a peaceful transition<\/a> is vital for the 9 million to 10 million Venezuelans who are forcibly displaced and living in exile. Medina, who resigned his diplomatic post in protest against Maduro’s rule in 2017, told Fox News Digital that exiled Venezuelans “have been preparing ourselves to go back to rebuild our nation.”<\/p>\n\nWith support from international organizations like the Organization of American States, Medina said the most important next step for Venezuela is to establish a transitional government that can restore the rule of law and rebuild institutions that have been decimated under the Maduro regime. Setting in place free and fair elections is particularly important, Medina said, noting that it\u2019s “a legal obligation owed to [Venezuela\u2019s] people, because on their occupied territory, it was never equitable or really free.”<\/p>\n
Under Maduro, Medina said that “there was no separation of powers, there was no rule of law, there was not even sovereignty.” Instead, Medina said Venezuela had an occupied territory extensively influenced by\u00a0terrorist and trafficking organizations\u00a0Hamas, Hezbollah, the Ej\u00e9rcito de Liberaci\u00f3n Nacional (ELN) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). He said these groups were exploiting Venezuelan resources.<\/p>\n
\nDavid Daoud, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that so long as Venezuela poses no threat to U.S. national security, the “ideal situation” for Venezuela “would be American guidance for determined local action.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The best we can shepherd Venezuela to be is a productive member of the family of nations, and that\u2019s something that we can help with a softer touch, without boots on the ground,” Daoud said. “I don\u2019t think we need to be in the business of trying to create Jeffersonian democracies anywhere.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venezuelan dissident outlines risks and opportunities as nation enters post-Maduro era \u200b With\u00a0Venezuelan dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u00a0extracted from Caracas…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":492904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,104,106,105,108,405,403,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-492903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-current-news","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-national-news","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa","26":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115839636837751467","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}