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Results for Caracas
The government of Nicolás Maduro has picked July 28 as the date for the next presidential election.
With the popular opposition candidate María Corina Machado banned from running because of financial impropriety charges that she says are bogus, late July leaves precious little time for Maduro’s opponents to coalesce around an alternative challenger.
That, of course, may be precisely the point.
That leaves two big questions: First, will the US judge that this move violates the “free and fair elections in exchange for sanctions relief” deal struck between Caracas and Washington last year? If so, the Biden administration will have to slap tough sanctions back onto the energy sector in oil-rich Venezuela.
Second, is Maduro overplaying his hand? By squeezing the opposition so brazenly, he risks triggering big protests if the election is seen as a sham.
But five years after surviving street protests of hundreds of thousands (and a mass exodus of millions more) over unfair elections, Maduro is betting that this time around most of those who would challenge him are already either politically exhausted or permanently exiled. Vamos a ver.
On Sunday, Chilean prosecutors said they had arrested a suspect in the murder of Ronald Ojeda, a 32-year-old Venezuelan ex-lieutenant and vocal critic of the government of President Nicolás Maduro, who was found dead in Santiago on Friday. Authorities said the lack of ransom demands and Ojeda's political history means he may have been abducted and killed by Venezuelan agents.
Ojeda had fled Caracas for Santiago in 2017, where he lived as a political refugee. He was charged with treason by the Venezuelan government in January, just weeks before he was abducted by four armed men on Feb. 21. His body was found encased in cement in a suitcase following a nine-day search. The detained suspect is a 17-year-old Venezuelan national.
While Venezuela denies involvement in Ojeda’s death, Maduro had already begun cracking down on political opponents in advance of this year’s elections, targeting key figures and organizations with accusations and arrests. In late January, Venezuela’s top court upheld an order from the Comptroller’s office barring popular opposition politician María Corina Machado from running for president, leading to accusations he was planning “a fraudulent election.”
In response, the US reimposed some sanctions that had been lifted in exchange for a promise of political reform and the release of political prisoners. Ojeda’s death may now lead Washington to reimpose additional sanctions on Venezuelan energy, mining, and secondary debt trading, despite the possible effect on global oil supplies and migration pressures.Just two weeks after sealing a historic election pact with the opposition, the Venezuelan government announced Monday that it would suspend “all effects” of opposition primaries, thereby jeopardizing a six-month pause of US sanctions on Caracas’ oil.
The decision comes just days after strongman President Nicolás Maduro called the contests a “fraud” — but he’s really afraid of the winner, popular opposition leader María Corina Machado. The election deal was supposed to lift a ban on her and other opposition figures holding office until 2030, but state harassment evidently continues. Fortunately for the ordinary Venezuelans brave enough to go out and vote in an opposition primary, organizers say they destroyed the voter sheets, making state retribution more difficult.
So, will the US keep buying Venezuelan oil? Washington said it would swiftly shut off the taps if Caracas doesn’t follow through with its democratic commitments, but as we wrote earlier, leverage is limited. If Maduro’s options are keeping oil revenue and losing power, or accepting sanctions he’s survived for a decade to stay in control, which do you think he will choose?
Risa Grais-Targow, Eurasia Group’s director for Latin America, says the US will likely find discretion to be the better part of valor under these circumstances. Before snapping back sanctions, she continues, “the US will still wait and see if Maduro takes steps toward allowing candidates to participate in the general election, even if the ruling yesterday seems to go in the other direction.”14: Venezuela has given the US 14 days to back off its “economic aggression,” or it will stop accepting deportation flights from the US carrying undocumented Venezuelan migrants. Washington has threatened to re-impose oil sanctions on Caracas after Venezuela banned the leading opposition candidate from running for president. But Venezuela is hitting Biden where it hurts: The migration crisis at the US southern border is becoming a major political liability for him, and Venezuelans are the third most common nationality of undocumented migrants apprehended.
50: The EU on Thursday reached a deal on an additional €50 billion in aid for Ukraine, breaking through a deadlock caused by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. "All 27 leaders agreed" on the support package, tweeted Charles Michel, the European Council president. Though Orbán is finally on board, it was not immediately clear what the Hungarian leader gained in exchange for abandoning his objections.
10: A US strike destroyed 10 Houthi drones in Yemen on Thursday, as Washington prepares to retaliate over a deadly attack on US forces in Jordan that the White House blamed on an Iran-backed coalition of militias. The US has repeatedly targeted the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in recent days in response to attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
78: Who do Americans trust? Nurses, that’s who. A whopping 78% of respondents polled said nurses are honest and ethical, the highest of nearly two dozen professions. The bad news? That’s still down 7 points since 2019, amid a wider collapse of trust in all trades. The least trusted? No surprises here: members of Congress, with just 6% – lower than car salespeople! And just one profession is seen as more trustworthy than it was four years ago: Labor union leaders, who rose by one mere percentage point to 25% during that period.
