton wrote. I mean, I think that was part of the same idea that if the military sees that we're ready to send 5,000 troops to Colombia or to Venezuela, then the military will say, wow, this is over. They're gonna send troops, they're really serious, so we'll just leave Maduro and we'll flip. And it was part of the same, I think part of the same thinking. And I think here, Bolton and others really believe that. I mean, sincerely believe that. And I just think it was a misreading of the situation in Venezuela. And I think that kind of thinking has now kind of run its course and has been shown not to have really been very successful. The military option is still, all options are still on the table, but I think as Rebecca said, there's no support for the US would have to go it alone. It's not a single Latin American country, even Colombia, which is the country that had most of the state that has single any willingness to commit any troops at all any kind of mobile lateral intervention. And so the US would have to go it alone with enormous costs. And don't forget, we have an election coming up in this country, there's also electoral politics, that's a piece of all this. Yeah, and aside from Senator Rubio, I don't think that you really have much conviction from the Congress to send troops. Matt has said this is not a military exercise for the US and the crisis to be resolved through with the military. And as you mentioned, 100 to 150,000 troops would be required. The country's twice the size of Iraq. But even more importantly, Sasha, is it seems that the president, whichever day you catch him on, grows bored of a certain crisis internationally. And there have been reports that he didn't want to pursue Venezuela as aggressively as he had thought that it could be taken care of easily. And he grew annoyed with Bolton. He called Maduro something that he, I would say out of respect called Pugin, and that's a tough cookie, a smart cookie. What is the Russian interpretation of what this president views as what needs to be done in Venezuela, and are they confused? I think that they see a lot of openings, by the way of how these organized and dysfunctional this administration is in doing the Venezuela thing, but also I don't think it's only confined to Venezuela. Like if Marco Rubio is the brain trust of this operation, I think Russian intelligence and apparatus are beyond happy and they see so many opportunities to put their fingers into it. And if Trump is not happy with his operators and he thinks that Putin can fix it for him, they're even more happy to even start the conversation. The problem is that if you want to get Russian serious involvement, there is nothing that you can give Russian return. And I think that Russians know that. There is no serious conversation on Ukraine that can start at okay, you can have Crimea, and we don't talk about this, or you get some partial sanctions relief. It will not fly in the current political climate. So Trump's hands are tied by the Congress, by the politics, and that there are not that many issues that we can really talk about arms control, so. And I think that for Russians, it's really a target-rich area, Venezuela policy, just to bring it up and to steer more chaos here domestically and to show that this president cannot achieve this. There's always kind of outreach to Putin and then Russia is really a big player on the national stage. That's very much plays into the Russian narrative. I don't think that anybody in the Kremlin believes in kind of pragmatic, secret arrangement where Russia be on board with the U.S. doing stuff in Venezuela to end people's suffering. Does Putin feel emboldened given what played out in Syria and the fact that he was able to save Assad in the sense that he could very well play the same role in saving Maduro? And is there any truth to that? I think that people in the Kremlin are smart and pragmatic enough to understand that Russia's toolkit in Syria was far wider than in Venezuela. And also, we had a ruthless dictator like Bashar Assad, but he was pragmatic and some of the economic and other choices made by the Syrian regime don't match. And it's interesting that Syria were more consequential than they were. Sure, and then it's really next door. You can fight all these missiles over. You can amass troops. You have really regional partners who have interests in cooperation and have Iran. You have Turkey and you can work out these relationships far better when your only partner there is Cuba, which is kind of desperate and is important. And then you cannot count on China really, only in the Iran that they don't support regime change. They're not one of the 50 countries. But that's it. And there is only as much what Russia can do in Venezuela. So everybody knows that. But I think that the Russian calculation is, what if? Like everybody in this town some years ago looking at Syria said, Assad is doomed. Like his days are over. And that was even before the Russian intervention. There were some tipping points in the campaign. But like everybody was, he needs to go, we need to double down. But then for the- There was a red line once upon a time. Yeah, for some, the combination of domestic and international factors that doesn't happen. For example, the generals still are stuck and they don't communicate. The West doesn't come up with a realistic strategy. More people flee and that removes the pressure from the cattle and then everybody is like, okay, like we're so tired, we want some sort of stability, right? And then the situation doesn't move for a year. And then probably it will be over. And then like regime change is not