Here is Vice President Pence on Tuesday, announcing U.S. recognition of some sort of new regime in Venezuela.
So far, the countries recognizing a new provisional government there are:
Canada, the Unites States of America, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Denmark.
In the Western Hemisphere, Mexico, Cuba, Uruguay and Bolivia are not recognizing the change as legitimate.
The situation is chaotic. Although the anti-government actions may bear some similarities to the 2009 coup in Honduras, which also sought to remove and succeeded in removing an elected President, that one came as a surprise to many. This one has been brewing for years.
No first rank U.S. Democrats seem to have come up on either side of this development. Rep. Ro Khanna expressed his concerns on Twitter:
Let me get this straight. The US is sanctioning Venezuela for their lack of democracy but not Saudi Arabia? Such hypocrisy. Maduro’s policies are bad and not helping his people, but crippling sanctions or pushing for regime change will only make the situation worse.
A rift between young and progressive Democrats and older and centrist Party leaders may well develop. The Russian government has voiced strong disapproval of recognition of a provisional government:
Lawmakers in Russia, which has close relations with Venezuela, are sharply critical of U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of an opposition politician who has declared himself the country’s legitimate interim president.
“I think that in this developing situation the United States is trying to carry out an operation to organize the next color revolution in Venezuela,” the deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the upper house of parliament, Andrei Klimov, told state news agency RIA-Novosti. “Color revolution” is a Russian term for the popular uprisings that unseated leaders in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
“I do not think that we can recognize this — it is, in essence, a coup,” another committee member, Vladimir Dzhabrailov, was quoted as saying by the Interfax agency.
Russia is a major political ally of Venezuela, and Russia’s largest oil company, Rosneft, is heavily invested in the South American nation’s oil fields, which produce less crude each month.
This stance may force some Democrats to reflexively support the coup leaders so as to distance themselves from the Russians.
Although Popular Will (Voluntad Popular), the political party which gave rise to the so-called Provisional President of Venezuela, Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez, is sometimes termed Center Left, I doubt this characterization will prove to be accurate.
I also doubt that the Maduro government will survive another week.