The conventional wisdom in some quarters is that Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro has proved in recent days that he's in firm control of his military goons and that he will be able to stay in power indefinitely.
The conventional wisdom may be wrong.
Maduro's problems will get worse. With or without a military intervention, his illegitimate regime is cornered, isolated and increasingly unsustainable.
Sure, Maduro danced in public on Feb. 23, trying to portray as a victory his bloody crackdown on opposition volunteers trying to get humanitarian aid into Venezuela. But that image is going to haunt him.
First, Maduro's international isolation will continue to grow. The United States and more than 50 other countries _ including Canada, Germany, France, Britain, Spain, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina _ already recognize National Assembly President Juan Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate president.
On Monday, South Korea announced that it is joining that list. And several Latin American presidents, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials of the 14-country Group of Lima agreed Monday at a meeting in Bogota, Colombia, to step up and expand diplomatic and economic sanctions on Maduro.
"We are going to be much more active at the international level to get more countries in Europe, Asia and Africa" to recognize Guaido, Chilean foreign minister Roberto Ampuero told me after the meeting. "We're not going to be just the Group of Lima."
Guaido, who was in Colombia over the weekend to supervise the blocked international aid effort, is reportedly planning to return to Venezuela. If he's arrested by the Maduro regime, we may see even stiffer international sanctions.
Second, the Maduro regime's foreign income will dwindle in coming months, as U.S. and international sanctions kick in. The United States has already announced measures that will drastically reduce Venezuela's oil exports, the country's biggest source of income.
Under the United States' recently imposed sanctions, American businesses cannot engage in transactions with Venezuela's state-run PDVSA oil monopoly. According to Trump administration officials, that is likely to freeze $7 billion in Venezuelan assets and result in $11 billion in export losses over the next year.
Third, unlike Cuba for decades, Maduro does not have a superpower that will be willing to support him an at any cost.
Russia says it's behind Maduro, but it won't lift a finger if President Trump breaks his shameful silence over Russia's invasion of Crimea and effectively tells Russian president Vladimir Putin: "If you escalate your involvement in my neighborhood, I will escalate our involvement in yours." And China is mainly worried about getting its loans repaid, something Guaido has vowed to do.
Fourth, it's unclear for how much longer Venezuela's armed forces will stand behind Maduro.
Most of the uniformed Venezuelan soldiers who blocked humanitarian aid and fired on unarmed opposition volunteers at the Colombian-Venezuelan border on Feb. 23 were not members of the army or National Guard. They were part of Maduro's paramilitary forces, or colectivos.
"Maduro had to resort to his last line of defense, the colectivos," one senior diplomat who also attended the Group of Lima meeting in Bogota told me. "It may be that Maduro did not dare ask the army or the National Guard to shoot at unarmed volunteers."
Fifth, while no U.S. or international military intervention is likely anytime soon, there might be growing pressure for a United Nations intervention if Venezuela's humanitarian crisis continues to deteriorate.
Virtually all Latin American and European countries that support Guaido _ including Colombia and Brazil _ said Monday that they won't back a U.S. or international military intervention.
But if Venezuela's humanitarian crisis continues to worsen, that could change. More than 3 million Venezuelans have already fled their country, and their numbers may swell to 10 million over the next four years, according to Organization of American States chief Luis Almagro.
Barring a miracle _ such as a huge rise in oil prices, which few expect _ Maduro's political future doesn't look good. He will be under growing domestic and foreign pressure to agree to a political solution that will most likely include his departure.