that much in the cards. And everybody comes to the table and say, okay, let's talk about stopping human suffering, tolerating Maduro or some iteration of the regime in place just for the sake of ending the human suffering. So that might be a very big win for the clever. There was a C. Putin, the humanitarian. Yeah. Okay, so Francisco, on that note, you've got right now, I think a dynamic where whether or not you're one of the countries that officially supports Guaido or you're one of the countries that still supports Maduro. Nobody is a huge Maduro fan. I think it's pretty fair to say. Given that the U.S. continues to squeeze sanctions against the country, it's virtually not producing any oil at all at this point, very minimal. Is there any situation or is there a moment where this administration could actually be blamed, I mean, aside just Maduro blaming America, could America take it too far on a global stage? Yes, yes, and I don't think we're far from that. I mean, we've started to see that. We've seen Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbach starting to write the first bits of like motivated reasoning analysis showing however many thousands of deaths do the sanctions. That's mostly propaganda, but not in... Propaganda only works if there's enough of truth, right? If otherwise it's just silly. The longer... Look, the Americans went to a maximalist sanctions regime very early on in the Guaido experiment. People had expected, people quite far on the right wing in the U.S. had expected that you would gradually ratchet up pressure. That didn't happen. We went to oil sanctions right away. We're holding back on secondary sanctions, but that's really sort of the final straw. But that is a very tough sanctions regime for a country in hyperinflation with an economy that's freefall and not producing any oil. In Venezuela, Venezuela doesn't produce food. If you don't produce food and you can't sell oil, how are you gonna get food into the country? I think the realm of people blaming the U.S. for hunger in Venezuela is will transform from like pure pro-maluda propaganda into just the way it is. That's not it. We should note hyperinflation is now at 1 million percent, 61 percent of Venezuelans live in extreme poverty, 64 percent, so they've lost an average of 24 pounds. And then obviously we've mentioned three plus million who have fled the country. Rebecca, let me ask you about those who have fled and those refugees because so many have gone to neighboring countries. Colombia has taken in over a million alone. This administration in Colombia, as we know, just recovering from their own civil war and domestic issues. The Trump administration recently has been rather tough on Colombia. Is that the right approach given how fragile the country still remains plus the flow of refugees? Well, first of all, to add to your list of just the indicators of human suffering, like the virtually non-existent access to healthcare, just basic medicines. I think there's an 85% shortage of basic medicines. So no, I do not think that the criticisms of Duque are helpful at this point. So I think the number is now at 3.7 million refugees. Colombia has taken in over 1.2 million of those. And as you said, this is a really critical moment for Colombia as it struggles to implement this peace accord from 2016. It's actually proving to be much more difficult than many had hoped. It requires tremendous resources. So they're dealing with this at the same time, dealing with this influx. And we should be assisting Colombia. I mean, plan Colombia, one of the few cases of a bipartisan, successful foreign policy. This is not the time for us to turn our backs on Colombia. As far as what the U.S. can do when it comes to supporting these countries, it's, I mean, I just have to say, we, TPS, time would grant TPS to Venezuelans. I think that it's very unlikely, unfortunately, that this administration will do that. But we should. We're asking all these other countries to take in these migrants, these refugees, but also pledging more to the regional response. I think it is critical as well. But in particular, I think your point on Colombia is spot on. And Michael, we mentioned an upcoming U.S. election here. How much of that focus, geopolitics doesn't always play a huge role when we're not currently in war, but how much of the dialogue at all do you predict will involve Venezuela, will involve the flow of refugees, will involve the pressure that our Latin American allies are now facing with the flow of these migrants and refugees coming in? Well, I think there are different sort of tasks and dealing with the humanitarian task within Venezuela is one, dealing with the migrant, the refugees that are outside of Venezuela is related, but it's a distinct one. Trying to end this horrible situation is another one. And then, of course, there are people working on the day after, what happens the day after somehow this gets settled and what do you do and how do you build a country that's totally destroyed? I think the focus, you know, what I'm worried about is you mentioned the Colombia thing. Well, we should say that the reason why Hernández Duque was not, had nothing to do with Venezuela was because of drugs. Drugs, right. And we all know as that elections approach that the drug issue increases in salience. And so, for who is supposed to be the most closest strategic ally of the United States in South America or Latin America, for that matter, we've had cooperation of over $10 billion over the last 20 years, more than any other country in the region. Duque had just been here in Washington and then he goes back and the president