by John Bolton;
Nothing ever goes as planned in revolutionary situations, and improvisation can sometimes make the difference between success and failure. But in Venezuela that day, things unraveled. We were certainly frustrated, largely because we were in Washington, distant from what was going on and mostly unable to know of events in fast-moving real time. As we learned later from Opposition leaders, after Cristopher Figuera released Lopez from house arrest, Lopez and Guaidó decided to move forward, hoping key regime officials would come along. History will record they were wrong, but they were not unreasonable in believing that once it was launched, they should play out the game. Cristopher Figuera later took refuge in a Caracas embassy, fearing for his life from the Maduro regime, later escaping to Colombia; his wife, and the wives of many other senior Maduro officials, had previously left Venezuela for the United States and other safer locations.
I had wrestled with the issue of when to wake Trump and decided to do so after arriving at the White House and quickly reviewing all the available information. I called him at 6:07 a.m., waking him for the first time in my tenure as National Security Advisor. I don’t know if Flynn or McMaster ever did so. Trump was very sleepy, but when I told him what we knew, he said only, “Wow.” I stressed that the outcome was far from certain. The day could end with Maduro in jail, with Guaidó in jail, or anything in between. I called Pence at 6:22 and gave him the same message, and then called around to other NSC members and key leaders on the Hill, where support on both sides of the aisle for our hard line in Venezuela was almost uniform. Throughout the day, Pompeo and I were on the phone constantly with foreign governments, telling them what we knew and soliciting their support for a struggle the duration of which we still couldn’t predict.
No one gave Maduro the word it was time to go, as had been in the Opposition plan, but there was no doubt, despite all of his regime’s surveillance, the rebellion took him by surprise. Maduro was hustled off to Fuerte Tiuna, a military headquarters near Caracas, where he was held under the tightest security for several days.59 Whether that was to protect Maduro or to freeze him in place before he fled Venezuela, or some combination of both motives, was disputed then and remains unclear even now. (The Cubans had good reason to be worried about Maduro; Pompeo later said publicly that we believed that he had been on the verge of fleeing Venezuela that day.)60 Padrino was also reportedly at Tiuna most of the day, the Opposition believed. But whatever the reasons, the Cubans and top regime figures were unquestionably very worried about what they were witnessing, which speaks tellingly about their own misperceptions of support for Maduro and the regime inside Venezuela.61
My concern now was that the failed uprising would prompt mass arrests of the Opposition and the possible bloodbath we had feared since January. But these worst-case outcomes did not take place that day and night, nor did they for weeks and months that followed. The most likely reason is that Maduro and his cronies knew full well that a crackdown could finally provoke the military, and even its highest officers, to move against the regime. Neither Maduro nor his Cuban handlers were willing to risk it, and that remains true even as of today.
On May 1, I scheduled a Principals Committee Meeting to discuss what to do. Everyone had suggestions, many of which we adopted, again begging the question of why we hadn’t done them all and more in January. Now was when the effects of bureaucratic foot-dragging became all too evident, and the lack of constancy and resolve in the Oval Office all too apparent. Although the sides emerged essentially where they had been before the turmoil of April 30, there was no way to pretend this was anything other than an Opposition defeat. They had run a play and gained no yardage, and in a dictatorship, that was never good news. But the fact that one play had been unsuccessful did not mean the game was lost, despite the palpable disappointment on our side. The task now was for the Opposition to pick itself up, dust itself off, and get moving again.
One immediate effect was that Guaidó’s previously planned May 1 mass demonstrations, while far larger than the regime’s counterdemonstrations, were not nearly as big as they might have been. Many citizens, obviously uncertain how the regime would react, were nervous about being on the streets, although television pictures from Caracas showed young men and women in the Opposition spoiling for a fight, attacking the police armored vehicles that were trying to restrain the demonstrators. Guaidó was out in public speaking all day, calling for continuous protests and strikes from public-sector unions, which he had worked with some success to break away from their long-standing support for the Chavista movement behind Maduro. The wretched state of the economy meant even government employees knew there had to be a major change before things got better. Maduro, by contrast, remained invisible, not coming out in public, probably holed up in Fort Tiuna, reportedly laying the foundation for large-scale arrests, which the Opposition and the general public feared, but which fortunately never materialized.
