There is a new president of Venezuela — at least as far as the United States is concerned.

Wednesday afternoon, President Trump issued a written statement officially declaring that Juan Guaido, the 35-year-old president of the National Assembly, is for all intents and purposes Venezuela’s top official.



The citizens of Venezuela have suffered for too long at the hands of the illegitimate Maduro regime. Today, I have officially recognized the President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the Interim President of Venezuela. https://t.co/WItWPiG9jK — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 23, 2019



The move, while surprising, was not totally unexpected: On Jan. 15, CNN reported that the White House was in internal discussions about recognizing Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate interim president. The decision to pull the trigger on the designation is one of the most symbolically significant policies the Trump administration has taken on Venezuela thus far, a powerful statement from the world’s most important democracy that Nicolas Maduro is a tin-pot pariah who deserves to be shunned as the incompetent dictator that he is.

Venezuela under Maduro’s leadership has fallen apart at the seams. Inflation surpassed 1 million percent at the end of last year (not a typo!), a figure that makes former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe look like an economic genius. Most of Venezuela’s population is in poverty, roaming the streets for dumpsters in the hope that food may be mixed in with the rubbish. The situation has gotten so bleak that 3 million Venezuelans have fled to Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador — better to start over in a new country than stay in Venezuela and starve to death. Medicine is in extremely short supply, the murder rate was the highest in the world in 2017, and many of the crimes that have been committed are the direct result of the Latin American country’s sorry excuse for an economy.

Maduro, the former bus driver, has driven his nation off a cliff.

The question is not whether Maduro is an underqualified buffoon who doesn’t know how to run a country, but rather whether Trump’s announcement will help or hurt the cause of democracy in Venezuela. Will the tens of thousands of men and women marching in the streets of Caracas and shouting for bread and respect now be castigated by Maduro and his regime as agents of the Yankee empire up north? If so, has the White House just made the job of these Venezuelans more burdensome?

This is not a defense of Maduro, who has shown himself to be a fool and a kleptocrat the moment he took over the presidency after the death of Hugo Chavez. Venezuela’s democracy has been eviscerated by Maduro’s own actions, whether it’s through fraud-induced elections and the emasculation of the National Assembly or the detention and torture of opposition politicians.

The issue here is not whether Maduro is a dictator or a bad guy, but what the best route is for democracy to return to this South American country. You don’t have to be an expert on Latin American politics to know about the turbulent and controversial history of U.S. actions in the Western Hemisphere.

The list is long: CIA-backed coups and proxy interventions in Chile and Guatemala, proxy conflicts in Nicaragua, failed assassinations in Cuba, and military support for right-wing forces in Colombia. Maduro has used this history to his own political advantage, packaging every denunciation or sanctions measure from Washington as the prelude to a CIA-sponsored coup against him. Trump’s recognition of Guaido, while understandable, may simply provide Maduro with the ammunition and talking points he needs to keep the Venezuelan military on his side and his regime from breaking apart.

Time will tell. Whatever happens, Maduro has dug his country and its people into such a deep hole that it will take years for Venezuela to climb out of it.

Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.