Five Questions for Faculty: Dorothy Kronick

A look into the escalation between the U.S. and Venezuela

The United States may be on the verge of a military attack on Venezuela. Since August, Washington has launched at least ten missile strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, tightened economic sanctions, authorized covert C.I.A. operations in Venezuela, offered a $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, and, most recently, directed an aircraft carrier to the Caribbean. Dorothy Kronick, Associate Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, has spent years researching Venezuelan politics, democratic backsliding, and U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. In this conversation, she discusses what might happen next.

On Friday, the United States redirected a carrier strike group to the Caribbean. What does this mean?

It means that an attack on Venezuelan soil appears more likely than it did last Thursday. Moving an aircraft carrier and its fleet—and not just any aircraft carrier, the aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, the largest in the world—is a big deal. One of my Venezuelan colleagues who’s been skeptical about the probability of land strikes within Venezuela had been telling reporters for weeks, “call me when there’s an aircraft carrier.” His phone is ringing.

What kind of attack? What happens next?

If there is an attack on Venezuelan soil, one possibility is that the U.S. military will target remote airstrips or ports believed to be used for cocaine smuggling. That would be in line with the administration’s stated objective to “disrupt illicit actors and activities.” A larger attack might strike Venezuela’s radar and surface-to-air missile systems, or major military installations like Fuerte Tiuna in Caracas or El Libertador in Maracay, possibly to promote regime change. An even more serious operation, which doesn’t seem especially likely, could involve special forces in an attempt to capture or kill Nicolás Maduro or other major Venezuelan officials.

It also remains possible that, despite the arrival of the USS Gerald Ford, there will not be an attack on Venezuelan soil. For one thing, the Venezuelan military could respond to the threat of U.S. force by proposing a deal that’s acceptable to Washington. That’s improbable, but it’s not impossible. For another, Washington’s priorities could shift. Those within the administration who are pushing for these strikes currently seem to have the president’s ear, but officials who prefer to normalize relations with Maduro could regain the upper hand. It’s still conceivable that the entire military mobilization could end up as an expensive, abandoned psychological operation.

What’s not in the cards for the coming weeks is a land invasion. That would require a deployment many times larger than the number of troops currently mobilized to the Caribbean. When the United States invaded Panama in 1989, we landed approximately 26,000 troops to fight the fewer than 15,000 Panamanian Defense Forces—and even so, the conflict dragged on for weeks. Venezuela has at least 50,000 active-duty members in its ground forces (maybe closer to 100,000) and no crossable land borders (neither Brazil nor Colombia would support an invasion), meaning that U.S. troops would have to start at sea. That’s not happening any time soon.

What’s the administration’s goal? Do you think they’ll achieve it?

Different people in the administration appear to have different goals. Secretary Marco Rubio seems focused on regime change: he wants Maduro out. Stephen Miller is reportedly motivated by an aggressive war on drugs, or by the appearance of an aggressive war on drugs. (As news outlets have repeatedly noted, fentanyl doesn’t come through Venezuela.) Then there’s another faction, led by special envoy Ric Grenell, that doesn’t support this campaign at all. Grennell appears to have been pushing for a modus vivendi with Maduro, including allowing U.S. oil companies (especially Chevron) to operate in Venezuela. 

So: would attacking Venezuela cause a large reduction in drug overdose deaths in the United States? Almost certainly not. Would attacking Venezuela convince U.S. voters that the administration is serious about drug trafficking? I don’t know. Would attacking Venezuela lead to regime change? It depends on the nature of the attack. 

If Trump were to commit the U.S. military to ousting Maduro, the Venezuelan armed forces would not be able to keep Maduro in power (needless to say). But Trump has not yet made that commitment. And short of an actual regime-change operation, it’s not clear where other plausible U.S. military action would lead. Land strikes might kill Maduro, push him into exile, or inspire the Venezuelan military to depose him. Then again, they might not. Maduro has made huge investments in military surveillance and the repression of servicemembers suspected of dissidence; that’s why he was able to hang on to power even after losing last year’s presidential election in a landslide, as I explained in an article published earlier this year. Moreover, it would be hard for a prospective U.S.-backed government to offer Venezuelan military officials credible guarantees of immunity from prosecution. For all of these reasons, the Venezuelan military might well continue to back Maduro even in the face of strikes. And of course, if Maduro did survive a U.S. attack, he’d likely end up with an even stronger hold on power. 

So far I’ve focused only on the short term. If GSPP ever decides on a series called “Five Hundred Questions for Faculty”, we can discuss the prospects for democracy in Venezuela in the medium term.

How has the Maduro government responded so far? 

As it usually does: with repression and propaganda. On Saturday, Maduro threatened to withdraw the citizenship of opposition politician Leopoldo López. (The Venezuelan constitution explicitly states that citizenship is irrevocable.) Other opposition politicians and activists have been arrested. The Venezuelan government is once again asking citizens to denounce “traitors” through a cell-phone app. The Venezuelan military is marshalling troops and posting slick videos of training exercises. At the same time, tighter sanctions are already “extinguishing Venezuela’s short-lived economic recovery.” 

How has all of this shaped your research agenda?

I am working on evaluating the U.S. government’s claims about the Venezuelans targeted by recent U.S. policies. Since March, when the government sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, a coauthor and I have been collecting and analyzing quantitative data in order to assess the government’s allegation that these men are members of the gang Tren de Aragua. We are also applying for funding to document the effects of the recent strikes on boats in the Caribbean and possible strikes on Venezuelan soil. Journalists are reporting individual stories; our goal is to provide a broader, data-driven assessment of the government’s official justification for its policies.

Dorothy Kronick is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy whose research focuses on Latin American politics, especially Venezuela. She studies crime, policing, and democratic backsliding, with work published in American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, and Science, among others. Her commentary has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Kronick holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and an M.A. in Economics from Stanford University and previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania.