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A US invasion or attack on Venezuela could plunge South America into a Vietnam-style conflict, the chief foreign policy adviser to Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has warned.
In an interview with the Guardian, Celso Amorim called Donald Trump’s recent decision to order the closure of Venezuelan airspace “an act of war”, and voiced fears the crisis could intensify over the coming weeks.
“The last thing we want is for South America to become a war zone – and a war zone that would inevitably not just be a war between the US and Venezuela. It would end up having global involvement and this would be really unfortunate,” said Amorim, a veteran diplomat and former minister in the first two of Lula’s three terms.
“If there was an invasion, a real invasion … I think undoubtedly you would see something similar to Vietnam – on what scale it’s impossible to say,” added Amorim, who thought even some enemies of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, would be inclined to join the resistance against such a foreign intervention.
“I know South America … our whole continent exists because of resistance against foreign invaders,” said Amorim, who predicted that any US attack would rekindle anti-American sentiment in Latin America similar to that generated by US meddling during the cold war.
The Brazilian diplomat was speaking as Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against Maduro’s regime continued to escalate.
Since August, the US has put a $50m bounty on Maduro’s head, launched the biggest naval deployment in the Caribbean Sea since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and carried out a series of deadly airstrikes on alleged drug boats that have killed more than 80 people.
Most international airlines have halted flights to Venezuela after Trump declared the country’s airspace “closed in its entirety” late last month – a move Amorim called “totally illegal”.
According to some reports, Trump gave Maduro a one-week deadline to resign during a phone call on 21 November – a deadline that has passed.
Many observers suspect Trump’s next move could be to order strikes inside Venezuela in what is widely seen as an attempt to topple Maduro by provoking a military rebellion against him. Asked earlier this month if the Venezuelan dictator had offered to relinquish power, Trump replied: “He will.”
Yet Maduro, who was democratically elected in 2013 but is widely believed to have stolen last year’s election, has shown no sign of buckling.
Amorim – whose government has not accepted Maduro’s claim to have won the 2024 poll despite longstanding ties to his political movement – said Brazil opposed forced regime change despite recognising there were “problems” with the vote count.
“If every questionable election triggered an invasion, the world would be on fire,” said the diplomat, who emphasised he was speaking in a personal capacity, and not for Lula.
“If Maduro reaches the conclusion that leaving [power] is the best thing for him and the best thing for Venezuela, it will be his conclusion … Brazil will never impose this; it will never say that this is a requirement … We are not going to push for Maduro to step down or abdicate,” added Amorim, who admitted Venezuela-Brazil relations were no longer as “warm or intense” as before.
There has been growing speculation over Maduro’s likely destination if he relinquishes power and enters exile. Potential sanctuaries are thought to include Cuba, Turkey, Qatar and Russia.
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Asked if Brazil could be another option, Amorim said he preferred not to speculate “so as not to appear to be encouraging” the idea. “However, asylum is a Latin American institution [for] people of both right and left,” he added, recalling how Ecuador’s Lucio Gutiérrez was given safe harbour in Brazil after being deposed as president in 2005. “We even sent a plane to pick him up,” said Amorim, who was foreign minister at the time.
The Paraguayan dictator Gen Alfredo Stroessner was also exiled to Brazil after being overthrown in 1989 and died in its capital, Brasília, in 2006.
Fears Venezuela could face civil war or guerrilla conflict if Maduro falls are not universally accepted.
Writing in the New York Post last week, the opposition leader, María Corina Machado – whose movement is widely believed to have beaten Maduro in last year’s vote – rejected the idea Venezuela would become “another Iraq or Libya”.
“There are claims that decisive action could create instability or spark migration. But the instability has already happened and the migration has already occurred,” she wrote, noting the 8 million Venezuelans who have fled amid the economic and democratic collapse of the Maduro era.
Lula’s foreign policy adviser hoped Trump may be inclined to reach a “negotiated solution” with Maduro and that a peaceful transition could still be achieved, despite the increasingly belligerent mood.
Any orderly political transition was likely to take time, Amorim suggested, recalling the “slow, gradual and safe” opening up of Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship, which began in 1974 and ended with the return of democracy in 1985.
Amorim floated the idea of a recall referendum – similar to one held in Venezuela in 2004 – as a way of defusing its political crisis. “[Then president Hugo] Chávez accepted the idea, somewhat reluctantly, but he accepted it. There was a referendum and he won,” Amorim said, adding: “I don’t know who would win now.”
Voting data released by the apparent election winner and verified by independent experts showed Maduro had suffered a stinging defeat to his opponent, Edmundo González. Maduro refused to publish the full voting tallies to support his claim to have won a third six-year term.