says, you know, you're not stopping what's wrong. And so, you know, that, I think, and that was very deflating for Colombia and then he repeated it, so it wasn't just a one-off comment. So, I think that's what, you know, the failure to see all of these kind of connections, to see that the Venezuela crisis is a priority, that Colombia is basically on the US side, so why do things that weaken Colombia at a time when we need all of their support, it's that kind of thing that worries me. And I think, you know, there is electoral politics on drugs, there's also South Florida electoral politics as well, the aspir, Cuban diaspora and Venezuelan diaspora are located, concentrated in South Florida. So, I think that's also part of the, part of the, at least some people in the administration's calculates, not everybody. The other thing I would say is that the administration, you know, there's, you have the president, you have the vice president, we have the secretary of state, national security advisor, and there's a special envoy for Venezuela, the other Abrams. And so, you have five senior people. Are they all on the same page? Well, that's what I was gonna say. One reads their statements and sees what they're doing. You can make your own, reach your own judgment, but I see very different approaches there and very different concerns. And I think that's another one of the problems on the US side, if you have, you know, a lot of people involved in Venezuela and they seem to be conveying different messages. And so, some more pragmatic, others more ideological. And so, I think that's also a problem for US policy moving forward. And just because we're in this fog of, you know, the Trump administration, what's normal, what's not normal, is that normal for an administration to have its top advisors and top officials to be sort of scatterbrainer all over the place, some, you know, because they come from an ideological perspective, some because they just depend on the president's mood, is that normal of a US administration, relative to foreign? I think it's a question of degree. I think it would be naive to say that, you know, this is the first time we've seen that, people are not on the same page, but I think the extent of the differences are pretty marked and striking in my view. And this speaks to the chaos that you talk about, that Russia's benefiting from. Yeah, I think so. I think that's exposed. I mean, I think there are good intentions on all sides, but they're motivated by, you know, there's an ideological agenda by some, there's a much more pragmatic, there's an electoral agenda by others, and sometimes these, you know, are intentional. And I want to just talk about, you mentioned the day after, and let's talk about some of the possibilities there before we open it up to questions from the audience. Francisco, you know, one comes to assume, or it's easy to assume that if Maduro does go, that Juan Guaidó will ultimately, the next day, be president of the country and everybody starts to heal. That's not necessarily the case. Explain why and what role does the military ultimately play and who the next leader of the country is. There's a saying in Spanish about Dos Crabuachos peleando por una botella vacía, two drunk people fighting over an empty bottle. That's what Venezuelan politics has become. They're fighting over control of the state, but the state has sort of dissolved underneath them. The administrative systems are not really there. There's a lot of chaos and distrust. Nobody in the military trusts each other, but nobody in the ruling party either. Since there is a topic of Russia and we're talking about American elections here, so let's just follow me down this thought exercise that brings all these strands together. One of the things that Russia has graced Venezuela with is sophisticated weapons, including some 5,000 of man-portable air defense systems, shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missiles that will bring down an airline. The government of Venezuela, because they don't, the Maduro Central Military has made sure to distribute some of those to some of its civilian armed groups. These things in the black market in Syria will sell for about $30,000, and a lot of these guys are living on like $2,000, $3 a month and keeping one of these things under their beds. At some point, somebody will have a bright idea to just hide one of these things under the sacks of cocaine, moving north from Venezuela to the US. And the day a US airliner is brought down by a Russian surface-to-air missile smuggled from Venezuela, is the day Venezuela becomes a national security priority for the US. This is a tail risk. It's a risk that some people sort of in the man-pads world are aware of, but it's not part of the broader debate, but it's what happens when you have a state that basically dissolves and fails. You have a state that dissolves and fails and you have a lot of weapons laying around. Those fine buyers, those fine buyers. It's very bad, you know, as soon as it is. There is a national security dimension from the US point of view to the Venezuelan problem that sometimes gets underplayed. But Venezuela, because it is a feeling state and it's becoming more and more non-governed territory, there are now large Swedes in Venezuela that are not really governed by Medut or by the central state. Their chunks, the mining regions are run by ELN, the Colombian guerrilla group, and prison gangs. They're like whole areas of the country that are run underground. If somebody steals their cell phone, you don't call the police, you call the prison gang leader and he shoots the guy who did