Biden’s confounding Venezuelan gambit

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/04/2022 (1316 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I KEEP asking myself the same questions:

Why would U.S. President Joe Biden reach out to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro? And why now?

Remember that former U.S. president Donald Trump severed diplomatic relations with Venezuela in 2019 over Maduro’s violent crackdown on internal dissent. Recall, too, that Trump undertook more than one attempt to forcibly remove Maduro from power – as meticulously outlined in John Bolton’s book on his time as Trump’s national security adviser.

But in March, after preliminary talks last fall, the Biden White House dispatched three top administration officials to meet secretly in Caracas with Maduro and a few of his closest advisers. It was the first U.S. official diplomatic encounter with top Venezuelan leaders in almost 25 years. That couldn’t have been easy for official Washington, given Venezuela’s continuing pariah status.

What was Biden hoping to accomplish with these talks? Yes, two Americans — Citgo oil executive Gustavo Cardenas and Cuban-American Jorge Fernandez — were released as a humanitarian gesture. But eight others remain in Venezuelan prisons.

For the Venezuelan side, Maduro reportedly asked for all oil sanctions to be terminated and any ongoing investigations of his family to be halted. Moreover, he demanded the U.S. government recognize him as the legitimate president of Venezuela until the general elections slated for 2024.

Not surprisingly, the reaction from the anti-Venezuela crowd was swift and decidedly critical. New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, did not mince words: “Nicolás Maduro is a cancer to our hemisphere and we should not breathe new life into his reign of torture and murder.”

Republican lawmakers from Florida were even more blunt in their attacks. In a letter to Biden, they stated emphatically that they “represent several thousands of Venezuelan nationals, most who have come to the United States fleeing the brutality and the butchery by Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.”

In light of these criticisms, then, why would Biden want to court the Venezuelans?

It is possible the Biden White House was dipping its toes in the diplomatic waters to see whether the Maduro government is interested in improving its human-rights situation, releasing political dissidents and American detainees and in conducting more open democratic elections.

Of course, securing oil supplies from Venezuela, a country that holds the world’s largest oil reserves, was a central policy driver for the Biden team. All of this diplomatic back-and-forth came together in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Washington’s subsequent decision to halt imports to the U.S. of Russian oil.

As White House press secretary Jen Psaki told the assembled media, “We need to ensure the supply meets the demand out there in the marketplace. Obviously, we’re engaging with big global oil producers around the world to meet that demand.”

At the same time, Chevron, a leading U.S. oil company, was undoubtedly pushing the Biden administration to break bread with the Maduro government. Indeed, the Venezuelan energy sector is desperately in need of outside investment to rebuild its energy infrastructure, to modernize its exploration and extraction capacity and, ultimately, to increase its oil output.

It’s no surprise, then, that Chevron, given its past involvement in Venezuela, would want to be part of that.

Since Venezuela also has an “oil for doctors” program with Cuba, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the Biden White House was looking to divert oil to the U.S. in order to punish the Cubans. That would further intensify the tough economic conditions in Cuba today and, more importantly, play well with the anti-Cuba constituency in south Florida before the 2022 midterm elections.

Biden’s Venezuelan gambit, then, is very reminiscent of past U.S. behaviour in Latin America. It’s mostly about following the money, pragmatic opportunism and once again sticking it to the Cuban government. So this diplomatic outreach is less about resetting relations with Venezuela and more about trying to squeeze the Cuban government.

At the moment, the fledgling U.S.-Venezuelan entente is effectively on hold. The domestic political pushback in the U.S. was essentially too much for Biden in a midterm election year. That’s probably just as well, as far as the Cubans and Venezuelans are concerned.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.