-Analysis-
BUENOS AIRES —We’re seeing it again, this time in Venezuela: Armed forces are becoming the arbiters of political crises in the Western Hemisphere.
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Perhaps the potentially most relevant example was in the United States, the world’s oldest democracy, which will be two and a half centuries old in 2026: Former President Donald Trump first threatened, then refused to recognize the 2020 election results, and then instigated the storming of the Capitol.
And when it happened, the response of his Democratic opponents was far too passive. The assault wasn’t a protest that turned rowdy but a violent mob that ended up assaulting police officers, threatening the lives of legislators and revealing the nature of right-wing radicalism in the United States.
The plan fell apart when the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by General Mark Milley, issued a public statement that they would defend the Constitution. Such a firm response, if not the gesture itself, was unprecedented in U.S. institutional history.
Brazil and Bolsonaro
Similarly in early 2023, when a right-wing mob stormed public buildings in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, Bannon had already been goading people online to act should President Jair Bolsonaro — a Trump admirer — lose the election held in October 2022. As in the United States, Bolsonaro voters were told the leftist candidate Lula da Silva could only win by fraud.
They assumed the armed forces would back them, if only by doing nothing.
Once the fear of fraud became prevalent online, the chiefs of Brazil’s armed forces were sounded out to see if they were amenable to rejecting the results that were turning out, by the slightest of margins, in Lula’s favor.
Their response was negative, though not unanimous. In contrast with the United States, Bolsonaro’s supporters managed to occupy and ransack the seats of the three branches of government during week Lula was sworn into office. They assumed the armed forces would back them, if only by doing nothing. But the military, after discussing the situation, decided not to back an ochlocratic coup.
They stated, for the second time since October, their respect for the Constitution — although again, less emphatically than their U.S. counterparts. It should be said, the United States and Brazil are the West’s two biggest democracies in terms of the size of electorates.
Declining democracy
The armed forces were also instrumental in ending, or blocking, crises elsewhere in the region. In Bolivia in late 2019, the opposition, backed by the Organization of American States and Western countries, questioned the election result in favor of the socialist president, Evo Morales.
This would have given a fourth presidential term to Morales, a stalwart of the anti-Western front that includes Iran and Russia. People began marching in anger, egged on by opposition chiefs based in the province of Santa Cruz, as police stood by.
Morales turned to the armed forces chiefs hoping for their support, but was advised to resign. That created an uncertain panorama that has yet to be cleared — with a conservative opposition accused of coup-mongering and the ruling socialists also divided in spite of a subsequent electoral win.
We know one thing about the military’s enhanced role in politics.
In Peru, the leftist President Pedro Castillo sought to shut down parliament and dissolve his own government on December 7, 2022. That barely lasted three hours as the armed forces chiefs unanimously rejected the move, emboldening parliament and the courts to sack the president.
Maduro claims
Like Bolivia, the incident has ushered in a prolonged period of tension following an immediate bout of rioting over the new president’s refusal to call a general election. The army barely intervened here beyond its refusal to back Castillo.
Today, the army and police have become decisive in another country in crisis: Venezuela. The sitting — but evidently not outgoing — president, Nicolas Maduro, insists he won the July election. Yet he needs the armed forces to suppress protests with the same vigor shown so far.
Whether in Venezuela or the United States, we know one thing about the military’s enhanced role in politics: It’s a surefire sign of a weakened democracy.