it, okay? So when you have non-governed spaces and you have lots of sophisticated weapons around, that's not a good combination. Reminds you of the fall of the Soviet Union in many ways, but I don't think many Americans would take it that seriously because what comes to my mind is that drone episode that happened last year where there was, I don't know if this was Maduro trying to instigate something himself internally or was it an attempt at assassination, but that seemed to be rather minor than compared to some of these scenarios you play out. That was not as sophisticated, Russian man. So where is Guaido in all of this, assuming that Maduro at one point will not be part of the equation? Look, best case scenario, he's the guy who gets to start the 20-year process of very slowly using a still-cohesive armed forces to try to rebuild the central state's control over the territory, sort of Plan Colombia style. That's a process that will take a generation and that's a very optimistic scenario. I think when states fail, they don't unfail quickly. What is likely is that Venezuela remains lightly governed, if at all, in many places with guerrilla infiltration and very powerful criminal gangs running large chunks of the territory, drugs running going north, but also gold and diamonds and coltan and rare metals from the Southeast. And groups of criminals who control these things who end up with money in their pocket are never very difficult to dislodge. That is manageable if the Venezuelan armed forces remain cohesive. That's not at all given. If on top of all that, the Venezuelan armed forces crack or break up into five or six warring little bits, then you're really looking at a kind of Libyan scenario and you could be looking at that for a generation. Wow. Michael, let me ask you, we have another G20 coming up next month in Japan. How high on the president's list will Venezuela be when he meets with these foreign leaders, in particular China and Russia? If he does, I mean, there's nothing on his schedule as we know of a meeting, but a pull aside wouldn't have you. I don't think it's gonna be the highest priority, but I think it will come up. I think it will be raised. This has turned into a global crisis and beyond the region, beyond this hemisphere. And it's something that the US has invested a lot in in terms of policy and really a lot of statements. There's a lot on the line in the United States in terms of what's been done already. So I think it's gonna be raised in that context. I hope it is. I certainly think that would be the way to go. I think there's a window now. And I do think that getting some of these supporters of Maduro to go along with some sort of negotiation I think makes a lot of sense. I mean, Cuba, even Cuba has said they've said, now whether this means anything or not, Francisco, correctly, but Cuba has made a shift recently. They've said we do not, first they said we do not intervene in other countries. And now they're saying, we're open to fostering a dialogue on Venezuela. Well, that's not a monumental change. It's something. But it's something. And I think we're at the point where we have to kind of grab on to- But you're saying there's a chance. There's a chance. There's a chance. Cuba is a basket case. Francisco talked about the sort of the Cubanization of Venezuela. There's also the Venezuelan relation of Cuba. Yeah, of course. The people starving to death, which hasn't been the case in Cuba, since the special period after the Soviet Union. Without natural resources either. Right. And so, what do they do? They want to survive too. I think oil supplies to have dropped by half. And at some point, Venezuela was mining oil from Algeria to Cuba. That's how high a priority. Before we turn it to the audience, I just want to leave a question with you because I mentioned to some of you when we were in the other room before the panel began that my parents, in 1990, went on vacation in Venezuela. And I'm wondering, and I remember the photos and the souvenirs they brought back and it was beautiful. And I'm wondering if you, your best estimation, and obviously even from a very optimistic standpoint, when could that day be again where Westerners travel as tourists to Venezuela? 15 years from now? 15? 15. Inza. Minamum, I would say. Minamum, yeah. Minamum. Optimism, yeah. I hope so. I hope 15. Hey, well with that, let's open it up for the audience. How about up here in the front? Thank you. I was wondering. I am from Colombia, but I wanted just to bring up to the audience on the table. When you talk about guerrillas moving from Colombia to Venezuela or groups, we are talking about narco terrorists. So it's not only that they have very powerful weapons from all over the world because they have the money, but they have a business. So Venezuela is not alone. And I just wanted to point out because I just hate when they say three of us because they're not co-terrorists. A question for Francisco. Today I heard that Maduro was saying that he was going to call for elections. How can that work? You're more updated than me because I didn't see it, but we've heard calls for things like parliamentary elections or things like that. National Assembly. National Assembly elections. National Assembly one year. It's nice. Guaido already responded to that and said this is absurd in the forest. To get to the back, the gentleman in the blue blazer. Navy. Thank you. This is for whoever wants to take to answer it. Just going back to the question about the day after, estimates coming out of the think tank community are suggesting it could cost anywhere between 15 and 80 billion per year in terms of