7: After seven years, the International Court of Justice (yes the same court that is handling the Gaza genocide case) on Wednesday ruled that Russia violated a UN anti-terrorism treaty by supporting separatists in Eastern Ukraine, and a minority rights treaty by suppressing the Ukrainian language in Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014. But in a setback for Ukraine, which brought the case, the court declined to rule on Russian responsibility for downing the MH17 commercial airliner in 2014.
87: Here’s some good news about America’s most famous missing aviatrix: An explorer claims his sonar imaging technology has found and photographed the remains of Amelia Earhart’s plane, which went missing over the Pacific Ocean 87 years ago as she attempted to become the first female pilot to fly around the world. Not bad. Next up, we’d like to ask this explorer to find us Jimmy Hoffa.The presidents of Venezuela and neighboring Guyana will meet Thursday in a bid to defuse a high-stakes territorial dispute. Both sides have very different views.
Caracas says the western two-thirds of Guyana – a region called Essequibo – rightfully belong to Venezuela, and that the current border is an illegitimate figment of 19th century cartography.
President Nicolas Maduro called a popular referendum to back his claims and has threatened to annex the region outright. Guyana, for its part, rejects this entirely and says an international court should decide the issue.
At stake are huge reserves of recently discovered oil in Essequibo, which could triple tiny Guyana’s GDP over the next decade as US firms develop the resources.
Troops are amassing on both sides of the border between the countries, and with US forces already helping the Guyanese military to protect the oil fields, any conflict could quickly spiral into a wider confrontation.
While neither side appears willing to compromise, they will meet Thursday on the Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent for talks.
THE WINNERS
Putin
To be fair, things aren’t great for Vladimir Putin – NATO is still stronger, and his economy is weaker than it’d be if he hadn’t invaded Ukraine. But from a low bar, 2023 was a clear winner for the Russian strongman. Ukraine’s vaunted counteroffensive failed to impress, Western attempts to cap the price of Russian oil faltered, and even an insurrection by his warlord-in-chief only seemed to make him stronger. Putin heads into 2024 happily watching the US Congress squabble over further aid for Ukraine, and who knows, next Christmas might just come early for the Kremlin if Donald Trump can win the US election in November.
Trump
Speaking of which, at the top of this year, the twice-impeached Teflon Don looked like he’d be getting fitted for a prison jumpsuit rather than filing campaign papers. But the bevy of state and federal legal cases against him – some of which were hard for non-lawyers to make sense of – only fired up his base. As a result, he’s not only miles ahead of any GOP challengers for the 2024 nomination, some polls also show him outright leading Joe Biden, who has suffered with voters because of perceptions of his age, inflation, a migration crisis at the southern border, and his controversial handling of the Gaza war.
India
This year, India eclipsed China as the world’s most populous country, defended its title as the fastest-growing major economy, and even landed a spacecraft on the moon. At the same time, PM Narendra Modi used his country’s 2023 presidency of the G20 and his deepening ties with the US to position himself as a vitally important diplomatic bridge-builder between the wealthy G7 countries and the developing nations of the so-called Global South. Popular at home, increasingly influential abroad, and with a flag on the moon to boot, Modi – who faces elections in 2024 – has guided his country to a winner of a year.
Nicolás Maduro
It was a feliz 2023 indeed for the strongman of Caracas. Most of the world quietly stopped supporting his erstwhile rival Juan Guaidó (remember him?), and rising global oil prices forced Washington to rethink its financial stranglehold on Caracas, offering oil sanctions relief in exchange only for some spotty promises that Maduro will hold a free and fair presidential election next year (fat chance.) By the end of 2023, an emboldened Maduro was even feeling frisky enough to threaten to invade his neighbor Guyana.
People willing to play Golf in Saudi Arabia
At first, it seemed inconceivable. Surely the whispers about Saudi Arabia offering golfers hundred-million-dollar contracts to defect to the desert were just fairway gossip, right? But Riyadh made it real when the Saudi-backed upstart LIV Golf absorbed the 107-year-old PGA Golf Tour in June. Critics said the Saudis were just “sportswashing” away an awful human rights record, but supporters said it was time to bust the PGA’s stuffy old monopoly. Meanwhile, the greens look even greener as prize money grows, and even the last-place finishers in LIV tournaments can take home $120,000!
THE LOSERS
AI Cassandras
In March, Elon Musk and a group of artificial intelligence leaders published an open letter warning that AI systems posed “profound risks to society and humanity” and called for a “public and verifiable” six-month pause in “the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”
It didn’t happen. Increasingly complex and powerful AI systems may indeed pose existential dangers for the human race (alongside their tremendous benefits), but a global pause in any form of technological progress – let alone one this pervasive, powerful, or flat-out entertaining – is impossible to enforce. For the Ancient Greeks, it was Cassandra’s fate to be ignored. But wasn’t it also her destiny to be correct? 2024 will be a huge year for AI.
