On January 17, Venezuela’s President Delcy Rodriguez met with CIA Director John Ratcliffe in Caracas. Ratcliffe is the most senior American official to visit Venezuela since U.S. forces kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro two weeks prior. The pair allegedly discussed the Trump administration’s plans for opening up the country’s oil sector in a show of understanding between the two governments. Days later, Rodríguez pitched an “anti-imperialist” reopening of the American embassy in Caracas to the one-party National Assembly.
The gravity—and perplexity—of the current status quo in Venezuela has yet to sink in fully within the DC blob. In Caracas, security forces and pro-regime paramilitary colectivos stop and search suspected U.S. sympathizers at the same time as the regime releases political prisoners at the behest of Washington. The new modus vivendi between Washington and Caracas has opened up hitherto unfathomable opportunities for the 27-year-old regime even as it confronts great risk to its integrity.
Talks are currently underway to lift the president’s 2019 oil embargo against Venezuela as a subset of ambitious oil majors aim to brave the criminal badlands of the country’s murky oil fields. True to form, corresponding and contradictory propaganda from the Caracas regime and the Miami neoconservatives has aimed to assuage adherents that Rodríguez and President Donald Trump are respectively outsmarting one another.
What actually happens will depend on the eye of the beholder. For MAGA realists, success depends on the amount of oil that American firms pump from the Venezuelan ground. But for Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the “Miami Lobby,” success is contingent upon delivering regime change in Venezuela. The problem is that the path of least resistance for realizing each goal necessarily jeopardizes the other, and both camps have frequently been at odds since Trump returned to office. It will remain to be seen whether either will ultimately triumph in the troubled South American nation.
In its first term, the administration pursued a doctrinaire “maximum pressure” policy against Caracas, including the aforementioned embargo and perhaps even a failed incursion, outsourced to the Miami-based mercenary firm Silvercorp. Since Trump’s return to the White House, his administration has oscillated erratically between maximum pressure and engagement over energy and immigration policy.
In January 2025, Special Envoy Richard Grenell traveled to Caracas, where he posed with Maduro for a smiling photo-op. The pair brokered an America First understanding: The regime agreed to accept deportation flights in exchange for the renewal of Chevron’s Biden-era oil license. Naturally, this arrangement with the regime came into conflict with the neoconservative Miami lobby embodied by Rubio and Florida representatives Mario Díaz-Balart, Carlos Giménez, and Maria Elvira Salazar.
With the GOP holding just a two-seat majority in the House of Representatives, these three threatened to sink Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill unless the administration rescinded Chevron’s oil license. The White House caved, and Caracas subsequently suspended repatriation flights. This confluence of events contributed to the deportation of more than 200 Venezuelans—nearly all of whom lacked criminal records—to El Salvador’s so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
The tragic irony for Miami neocons, who have spent over a decade advocating on behalf of Venezuelan dissidents, is that many of the CECOT deportees had suffered persecution at the hands of the Maduro regime. The ensuing backlash, both in the U.S. as well as allegedly from the Salvadoran Dictator Nayib Bukele, resulted in a July three-way prisoner swap of the Venezuelan detainees in exchange for ten American citizens held by Maduro. The White House thereafter restored Chevron’s oil license, while the regime once again acquiesced to repatriation flights.
Rubio orchestrated a savvy convergence between neocons and MAGA primacists, distracting the latter from cartel wars in Mexico. Instead, the administration began bombing alleged Venezuelan drug runners in an effort to pressure the “narcoterrorist” Maduro. While Trump and other members of the administration have continually expressed interest in bombings “on land”, doing so would inevitably spark media and diplomatic scrutiny in the likely event of civilian casualties. By deliberately concealing—and effectively destroying—evidence of maritime victims’ alleged culpability, the administration has managed to mitigate blowback from over 100 extrajudicial killings.
And yet, all throughout, Chevron has continued to pump Venezuelan crude, and the regime has accepted deportation flights, barring a brief period in which the White House unilaterally closed the country’s airspace. By all accounts, Maduro—like Delcy Rodríguez—was more than willing to acquiesce to U.S. demands, save for Rubio and the Miami lobby’s insistence that he immediately leave office. The result was the dictator’s downfall in favor of his vice president.
Trump, however, appears to have learned valuable lessons from the foreign adventurism of his predecessors. When asked by a reporter why he backed Rodríguez over opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, the president responded: “If you ever remember a place called Iraq, where everybody was fired—every single person, the police, the generals, everybody was fired—and they ended up [turning into] ISIS instead of just getting down to business.”