Venezuelan reconstruction. And what does the United States need to be prepared to do in terms of its financial commitments, but also global leadership on this issue? We've heard the administration be critical of foreign assistance before. But bringing it back to my least favorite buzzword, Great Power Competition, in what do we stand to lose if China or if Putin, the humanitarian comes in and gets to dictate the terms of that reconstruction? Who wants to take it first? I'll take a shot at that. So, I think it's going to require much more than the United States. In fact, as I was thinking about China in preparation for this, I was thinking China could potentially play a very productive role. China needs oil, Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves. I think that the production, Francisco, I'm sure you know this is the number. It's dropped by 50% since, it's dropped by 50% since Maduro. More? I think it worked, about 80. 80? Okay, so it's... It's at $700,000 a day now, which is not good. Yeah, not good. And so, I mean, I think that China, for example, could invest in the oil industry, hopefully in a very transparent way. But I do think you brought up Great Power Competition. I think if you take a step back and look at China's involvement in the region, writ large, I think that we are not doing very well. Our messaging to the countries of Latin America are, you have to choose between us or China. We're saying, it's a really bad idea to deal with China, but then we're not offering anything in return. No sorts of alternatives. The Chinese are coming in and they're saying, hey, we can offer investment, infrastructure. And then we're making things worse, I think by doing things like cutting funding to the Northern Triangle, because we're not even reliable and we have pledged to help a country. So I think that we have to play a big role in Venezuela to sort of stop that trend that we're seeing in the region where we're just handicapping ourselves. And Sasha, China would by no means be a silent donor. So what role would Russia play if in fact you see China starting to big foot and cover a lot of the expenses? I think that's fine for Russia as long as Russia political interests are secured. The problem is with the attitude of the administration where it sees China everywhere, like John Bolton gave a speech on Africa and it was a speech on China and Africa. He gave a speech on US policy in the Arctic and it's very much about China. So if you see every problem as a nail, it's kind of tough to see really creative in the productive cooperation here. But on Russia, I don't expect Russia to spend a penny, frankly, because you look at Syria and you see that Russia is now trying to mobilize Europeans and say, hey, it's actually your fault that you allowed the situation go that far with the red lines and Assad has to go. So now, and you are sanctioning us, so we don't have money because of you. So you need to pay for the reconstruction and it's basically you broke it, you own it under our control. So I think it will be very much similar attitude, but I don't envisage that we enter this stage of conversations. You want to hold it here in front? Thank you for your conversations. So I'm a Japanese media correspondent. So I'm wondering why now the Trump administration trying to commit a Venezuelan issue or oust the Maduro regime, why now? It seems that the US, I mean, my interpretation and what's been covered by the media is that the US banded together with other countries and a coalition to support Maduro and hoping that this would be a quick transition and that doesn't seem to have played out and the situation has sort of stalled, correct? The cynical interpretation has to do with a golf club in South Florida called Doral, which Doral is like the place where Venezuelans go live in South Florida and Donald Trump owns a golf club there. He's lost money there. He's lost a bunch of money there, but he's met a lot of Venezuelan exiles there. And when you ask Donald Trump and people ask him about it, he'll always go back to Doral and the just person. Just the happenstance of he happens to own a golf club where opposition minded Venezuelans play golf. And I remember, I recall obviously Marco Rubio playing a key role in persuading the president and Leo Lopez's wife flew into the White House and met with the president as well. A year ago or two years ago, I wrote an article that said, you know, autocrats have an edge with Trump, why not Maduro? Because in a way it makes the statement that President Trump has a weakness for autocrats around the world. Well, Maduro was an autocrat and obviously had his Trump position. And I think part of the explanation has to do with South Florida, I don't know about the Doral, but electoral politics in South Florida and also saying, you know, and also the very, very outside influence of Marco Rubio, Senator Rubio on this issue. And the connection with Cuba, which Francisco, you know, made a very compelling case. This is not just Venezuela and not just, you know, because Cuba is the regime that we've been trying to change for six decades without any success. So it's tied to that sort of ideological kind of plan and project as well. And that's why I think, you know, Maduro was a little bit of the exception compared to some of the other strongmen around the world that are not dealt with as severely by the same situation. I would venture to say that for Rubio, for example, this is not about Venezuela, it's about Cuba. That's driving, I mean, that's what's driving him. And from an electoral standpoint, you can see the president already sort of saying, you want to