An unnecessary negative development was Trump’s decision to call Putin on May 23, primarily on other subjects, but including Venezuela at the end. It was a brilliant display of Soviet-style propaganda from Putin, which I thought largely persuaded Trump. Putin said our support for Guaidó had consolidated support for Maduro, which was completely divorced from reality, like his equally fictitious assertion that Maduro’s May 1 rallies had been larger than the Opposition’s. In a way guaranteed to appeal to Trump, Putin characterized Guaidó as someone who proclaimed himself, but without real support, sort of like Hillary Clinton deciding to declare herself President. This Orwellian line continued, as Putin denied that Russia had any real role in the events in Venezuela. Russia had, Putin admitted, sold arms to Venezuela under Chavez ten years earlier, and maintained responsibility for repair and maintenance under the contract signed at that time, but nothing more than that. He said that Cristopher Figuera (although he did not use his name, but his title) was probably our agent, could fill us in. What a comic! Putin could easily have come away from this call thinking he had a free hand in Venezuela. Shortly afterward, so Treasury informed us, Trump spoke with Mnuchin, who happily concluded that Trump wanted to go easy on more Venezuela sanctions.
Over the next several months, Venezuela’s economy deteriorated, continuing the twenty-year-long decline under Chavez and Maduro. The President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, after visiting Venezuela, told me that he hadn’t seen hospitals in such condition since his last trip to North Korea. Negotiations between the Opposition and key regime figures resumed. Progress varied, and there were long periods when negotiations seemed stalled. The Opposition struggled to find a new strategy after the April 30 failure, with mixed success. One potentially attractive route would be to foment competition within the regime to overthrow Maduro. If setting these scorpions in a bottle against each other produced Maduro’s removal, even if “the regime” remained in place, it could increase instability and sharpen infighting, affording the Opposition more opportunities to act. Florida’s Venezuelan-American community, depressed by the outcome, rebounded quickly because of the continuing imperative to relieve the oppression of their friends and families. And US politicians, from Trump down, realized that Venezuelan-American voters, not to mention Cuban-Americans and Nicaraguan-Americans, critical in Florida and elsewhere, would be judging candidates based on their support for the Opposition.
But the fundamental gridlock in Venezuela continued. Neither side could take down the other. It would still be a mistake to say, as many commentators have, that the military remained loyal to Maduro. The military stayed in its barracks, which, without question, on net, benefits the regime. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean, in my judgment, that the more junior officers and enlisted personnel feel any sense of loyalty to a regime that has devastated the country, where economic conditions continue to deteriorate day by day. Instead, in my view, senior military officers are almost certainly still more concerned about the cohesiveness of the armed forces as an institution. An order to suppress the Opposition could lead to civil war,
with most regular military units likely supporting the Opposition, against the several forms of secret police, militias, and Cuban-directed colectivos. Such a conflict is one of the rare developments that could actually make things worse than they already are in Venezuela. But that is precisely why, in the right circumstances, the military is still perfectly capable of ousting the regime, not just Maduro, and allowing a return to democracy.
What now stands primarily in the way of freeing Venezuela is the Cuban presence, critically supported by Russian financial resources. If Cuba’s military and intelligence networks left the country, the Maduro regime would be in serious, probably terminal, trouble. Everyone understands this reality, especially Maduro, who many believe owes his position as President to Cuban intervention in the struggle for control after Chavez’s death.62 Looking back, it’s clear to me that Havana saw Maduro as the more malleable of the leading contenders, and time has proven this thesis accurate.
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At the end of that last day in April 2019, two decades of mutual mistrust; cowardice on the part of several regime leaders who had committed to act but who lost their nerve at the critical moment; some tactical mistakes by the inexperienced Opposition; the absence of any US advisors on the ground who might, and I underline “might,” have helped make a difference; and the cold, cynical pressure of the Cubans and the Russians, brought the attempted uprising to a halt the day it started. I laid all this out at the time, hoping both to continue the Opposition’s efforts, and to make the historical record clear.63 Recriminations after failure are inevitable, and there were plenty to go around, including from Trump directly.
But make no mistake: this rebellion came very close to succeeding. To believe otherwise ignores the reality that, as further information comes to light in the years ahead, will only become clearer. In the aftermath of the April 30 failure, the Opposition continued to oppose, and American policy should continue supporting them. As Mitch McConnell said to me in early May, “Don’t back down.” All credit to those who risked their lives in Venezuela to free their countrymen, and shame on those who second-guessed them. Venezuela will be free.
CHAPTER 10 THUNDER OUT OF CHINA
America’s economic and geopolitical relations with China will determine the shape of international affairs in the twenty-first century. Deng Xiaoping’s decision to shift Chinese economic policy away from orthodox Marxism, starting in 1978, and the US decision to recognize the People’s Republic of China (and derecognize the Republic of China on Taiwan) in 1979 were critical turning points. The history of these decisions and their consequences is complex, but US strategy and the West’s more broadly, as well as “informed” public opinion for the next several decades, rested on two basic propositions. First, those who supported these developments believed China would be changed irreversibly by the rising prosperity caused by market-oriented policies, greater foreign investment, ever-deeper interconnections with global markets, and broader acceptance of international economic norms. As the phrase went, China would enjoy “a peaceful rise” and be a “responsible stakeholder” or “constructive partner” in international affairs.1 Bringing China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 was the apotheosis of this assessment.
