Podcast: Border Politics and Latin America with Moises Naím

TRANSCRIPT: Border Politics and Latin America with Moises Naím

Moisés Naím:

We have this young President Juan Guaidó, who now has 60% of popularity in the country and people trust him for now.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. It's an audio version of what you can find on public television where I analyze global topics, sit down with big guests, and make use of little puppets. This week I sit down with Moisés Naím, an internationally syndicated columnist who used to run Foreign Policy magazine and was also a senior government official in Venezuela in the 1990s, not now, thankfully. Today we'll talk about the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, Latin America more broadly, and how he sees power shifting around the world. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Moisés Naím distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, well-known author, new novelist, though we're not going to talk about that at all, so good to be with you.

Moisés Naím:

Thanks for having me again, Ian. It's always a pleasure chatting with you.

Ian Bremmer:

I've so much to talk to you about. Latin America, usually a part of the world that's a little bit quieter in the headlines, but absolutely not now and particularly in Venezuela where you, for your sins, were actually in cabinet back in the '90s, thankfully not now.

Moisés Naím:

Yeah, the challenge is huge and people pay attention to the political situation and the difficulties and all of that, and the huge corruption of the Maduro government, but the story that is central there is that this is the largest economic collapse in history. There are no precedents to this, and all of this is driven by the fact that the productive capacity has been destroyed. The domestic industry for most sectors is very, very tiny now. The Venezuelan economy now has the size of one of the Central American small countries and this was the largest wealthiest country in the region-

Ian Bremmer:

With the largest oil reserves proven in the world today.

Moisés Naím:

Today. And the fact is that oil experts have been declining at 15% per month in recent years. That is driven by a combination of the destruction of the oil industry, both because of theory of corruption and because they just appoint their political cronies to run it and they don't run it, they run it to the ground. And the other is sanctions, US sanctions on the oil industry and the capacity of the oil industry to operate internationally. So the combination of all these things have made Venezuela, who used to be a petrostate, one of the world's largest players in the oil industry. Now, instead of being a petrostate, it's a narco state because now narcotics trafficking is the dominant industry in the country.

Ian Bremmer:

So most of the money for the government, for the military today is no longer coming from oil production?

Moisés Naím:

Exactly. It's coming from illicit activities, mostly narcotics, but also the illegal kind of exports of coltan, of gold and Venezuela is very wealthy in terms of minerals, all kinds of minerals.

Ian Bremmer:

But with the level of collapse that you've talked about, again, unprecedented in this part of the world in a very short period of time, why overwhelmingly is the military still with Mr. Maduro?

Moisés Naím:

Because there is no exit for them. Most of them are either under tight control by the Cuban Intelligence Services because the other big story that has not been sufficiently told is that Venezuela is now occupied by Cuba. The Cuban government plays significant roles in important decisions. There are very few decisions of state that have to do with international relations, with economy, with domestic politics, with repression, with the management of the country that are not controlled or influenced by the Cuban government. And so they are very good, the Cuban government has been very good at controlling. They have 60 plus years of running a very tight dictatorship and the first thing you learn as a dictator is pay attention to the military. These are the guys that can do you in, so that's what's going on. So there is repression, there is control and the fact that the military, the top brass, is up to the ears in all kinds of dirty business.

Ian Bremmer:

But they can't be having anywhere close to the resource and the success that they were experiencing when the economy was actually booming comparatively?

Moisés Naím:

Well, some of them, when the economy-

Ian Bremmer:

Because they ran the oil sector too.

Moisés Naím:

They ran the oil sector relatively, but again, we are talking about a highly fragmented military. Some of them are actively involved in the cartels, in the drug cartels.

Ian Bremmer:

Now you mentioned the Cubans and you said that increasingly Venezuela is a country in terms of its power that's occupied by the Cubans. You didn't mention Moscow. We talk a lot about Russia, of course, and perhaps too much in terms of the mainstream media these days, but certainly the Russians have wanted to show that they are putting their finger on the scale in favor of Maduro and his regime. What role do you actually see them playing?

Moisés Naím:

Critical. And it was quite a surprise. They're a new player, they're a newcomer to this play. They have been very important suppliers of weapons during the '90s, during the Chávez years, from 1999 on Venezuela under Chávez, and then under Maduro became one of the biggest clients of Russian weaponry that very often came with technical assistance and all kinds of support systems for that, that included members of the military. But then not unlike what happened in Syria where Russia was not a player originally, it was United States and the European Union, Iran and so on, and all of a sudden Putin became a spoiler, just Putin showed up, the Russians showed up, and now they're important players in Syria.

You cannot imagine a solution or a negotiation in Syria that does not include the Russians, which was not the case at the beginning. Same in Venezuela, the Russians today play a very important role. Recently, there was an attempt to overthrow Maduro in which the Americans and Secretary of State Pompeo recognized that they had high-level talks with the Minister of Defense, with the President of the Supreme Court, with very important military people, with the Head of Intelligence. They had it all organized and they were going to go ahead and remove Maduro.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, do you believe that? I say that because when there was a coup attempt against Erdogan in Turkey and it failed, those people were gone, they were arrested, they were purged, and in fact, they went much farther and much broader than was complicit. Now, in the case of the coup attempt against Maduro in Venezuela, you had the United States government saying that they were in conversations directly with the senior Venezuelan officials, but after the coup attempt failed, those leaders are still in their roles, no purge whatsoever. So how do we square that?