The problem is that significantly increasing oil production is no easy feat; doing so while also pleasing the Miami lobby is an even more daunting task. Venezuela oil production is currently around 1 million barrels per day (bpd). The vast majority of Venezuela’s reserves consist of harder-to-extract heavy crude from the Orinoco belt. Years of neglect, sanctions, and crisis have devastated the country’s broader oil infrastructure.
An estimated $100–180 billion of investment over the course of 10 years would be necessary for a significant increase in production; just maintaining current output of 1 million bpd would require $53 billion of investment over the next 15 years. Accordingly, the president has intimated that the White House will oversee Venezuela’s hydrocarbons sector for years to come.
With oil trading in the mid $50s-per-barrel, many American drillers are already struggling to pump oil at home, let alone abroad. Some low-hanging fruit in Venezuela—mostly via Chevron—could realistically lift production to 1.25 million bpd by the end of Trump’s term. In the long term, however, the simplest method for securing a lasting increase in output without creating a quagmire is to retire military assets from the region and expand trade with the regime under normalized relations.
Naturally, this scenario is unacceptable to the Miami neocons. The day after Maduro’s capture, a reporter asked Giménez, Elvira Salazar, and Díaz-Balart why they were not supporting opposition leader Machado. Furious, Giménez berated the reporter, responding: “You’re talking to us? When have we ever not supported her?…I’m convinced that when there are elections—whether there are new elections or there’s a decision to take the old elections, the last elections—that the next democratically elected president of Venezuela is going to be María Corina Machado.” But so far, the trio, along with allied influencers and activists, have fallen in line and urged followers to “trust the plan.”
The plan presumably refers to three points outlined by Rubio: stabilization; recovery, entailing increased oil output; and transition. Notably, the administration has neglected to offer a timeline for the secretary’s proposal. Rubio stated before congress that the third point entails a full transition to democracy but many in South Florida are already beginning to have doubts. The Miami Herald has raised alarm bells on the prospect of a lasting MAGA–Bolivarian alliance. One Floridian journalist said to me: “The worst thing that could happen is that the regime survives with Trump’s help.” When I asked a Venezuelan-American service worker how she felt about Maduro’s ouster, she said that she and her family in Venezuela were initially ecstatic, but expressed disappointment that little had fundamentally changed.
Trump (and the CIA) are probably correct that a sudden regime change stands to worsen the country’s crisis. If and when the opposition takes power, a plethora of armed actors, including Colombian guerrillas, colectivos, and regime loyalists in the military stand to stoke internal conflict. Inevitably, the Miami neocons would subsequently move the goalpost from regime change to defending a beleaguered freedom-loving government in Caracas.
In this scenario, a U.S. occupation would facilitate oil production by providing needed security for oil majors at the cost of backlash from the American public. On January 18, Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated that multinationals would be responsible for their own security in Venezuela after reports suggested that the White House was considering contracting mercenaries to protect investments.
In many ways, the precariousness of the Venezuelan condition is itself a strength for the regime. Under the current state of quasi-siege, the more that Caracas capitulates to Washington—or suffers lethal retaliation—the more likely state collapse becomes. Paradoxically, some level of accommodation is consequently desirable on the American side. The regime no doubt recognizes this and will inevitably resort to its tried and true strategy of strategic patience. Assuming that a long-term MAGA–Bolivarian alliance is, in fact, impossible, the regime may well survive by simply waiting out the rest of Trump’s term.
Analysts had previously noted that an operation in Venezuela would take place before or soon after the new year following the USS Gerald Ford’s October transfer from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Caribbean. The largest aircraft carrier in the world, the Ford has spent the majority of the past four years supporting U.S. proxy wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The administration may well need to relocate the carrier and other Caribbean assets to other theaters, particularly as it continues to stoke tensions with Iran. Democrats are also virtually certain to retake the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate in November, subjecting a lame-duck Trump to stricter oversight of potential war crimes in the Caribbean and future strikes inside of Venezuela.
Democrats are likewise likely to pressure the administration into holding elections, blocking pertinent funding as well as legislation needed for normalizing relations with Caracas. A curious turn of events could even take place whereby rank-and-file Latino neoconservatives in 2028 swing to a Democratic Party promising to usher full regime change in Venezuela. Alternatively, the GOP’s Miami trio may well force the White House to commit to a timeline on elections before the next congress takes power in 2027.
The Rodríguez regime may ultimately collapse or survive via fortuitous neglect. While Miami neocons decry the prospect of a lasting collaboration with the regime, both they and primacists may find that the worst of all worlds is that the regime survives with limited oil output to American shores.