Second, proponents of the benign view of China’s rise argued that, almost inevitably, as China’s national wealth increased, so too would democracy. Nascent patterns of free elections, which observers saw in isolated local village elections in rural China, would spread to other locales, and then rise to the provincial level, and then finally to the national level. There was a strong correlation, they said, between the growth of economic freedom and the emergence of true middle classes, on the one hand, and political freedom and democracy on the other. Then, as China became more democratic, the consequences of the “democratic peace” theory would kick in: China would avoid competition for regional or global hegemony, the world would thereby avoid the “Thucydides trap,” and the risk of international conflict, hot or cold, would recede.
But both these views were fundamentally incorrect. In economics, after joining the World Trade Organization, China did exactly the opposite of what was predicted. Instead of adhering to existing norms, China gamed the organization, successfully pursuing a mercantilist policy in a supposedly free-trade body. Internationally, China stole intellectual property; forced technology transfers from, and discriminated against, foreign investors and businesses; engaged in corrupt practices and “debt diplomacy” through instruments such as the “Belt and Road Initiative”; and continued managing its domestic economy in statist, authoritarian ways. America was the primary target of these “structural” aspects of China’s policy, but so were Europe, Japan, and virtually all industrial democracies, plus others that are neither but were still victims. Moreover, China sought politico-military benefits from its economic activity that free-market societies simply do not contemplate. It did so through purportedly privately owned companies that are in fact tools of China’s military and intelligence services,2 by fusing its civil and military power centers,3 and by engaging in aggressive cyber warfare that targeted foreign private interests as much or more than government secrets.
Politically, China began moving away from becoming a democracy, not toward it. In Xi Jinping, China now has its most powerful leader, and the most centralized governmental control, since Mao Tse-tung. Every dictator has to run his chances, so internal disagreement within an all-powerful Communist Party structure is hardly evidence of democratic “green shoots.” If further proof is necessary, the citizens of Hong Kong have provided it, seeing the “one country, two systems” promise in existential jeopardy. Ethnic (Uighurs and Tibetans) and religious (Catholic and Falun Gong) persecution on a massive scale continues. Finally, China-wide, Beijing’s use of “social credit” measures to rank its citizenry4 provides a chilling vision of a future that hardly seems free to American eyes.
All the while, as I said repeatedly in speeches and articles before I joined the Trump Administration, China’s military capabilities have expanded: creating one of the world’s top offensive cyber warfare programs; building a blue-water navy for the first time in five hundred years; increasing its arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, including a serious program for submarine-launched, nuclear-capable missiles; developing anti-satellite weapons to blind US space-based sensors; designing anti-access and area-denial weapons to push our Navy back from Asia’s coast; reforming and modernizing the People’s Liberation Army’s conventional warfare capabilities; and more. Watching China’s transformation over the years, I saw all this as deeply threatening to US strategic interests, and to our friends and allies globally.5 The Obama Administration basically sat back and watched it happen.
America has been slow to awaken to basic mistakes made decades ago. We have suffered extensive economic and political harm, but fortunately, the game is far from over. As the knowledge spreads that China has not played by “our” rules, and quite likely never intends to, we are still capable of responding effectively. To do so, it is essential that enough Americans see the nature of China’s challenge and act in time. If that happens, we need not worry. As Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto reputedly said after Pearl Harbor, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Trump in some respects embodies the growing US concern about China. He appreciates the key truth that politico-military power rests on a strong economy. The stronger the economy, the greater the capacity to sustain large military and intelligence budgets to protect America’s worldwide interests and compete with multiple would-be regional hegemons. Trump frequently says explicitly that stopping China’s unfair economic growth at US expense is the best way to defeat China militarily, which is fundamentally correct. These views, in an otherwise bitterly divided Washington, have contributed to significant changes in the terms of America’s own debate about these issues. But having grasped some notion of China’s threat, the real question is what Trump does.
On this score, his advisors are badly fractured intellectually. The Administration has panda huggers like Mnuchin; confirmed free-traders, like Kevin Hassett, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, and Kudlow; and China hawks, like Ross, Lighthizer, and Navarro.
I had the most futile role of all: I wanted to fit China trade policy into a broader China strategic framework. We had a slogan, a good one, calling for a “free and open Indo-Pacific” region (unfortunately acronymed as “FOIP”).6 Conceptually, broadening the strategic environment to include South and Southeast Asia is important, showing that not everything revolves around China. But a bumper sticker is not a strategy, and we struggled to elaborate it and avoid being sucked into the black hole of China trade issues, which happened all too often. And that, at least in summary fashion, is where we turn next.
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