Moisés Naím:

Power, the distribution of power. These individuals have their own power bases in different kinds of ways and they immediately turned and immediately started denouncing the United States, stating and restating their enthusiastic support for Maduro, explaining that they are all part of the same family that is countering the empire of the North, that they play them and each one of them has sufficient power not to be overtaken or taken out.

Ian Bremmer:

So why do you think it failed?

Moisés Naím:

I think it failed because they turned and I believe-

Ian Bremmer:

But why did they turn?

Moisés Naím:

Because of the Russians. That is what Secretary of State Pompeo said publicly that the Russians played a role in turning this around, and I have other sources here in Washington that confirmed that.

Ian Bremmer:

So despite all of the money, all of the control that they've had, they were willing to go against their own interests and their regime in support of the American administration that was not offering them much of anything until the Russians stepped in?

Moisés Naím:

No. What they didn't have and they need is sustainability. This current situation is not sustainable. You cannot sustain this massive humanitarian crisis of people eating from the garbage cans in the streets, children dying in hospitals, people fleeing the country, 8,000 Venezuelans per day seek refugee in other countries, the inflation is the highest in the world-

Ian Bremmer:

Which gets you a couple million a year, that's a Syria-type crisis.

Moisés Naím:

Even larger. The Venezuelans displaced and the Venezuelan refugees is larger than Syria by now, and it will continue if nothing happens and the situation in Venezuela, the economic situation doesn't get better, you will continue to have desperate people that are willing to walk to another country, typically Colombia, and that will destabilize Colombia. If you get one more million Venezuelans walking to Colombia and they are taxing their social systems, their schooling, the health, the housing, the job market.

Ian Bremmer:

And your view, if you could make a recommendation to the Trump administration about anything that they might do differently than what they've done so far, you would say what?

Moisés Naím:

At this point, we have had from them a lot of talk about an action with sanctions and they have been very effective. I think that was well-designed and it's working, but as there is this constant dangling of all options are on the table, meaning the military option is on the table, and that has created expectations and is a distraction-

Ian Bremmer:

And quite as talked about it even-

Moisés Naím:

... And everybody talks about it, but then you talk to the people in the administration or in the Pentagon and elsewhere, you don't see that there is so much appetite for a military intervention with whom, with which legitimacy? Are you going to go to Congress and require authorization for that? Are you going to go to the United Nations and seek the Security Council's-

Ian Bremmer:

And which allies will support-

Moisés Naím:

... Which will not happen, and is President Trump willing to just go it alone and try to do it and how and what-

Ian Bremmer:

I think if they just bolted in a plane, I think that could be-

Moisés Naím:

Yeah, well, that's a possibility.

Ian Bremmer:

Okay, let's move from Venezuela. We could talk about it for hours, but Lord knows your involvement around Latin America is also extremely long-lasting and I'd love to ask you about a little of that. Another place big in the news right now is Mexico and the potential for a trade fight between the United States and the Mexicans. Were you surprised that this is, now after the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement was moving to ratification, were you surprised to see the trade and immigration issue right back in the headlines?

Moisés Naím:

I was surprised by the timing, not by the action. I always expected that as domestic politics in the United States and the electoral calendar grew close to events that Trump would lash out against Mexico. That's what... remember when he declared that he was going to run for President of the United States. The essence of that message was about Mexico and China.

Ian Bremmer:

Stopping the Mexicans from-

Moisés Naím:

... Stop the Mexicans, they're criminals and...

Ian Bremmer:

Rapists, he said

Moisés Naím:

.... Rapists and all the horrible things, and apparently that has paid off. He's convinced that there is a base, that there is a political base that needs that, and I think he's going to play that.

Ian Bremmer:

Is it fair to say that López Obrador, the Mexican President, really does not want that fight?

Moisés Naím:

No, he's not. Actually, he has stated it several times. It is in writing. It is the official policy of the Mexican government and López Obrador, the President, constantly repeats it. He says my mantra is, I repeat it every day, I will not fight with the United States, I will not fight against the United States, and he repeats it. He doesn't want to fight with the United States, but it seems like well, López Obrador doesn't want to fight, President Trump needs a fight with Mexico. So we see these clashing interests, both driven by electoral and political calculus.

Ian Bremmer:

Now López Obrador is an incredibly powerful politician in the Mexican context. His popularity is enormous. He's got control in both houses of Congress. Can he work through this without experiencing a lot of damage internally, irrespective of whether tariffs go up or not?

Moisés Naím:

Sure. He can turn this around and explain that whatever bad economic situation happens in Mexico and it may, Mexico may suffer from López Obrador policies, but then he can blame the United States and he can blame Trump. He says the situation is bad because you can see what Trump has done to us. So Trump is providing a cover for whatever economic malpractices and bad economic policies that López Obrador will be undertaking.

Ian Bremmer:

So do you think there's going to need to be a shift from the Mexican President if these tariffs come on to start blaming Trump directly? Is he going to start needing the fight?

Moisés Naím:

I think he will try to avoid that because his political cycle is different. He was elected for six years, so he still has a lot to wait for and the run for that is still long.

Ian Bremmer:

Moisés Naím, great to see you, my friend.

Moisés Naím:

Same here. Thank you, Ian.

Ian Bremmer:

That's our show this week. We'll be right back here next week, same place, same time unless you're watching on social media, in which case wherever you happen to be, don't miss it. In the meantime, check us out @gzeromedia.com.

Announcer:

The GZERO World is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, places clients' needs first by providing responsive, relevant and customized solutions. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.