Venezuela here at home, elect one of the Democrats who are, you know, the socialists like Maduro. Yeah. Okay, all the way in the back in the tan jacket. So sorry, you're even further back with the tan jacket, and then I'll come to you in the pink. Thank you. You already answered my question, but I would like to rephrase it. After a long time, President Trump was willing to become friends with Putin, but the Mueller 800-pound guerrilla investigation was sitting on his shoulders. Now that it is gone and we have a new president in Ukraine who don't have an idea of what kind of policies he's going to have. And there was almost a failed revolution in Venezuela. Would it be, it would be quite logical that President Trump would like to resume his bromance with Putin by suggesting, let's see, let's scratch, I'll scratch your back and you will scratch mine. I will give you Ukraine and you will give me Venezuela. At least there were lots of rumors about it all over the place. Mr. Pompeo went to Sochi and they didn't reach any kind of agreement. The question to Mr. Gabuev, do you think that this was the last attempt when Trump could have tried to reach a deal with Putin but since it's failed, it is over for the potential bromance which could have happened between them. Thank you. First of all, we don't know after reading all the Mueller report, we still don't know what's the source of Trump's administration for Putin. It's still mysterious. Could go different ways, but it's still, I think that the question that's not really answered. I don't think that there is much room for pragmatic agreement on anything, be it arms control, be it Syria, like there is stuff that we can do better that we're already doing, but I think arms control is partially stuck because of desire to pull China in and definitely China doesn't want to be part of this conversation at this stage for sure. In Ukraine, we are stuck by Putin is not letting the hook in Donbass off and then there is not that much that the US can give on Ukraine. They cannot say like, okay, you have Crimea, we will not raise it anymore. On sanctions, you cannot do that because a lot of this has been taken by the Congress. So there is very little that the countries cannot, is something that it can do better, but there is not that much they can do more. So we are stuck on this. And we still see the pattern. And I think that that was clear long before there was an outrage. And it's not because of Mueller. It's because of the nature of the relationship. But we still see continuous outrage made by US administration to Putin and Putin is happy about this. So we're gonna see probably meeting with Ossaka and probably follow up. What Putin said in Sochi in Walda this October was that we understand that Trump cannot deliver on Russia because his hands are tied by elections. And probably in his second term, he will be freer to do stuff and will be more open to talk and reach a pragmatic compromise. I won't predict the outcome of this election in this country. But that's probably something Putin's about. The question remains to me on what's on and off on both sides. And I don't see frankly much that's of substantial. But it's safe to say the Putin supports second term for President Trump. He didn't say so, but I would assume. Did you want it to chime in? No? Okay. Okay, so the pink salmon shirt. Yeah, all the way in the back. Hi, my name is Neil Garver. I'm a neighbor and I'm a Smithsonian Information Specialist. I have a very general question for you. I've heard the word sanctions battered around and I've heard targeted sanctions. But when you talk about sanctions and you look at the populace, the people, not the one percenters, aren't sanctions seen in general as an act of war? They're portrayed in Venezuelan state media as an act of war all day every day. That's sort of at the center of the Venezuelan propaganda regime. And there's some polling data in Venezuela to suggest that that is an argument that more and more people are buying. Problem in Venezuela with sanctions is that there's not sort of a middle ground between the slap on the wrist of like individual sanctions. I'm gonna freeze your account, Mr. Corrupt Official, and like the nuclear option of the U.S. will no longer buy Venezuelan oil. There was kind of a missing middle there. And the Trump administration jumped this year very quickly from slapping the risk territory to nuclear weaponry. So there isn't enough, like, I struggle to sort of convey the gravity of the situation. Any Venezuelan you meet, and me included, and I went in this room with the Venezuelan, are you currently trying to figure out a way to get a prescription medicine to a family member back home? Everybody will raise their hands, you know? And now they've stopped direct flights from the U.S. to Venezuela. It's like set the video game on even a harder setting. Now we have to figure different ways to do that. There's no medicines. There's no food. And there's no way to import them because if you cancel oil for dollars, then how do you get the money? It's, I'll stop there. Just to add to that, when I was talking about multilateralizing sanctions, I was talking about multilateralizing targeted sanctions, which is, like you said, that's, I mean, it's very different than the decision on the oil, which. It's very draconian. Yeah, it's the only thing in this world. Yeah. In the corner here, you know what, let me, I'm sorry, we just haven't had a woman ask the question yet, come to the, in the black, and then I'll come to you, sir. The black dress. So Chris. Hi, my question's for anybody who's interested, but following, you know, the