Analysis | Four reasons it’ll be hard to offer Maduro a golden parachute (and one reason to try anyw

Analysis | Four reasons it’ll be hard to offer Maduro a golden parachute (and one reason to try anyway)
Guiado, ICC, justice cascade, Libya, China, Cuba, Russia, Turkey, Noriega,
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A Venezuelan opposition supporter holds a placard with the image of human skeleton, Bolivar bills attached to it and a legend reading “going hungry” as he waits to listen to self-proclaimed “acting president” Juan Guaido on Jan. 25. (FEDERICO PARRA/AFP/Getty Images) By Andrew Bennett , Ariya Hagh , Daniel Krcmaric and Zacc Ritter January 26 at 7:00 AM Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro is in trouble. Street protests against his leadership are growing. Opposition parliamentary leader Juan Guaido claims he is now Venezuela’s interim president - and has been recognized as such by the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and a host of other Latin American countries. However, many top Venezuelan military officers continue to support Maduro, raising the possibility of large-scale violence. President Trump has insisted that all options are on the table to remove Maduro, including economic sanctions and military force. But an unnamed administration official recently hinted that the U.S. might help Maduro achieve an “exit solution,” presumably exile, if he agrees to leave power peacefully, and Guaido has offered amnesty. But as other authors of this piece - Andrew Bennett, Ariya Hagh and Zacchary Ritter - find in our ongoing research, an exile with immunity for Maduro - essentially a “golden parachute” - may be difficult to achieve. Further, citizens may feel cheated if Maduro skirts justice and accountability. Yet coaxing Maduro out of office would certainly be less costly than a military intervention. So is a golden parachute possible? How would it work? [Trump’s challenge to Venezuela’s president could lead to a military occupation. Here’s why - and why that’s dangerous.] 1. The credible commitment problem. For a leader facing trouble at home, exile can be attractive. Compared to a domestic retirement, where a leader has to worry about whether to rely on promises of amnesty, exile has historically offered a credible promise of immunity. Recently, however, there has been a global “justice cascade” of human rights prosecutions that seek to hold leaders accountable wherever they are. Leaders like Liberia’s Charles Taylor and Chad’s Hissene Habre received international assurances of immunity if they accepted exile, only to be called into court later. Exile may no longer be seen as a safe exit guarantee. As one of us, Daniel Krcmaric, has shown, the new international prosecutions of leaders are reshaping exile patterns. He finds that previously, leaders who’d committed human rights abuses went into exile at about the same rate as those who did not. But since the late 1990s, when the International Criminal Court (ICC) was created and Augusto Pinochet arrested, culpable leaders have been six times less likely to go into exile than leaders not responsible for mass abuses. Undermining the exile option for culpable leaders, Krcmaric argues, creates a “justice dilemma.” These leaders now have a hard time finding safe havens - and so have incentiv