Benjamin Netanyahu
The wily rightwinger returned to power in Israel late 2022 despite his ongoing legal troubles, but it’s been downhill since. All summer, he faced massive protests over his plan to weaken Israel’s courts. Then, the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust occurred on his watch, prompting fierce domestic criticism of the failures of intelligence and strategy that enabled Hamas to attack on Oct. 7. Israeli society broadly supports Bibi’s stated aims of defanging Hamas and bringing home the hostages (two goals that may in fact be in conflict), but a majority of Israelis still want him to resign.
Migrants on the move
This year the political winds began to shift swiftly against migrants and asylum seekers seeking new lives in the world’s leading economies. In the EU, the number of migrants neared levels not seen since the Syrian refugee crisis in 2016, boosting anti-immigrant politicians and forcing the EU to tighten asylum rules in a long-debated migration policy reform. Meanwhile, in the US, record numbers of undocumented migrants crossed the southern border, empowering Republicans in Congress to hold up funding for Ukraine for tighter border policies. Expect tough talk on migration to play well in the EU Parliament elections next June and the US presidential election in November.
Imran Khan
The hugely popular former Pakistani Prime Minister – who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in 2022 – went from looking like he might sweep back to power in elections this year to being locked up in prison, forced to use an AI replica to get his message out. He was imprisoned in August on corruption charges that he and his followers say are bogus, and the elections that were supposed to return him to power were postponed until next year. His legal troubles may keep him off the ballot entirely. Still, he remains an immensely potent force in Pakistani politics, making a 2024 comeback impossible to rule out.
People who opposed coups in Africa
On the heels of coups last year in Mali and Burkina Faso, this year saw governments deposed in both Niger and Gabon. Niger’s democratically-elected government was overthrown by soldiers from the presidential guard in July. Similarly, Gabon military officers seized power in August, unseating the longtime president shortly after he was declared the winner of a contested election. The recent coups come amid a larger trend of increasingly frequent coups in the region – nine over the past three years – which have harmed economic well-being and raised concerns about regional security.
The very biggest losers: Anyone who didn’t subscribe to the GZERO Daily Newsletter
A no-brainer right here. Anyone who wasn’t getting the Daily in 2023 lost out on the best daily dose of global politics that’s out there – delivered right to your inbox with insight, kindness, and humor. The good news is you can still subscribe – sign up here, and you’ll already be a 2024 winner before the year has even begun!
The dispute over the Essequibo region – which is larger than North Korea and inhabited mostly by indigenous communities – stretches back more than 150 years (see our explainer here for more). But Venezuela’s strongman President Nicolas Maduro has ramped up tensions recently.
In part, he’s eyeing massive oil deposits that have been discovered there. But he may also be stoking nationalist feelings ahead of what will be a highly controversial – and not necessarily “free” – presidential election next year. Even prominent opposition figures have long supported Caracas’ claims on the territory (shades of the way that many dissidents in Putin’s Russia supported the annexation of Crimea.)
That means the referendum will almost certainly result in a resounding ¡Sí! But then what?
Rattling Essequibo could flare into a wider conflict. US forces regularly do joint patrols with the Guyanese military to protect local oil fields that US firms are developing. Pentagon officials reportedly visited the capital, Georgetown, this week to reassure the Guyanese, and Brazil put its local forces on high alert.
The risks are immense. But by asking the Venezuelan people to weigh in like this, Maduro may be uncorking nationalist passions that he will struggle to control.
The United States has temporarily lifted sanctions against Venezuela’s oil, natural gas, and gold sectors after Venezuela’s strongman President Nicolás Maduro agreed to a deal with the US-backed opposition on scheduling elections with international observers and allowing opposition candidates to run.
This gives the South American country a lucrative opportunity to export oil to US markets, which will put coveted US dollars directly into Caracas’ coffers. Boosting the Venezuelan economy can’t hurt Maduro, fair elections or not, and could lead to lower US gas prices, which would save Biden some political pain ahead of his reelection bid.
The six-month scheme is a major reversal for Washington, which applied “maximum pressure” against the Venezuelan regime during the Donald Trump years. That approach seems to have largely failed: Sanctions have crippled Venezuela’s economy but failed to oust Maduro, and after an initial flurry of fanfare, the US-backed, self-declared interim leader Juan Guaidó’s movement is all but dead.
The White House says it will slam the hammer back down if Caracas doesn’t follow through with its promises. But Washington also wants to see political prisoners released, and Caracas seemed to nod at that expectation by releasing five detainees after the sanctions paused.
But this is far from Maduro’s swansong. There’s no set timeline to arrange for official candidate lists and hold votes, no agreed-upon rules for how the election and campaign will be conducted, and most importantly, no real incentive for Maduro to allow a truly fair contest. He’s made it this far under sanctions, after all, so why should he dread their re-imposition?
And if he can make some money while dragging the process out, pues que chevere (well, that’s great!).