dialogue on possible U.S. military intervention, Maduro did tweet that not only would there be serious retaliatory carnage, but you know, a possible Vietnam 2.0, is there any merit to that claim and how do you think that alliances would stem or change if this crisis did escalate towards war? Okay. As far as that, so, I don't wanna get too into the weeds on what a military intervention would look like, but what I will say is, so you have the elements of the Venezuelan military that are loyal to, will remain loyal to Maduro, but I think even perhaps more problematic, and which would lead to a long-term sort of low-intensity conflict, are these non-state actors, whether it be the collectivos, whether it be the ELN, you mentioned the ELN, or dissident ARC members that would pick up arms. I think there is something to that. This would not be quick, it would not be easy, and it would involve U.S. boots on the ground for a very long period of time. It made the sense, a lot. Yeah. I don't see a planet where the U.S. troops would ever hit the ground because it's too crazy an idea. No, I don't think it's, I hope not, but there was a lot of talk of it. Right, but the thing that seems to me much more likely is that you have a remote control operation with cruise missiles and things that happen from very high up in the sky, and things go boom, and it's Libya, it's not Vietnam, it's Libya, it's Libya. You attack, you destroy the only organized force that could hold the country together, in this case, the Armed Forces, but then you don't really have a compelling national security interest there, so you just go home, and you don't have to go home because you were never there specifically, and you leave a civil war that is just slow burning forever on the ground, and that's the thing that doesn't let me sleep in there. Well, that's like, that just can't, I mean, I would say that this can't happen. I mean, the idea of a surgical strike in a city like Caracas, I mean, it's not, it would create the need, whether or not we would get up and go is another question, but it would create a disaster on the ground. It'd have to occupy, it would be an occupation. It would have to, yeah. It would have to be an occupation. If you do that, one of them. And Sasha, if you break it, you won't be there. If you were minimally responsible, you would have to occupy. Right. May I remind you the situation? The United States. Not always responsible, is that what you're trying to say? No, what I'm trying to say is that it's entirely imaginable to me that a deeply responsible decision is made to attack and not occupy. That's, that's, that can happen. So in that situation, Sasha, what's the likelihood of little green men? I don't think that little green men really matter there. I think little green men were really confined to Crimea where the opportunity has been given to the people to vote, and we can debate the legality of the referendum for sure, but I don't think it's disputable that most of the people cast their ballot to vote Russia, which was illegal, but which is the fact, and that you couldn't do that operation without overwhelming consent of the local people and overwhelming military superiority because Russia had a base and had a presence there. How many military personnel are in Venezuela currently? There is a report of 120 people that they flew in, and they may have flown some of their paramilitary people with mostly to guards, raw snapped objects there. It's definitely not enough to change any situation on the ground, and most of the people who have been flown in seem to be cyber specialists, but that's... Can I just say, I find that scenario also very scary, but I just cannot see that happening. I think that it would spill over into Colombia. I think I just, it would have to be, I mean, that would be really, really stupid. It would be the downing of it. I don't care, crazy. All of the... Not that that's impossible, I've seen... All of the military scenarios are absolutely awful, but on April 30th, when there was this little abortive uprising, how close were we? We were, there was shooting in Caracas and big guns, and we don't know who exactly was shooting. How close were we to one military unit taking up arms against another military unit and then having the beginning seat of a civil war that starts to create pressure on the United States to take out that unit with a cruise missile, because that's what you're being told, by the way, though people here that you need to do to give them the upper hand. And how does that, you know, you can, we've come already so close to situations where like we're one small miscalculation away from a chain of events that takes you to these impossible scenarios. Well, I want to say as much as that, I mean, I applaud the United States for recognizing Juan Guaido as the interim president, but I think a request from Juan Guaido to intervene, it's not in the US interest to do so, so. I would agree, but you know, I think it was in the first week of my first international relations course that I was taught that every war starts with a miscalculation. Somebody makes them sick. And I think that we've seen that movie before in Libya where many colleagues and the Pentagon and the Intel community were saying that actually going there even with the airstrikes is not necessarily a very good idea. And we need to have developed continuously planning and plan B and really talk to other actors involved. And that has not been necessarily done because the idea was we take Kandavi's war machine out, he will stop because he will immediately get the message and then we will have political process and that