🌍 Is Nicaragua next?

Your Insider’s briefing:
— Is Nicaragua next?
— Another petrostate halts exports
— Don't eat this embassy's food

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30 years

That’s how long the reported new US-Saudi civilian nuclear agreement will last. The deal, yet to be announced, is a big win for Riyadh, potentially involving the US enriching uranium on Saudi soil.

Nicaragua's leftist dictator, Daniel Ortega (80), has traditionally clung to power with a little help from cheap Venezuelan oil and sharp Cuban spooks.

So with both lifelines now cut, and America's Donroe Doctrine in full flight, you'd think Ortega would just lay low, right? And sure, the frail Ortega just went months without a single public appearance, raising doubts if he's even still alive — his wife has long run the show, a little like Othello’s Iago (or Sultan’s Jafar for Disney fans).

But then came Sunday, when Ortega hobbled back out in the capital Managua with this absolute banger: "There will never again be elections in Nicaragua."

And lest you think he was just high on Flor de Caña, he went on to specify his rubber-stamp legislature will now permanently block the opposition via a "wall" of laws.

Why? We'll get into the real reasons, but he argues it's to defend Nicaragua against yankee-backed coups (his first big career break was ousting a US-backed dictator).

Either way, it's a shocking move: even North Korea has 'elections'. That sweet sweet pageantry is still useful for legitimacy, propaganda, surveillance, and rallying.

And yet… Ortega’s move is also unsurprising: he’s really just signing the death certificate for a democracy he killed years ago — since his 2006 re-election, he's dismantled institutions, parties, and press, while killing, jailing, or exiling rivals:

Becoming increasingly isolated abroad, you’d think Ortega might try to make a few friends. But instead, he just cut ties with Italy rather than return a fugitive wanted for the kidnapping and murder of an Italian ex-prime minister! The fugitive has long been running a (popular!) Italian seafood restaurant in Nicaragua’s capital.

But would you like to guess who's been cosying right up with Ortega instead? Yes!

🇨🇳 China: Nicaragua ditched Taiwan for Beijing in 2021, unlawfully seized Taiwan’s embassy for China, fast-tracked a trade pact, inked endless MOUs, and awarded vast but opaque land concessions — we're talking an area bigger than Delaware. Plus...

🇷🇺 Russia: What began as Cold War backing for Ortega's Sandinistas now lives on via last year's security treaty, this year's joint military exercises (running now through Dec), plus a growing local Russian footprint:

Now to be clear, both Moscow and Beijing are still more bark than bite in Nicaragua, but they share a basic strategy of building leverage against the US: stay out of our neighbourhood and maybe we'll stay out of yours?

The other thing linking these two authoritarian partnerships is the Nicaraguan official running point: Laureano Ortega, the family's 43-year-old presumed heir.

And that brings us back to why Papa Ortega just called off Nicaragua's elections:

Yes, it reflects continued regime paranoia amid plummeting popular support. And yes, it's a bit of defiance to rally the base against a more assertive-if-distracted USA.

But the most likely driver here is that the ailing Ortega Sr — who's already lasted longer than Stalin and Mao — is now preparing the ground for his son to eventually run the show, perhaps initially as another 'co-president' with Ortega's wife.

Ortega has now…

Ortega has now ditched his last democratic fig leaf, letting his authoritarianism out for all to see. Throw in some active-if-performative flirting with US rivals like Russia and China, and you’ve got a pretty clear breach of the Donroe Doctrine: the idea of reasserting US dominance and shutting hostile powers out of the hemisphere.

But what can the US really do about any of this? And should it do anything? As far as actual US interests are concerned, Ortega himself poses no real threat to anyone but his own people (as above — it’s grave). Nor is he sitting on the kinds of historic oil reserves that Trump 2.0 cited when yeeting Maduro.

Rather, the main factor here is geography: Managua is closer to LA than LA is to DC. Throw in the legal and institutional vacuum left by decades of Ortega rule, and you get (say) thriving US-bound organised crime and irregular migration.

But even still, Ortega doesn’t seem to occupy the same Trump mindspace or even US media-space that Maduro once did, or that Cuba’s Diaz-Canel still does. Rather than dance on state TV or officiate at mass communist rallies, old Ortega mostly now just rants (when he’s not in hiding for months at a time).

So while there are some loud voices in Congress calling for Trump to Maduro Ortega, and the US president might need a win given how his Iran war is playing out, it’s hard to see that kind of immediate US escalation with Ortega, particularly with everything else on Trump’s plate. Rather, DC is still hitting Ortega’s circle with sanctions, while threatening expulsion from Central America’s big CAFTA trade deal with the US. Plus it’s still really Rubio in the lead here, not Trump.

So absent any major developments, we’ll probably see more of that, at least until Ortega shuffles off this mortal coil. The Ortega family realistically knows this, which might further explain why it’s now happy to just end the electoral pretence once and for all, and cement the family’s rule while it still can.

That leaves ordinary folks in Nicaragua to pay the price: stuck under a fading dictator’s dynastic project with no vote, no voice, and few ways out.

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