The Changing Tides of U.S.-Venezuela Relations | Opinion

Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's strongman president, was once considered a dead man walking. But today, Latin America's most high-profile authoritarian is resurgent—so resurgent that it's hard to imagine he was on the cusp of being overthrown in a coup three years ago.

In 2019, Maduro, who took over the presidency after his mentor Hugo Chavez passed away in 2013, found himself squeezed between a U.S.-backed opposition movement and an economic situation bordering on apocalyptic. The Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign on Caracas, in combination with Maduro's total lack of a viable economic policy, pushed the Venezuelan economy into the worst free-fall a country in peacetime has seen in almost 50 years. Venezuelans writ-large were struggling for work and finding it difficult to put food on the table. An astounding 96 percent of Venezuelans were living below the poverty line. Even Venezuela's soldiers weren't immune to the hunger; analysts estimated that thousands of low-level Venezuelan troops asked for a discharge or walked away from their posts due to poor conditions.

Maduro's political standing looked precarious. In January 2019, Washington, joined by other countries, cut ties with the Venezuelan government and , the head of the National Assembly, as Venezuela's rightful president. U.S. imports of Venezuelan oil plummeted from 806,000 barrels a day in 2013 during Maduro's first year in office to 92,000 barrels per day in 2019. Venezuela's total oil exports declined by almost 45 percent in the same period—a huge problem for a country that relied on crude for more than 80 percent of its overall exports.

Venezuela's faltering economic prospects would bleed into Venezuelan politics, eventually resulting in major stakeholders, like the army and economic elites, pushing the incompetent Maduro out of office and opening up the gates for free and fair elections. At least that's what U.S. officials thought at the time. A month and a half after the U.S. switched its diplomatic recognition to Guaidó, national security adviser John Bolton proclaimed that Venezuela's military was having conversations with the opposition on the subject of a post-Maduro future. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sounded bullish about Maduro caving: "This is not someone who can be part of Venezuela's future and whether that change takes place today or tomorrow or a week from now, one can't predict."

Of course, events since then have shown that Bolton and Pompeo were both wrong. Maduro's staying power was vastly underestimated, and Guaidó's power to move the politics in his direction turned out to be quite limited. Sure, Maduro couldn't govern worth a lick—turning the once wealthy country into a basket of destitution and was hollowing out its long-term economic potential as millions fled the country for greener pastures.

But Venezuela's political elite, and most importantly its military, weren't ready to ditch Maduro and throw their lot in with the opposition. There were three reasons for this: Maduro was shoveling a lot of cash and perks to the elite in order to retain their loyalty, Guaidó was an untested politician who had no significant constituency domestically, and the opposition movement was divided against itself. All of it came out during the short-lived attempt in April 2019 to overthrow Maduro, a plot that failed once it became clear that Venezuelan troops were staying in their barracks and senior officials surrounding the mustachioed dictator (with the exception of the chief of the National Intelligence Service) stuck with the boss.

It took a few years, but U.S. policy is now catching up with the reality that Maduro isn't going anywhere. China and Russia have bailed him out of a deep financial hole by scooping up Venezuelan crude oil (on the cheap) and are protecting Maduro from any further recriminations at the U.N. Security Council. Guaidó, once presumed to be the man who had the bravery and tenacity to lead the South American country back to democracy, is a figurehead who's losing support. Russia's war in Ukraine and the West's sanctions on the Russian oil industry have given Maduro a potential opportunity to make Venezuela's depilated oil industry more relevant—and Washington, searching the globe for alternative suppliers, is open to letting oil majors produce there again. Colombia, the closest partner the U.S. has in Latin America, is also in a state of transition, with a new president, Gustavo Petro, far more interested in rebuilding the relationship with neighboring Venezuela than being Washington's surrogate in the region.

The circumstances have changed, and Washington's approach is slowly changing with it.

While the U.S. doesn't have any formal diplomatic relations with the Maduro government, U.S. officials have nonetheless had contact with it. This strikes a chord among moralists who believe Maduro should be economically punished and diplomatically isolated, but dialogue with even immoral regimes is often essential to safeguarding the U.S. national interest. The seven American prisoners who were released by Caracas on Oct. 1 would still be in jail today if Washington wasn't willing to engage in a little give-and-take.

The U.S. is reportedly in discussions with the Venezuelan government to lift some oil-related sanctions in exchange for Maduro participating in negotiations with his political opponents on a plan that would greenlight presidential elections, release political prisoners, and free up money frozen in U.S. bank accounts to address the country's litany of socioeconomic problems. The idea is to incentivize all sides to cooperate in the process.

Whether it will work, only time will tell. But it's clear the previous U.S. approach wasn't working, and we have years of evidence to back it up.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Newsweek.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.