it work. So, and the question is that was done under very careful, rational, different precedent with all the procedures in place and like a lot of kind of different people in the situation room. Like what happens now is books up for grabs. Right. And events happen, you know, the precipitating event that might push us down this like horrid slide is something we're probably not even imagining right now because that's happened yet. Well, if it does come to that, I would hope, I mean, there's a lot of experience in Latin America peacekeeping and perhaps, I mean, the only way to deal with that I think would to have an international sort of coalition of actors, not just the US. Who are they? Okay, I think we have time for two more questions. So, and then I think, I don't know if you're available after I'm just gonna volunteer in your time to answer questions. I'll be outside. I promise to you the next question. Hi, my name is Daniel Diaz, Concerned Citizen. Reuters reported that in January, there's the area 400 military contractors went to Venezuela to protect Maduro. Plus the arms and equipment that Russia apparently is providing to Venezuelan. Plus, you said 150 cyber. So, do we- Military personnel, we don't know whether they are cyber or not. Do we believe that Russia is trying to have like a military footprint in Venezuela? Are they building any military base? Because I know you said that they just want to have kind of like doing like, oh, you can't mess with us in Crimea. So, we want to mess with you here in your backyard. But beyond that, do we have any idea if they're building something like more steady to stay here and kind of like mess with us for a longer period? There is some reports which are uncorrelated and not verified about Russia's been military installations for intelligence purposes like tracking stations and stuff. So, that's important. But if that goes, I think Russians are clear that you cannot build a military muscle enough to protect those, particularly given the vulnerability and the pre-civil war kind of situation on the ground. So, you can protect them under Maduro regime, but then it's not that Russia is really hoping to build enough military presence that these facilities are there. So, I'm really not sure. Okay, but we're using the word cyber kind of dismissively in this conversation. I think that's a mistake. Cyber, what we're referring to is a software and hardware capabilities that Venezuelan and Cuban military intelligence need to make sure that they hear every conversation between any two member of their armed forces. That's not an afterthought. That's the core of the regime's strategy for keeping power. Okay, one final question in the front here. It's coming. Dan Lieberman. Yeah, the crisis started when the oil prices dropped and Venezuela had not prepared for dropping oil prices. They had not prepared their economy, but it got exaggerated when the reserves were frozen. The Britain would not have allowed repatriation of the gold and they were cut off from borrowing on the financial markets. Now, after about two years, the sanctions have not succeeded. It's unknown what they hope to succeed by the sanctions except to overthrow the government. So, the sanctions have not succeeded. Government has not been overthrown. So, what could have the sanctions been and why are they still in place if all they've resulted is in the starving of the Venezuelan people? And that actually softballs the effect because sanctions have, there's a time lag between the sanction being imposed and the real effect being felt. A lot of people who follow these things closely think that the worst effects of sanctions are just coming online now or will be coming in the next couple of months as the accounts payable starts to stop coming in. Now, for the last couple of months, we've still been taking in money from oil we sold before. So, it could get even much worse. And it, I think it was predicated, the idea was predicated on, you know, nuclear option was predicated on the notion that this would happen quickly. Obviously it hasn't, in other words, unless you think that, you know, that the objective was to make the suffering of the Venezuelan people even worse and cause even more refugees to leave. The other alternative was that this would just be a very big blow and, you know, the top rest was even this is over. And again, this would change. But as this goes on, as Francisco says, the effects, I think, are even worse over time. There's clearly not a plan B. You don't see a situation. There wasn't a plan B from the beginning. You don't see a situation. Was there a plan A? Yes. There was a, not a plan, but a hope. There was a hope A. A hope A. A hope A. And you don't see a situation and vision situation where the U.S. would lift sanctions with Maduro still in power. Here? I'm asking. I'm not American. Ha ha ha. We're seeing basically not a policy, but an attitude. As throughout this administration's foreign policy, it's not a policy, but an attitude. It's a hope. Well, yeah, we talked about the suffering and I just want to leave you with one note and there was a touching article this morning. We talked about the human tragedy there and there was a New York Times story about a child who didn't have any medication and is dying and just bones basically. And a local nurse got on a bus, found her way to get to this child so you still see that they're unsung heroes and there's humanity and we can't forget that. So with that, we will leave it. And I want to thank you all for coming and this is, I think, a very engaging and interesting conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.