There may be a narrow path acceptable to most parties in Venezuela. Cynical and sadistic as it may be, it’s possible that the administration could succeed in diverting the Miami lobby’s designs on Venezuela by throttling Cuba. In the broader hierarchy of tropical oppression, Cuban-Americans sit atop the pinnacle of neoconservative victimhood in Miami—and exercise the most influence. Consequently, the White House has halted all oil exports from Venezuela to Cuba and is increasingly pressuring Mexico to curb its shipments to the island.
Oil charity from Venezuela and Mexico has been a lifeline for Cuba, which is currently undergoing its worst humanitarian crisis since the “Special Period” of the 1990s. Shortages and blackouts have grown commonplace, and more than 2 million people have emigrated from the country since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. The neoconservative theory of regime change through sanctions has shown no sign achieving its stated goal. Miamians, however, view this fact as cause for doubling down on deepening the island’s suffering.
While these moves buy the administration time in the Magic City, the White House could opt to pursue a power-sharing agreement in Caracas as the last point of Rubio’s three-step proposal. Vile as the regime may be, it is unrealistic to presume that Chavismo—and especially the Venezuelan military—will peacefully turn over power under threats of prison sentences. For all practical intents and purposes, Venezuela under Rodríguez remains a military dictatorship. As such, virtually all of Latin America’s military regimes have ceded power to democratic governments on the condition that officers receive broad immunity for past crimes.
In Brazil, redemocratization was a gradual process that began in the late 1970s under President João Figueiredo’s policy of abertura, or “opening.” The groundwork for a transition was laid by the 1979 Amnesty Law, which granted immunity to both government officials and opposition activists for political crimes committed during the dictatorship. In 1982, the regime allowed voters to directly elect governors for the first time, with the opposition Brazilian Democratic Movement Party winning gubernatorial races in multiple prominent states.
The military finally relinquished control to a civilian, José Sarney, following an indirect election in 1985. Direct presidential elections were finally held in 1988 amid a rewriting of the constitution; subsequent governments have avoided prosecuting military officials for past crimes. The former union leader and current President Lula Da Silva led protests in favor of direct elections in 1984 and was briefly jailed during the dictatorship. Nonetheless, the left-wing Lula—like all of his democratic peers—has avoided prosecuting members of the military for past crimes.
In Chile, General Augusto Pinochet left office in 1990, following a 1988 plebiscite in which voters rejected extending the general’s term as president to eight years. The 1980 Constitution that Pinochet helped draft, included a provision that the dictator would assume a life term as senator after leaving office as commander-in-chief of the army in 1998. This position granted him immunity from prosecution in addition to a permanent role in Chilean politics. The armed forces likewise retained significant autonomy and veto power over reforms under subsequent democratic governments.
In Paraguay, Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship ended abruptly in 1989, when he was overthrown in a military coup led by General Andrés Rodríguez, a longtime military confidant and member of the ruling Colorado Party. The coup was precipitated by internal divisions within the Colorados over the issue of succession with one faction favoring Stroessner’s son while the other was opposed to dynastic rule. Rodríguez won the presidency in 1989, with the Colorado Party remaining in power for all but three of the 37 years since Stroessner’s ouster.
None of this means that it is just to leave the crimes of autocratic regimes unpunished; both Argentina and Chile eventually brought dozens of officials to justice. It does mean, however, that incentives need to be given in order to ensure the compliance of the Venezuelan military. Once again, the sheer precarity of the Venezuelan condition is a sad but crucial advantage of the Bolivarian regime.
Neither Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay nor Bolivia ran the risk of sparking armed internal conflict at the time of democratic transitions during the 1980s and 1990s. Chavismo has managed the remarkable if sinister feat of establishing a relative peace with armed groups such as the 5000-strong National Liberation Army (ELN) and ex-FARC guerrillas; homicides have fallen from around 90 to 26 per 100,000 in the past decade. In the event of state collapse, violence is likely to soar beyond heights seen during the mid-2010s.
An useful historical example is Colombia’s civil war of the 1940s and ’50s, known as La Violencia. Over 200,000 died in this partisan conflict, which was characterized by extreme cruelty from the Colombian Liberal and Conservative parties. The bloodshed was mitigated following the overthrow of the military dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953–1957). Both political parties thereafter agreed to share power across various Colombian institutions in a coalition known as the National Front.
Formalized in 1957 between Liberal leader Alberto Lleras Camargo and Conservative leader Laureano Gómez, the agreement saw both parties alternate the presidency, divide ministerial and government posts, and maintain representation on all executive and legislative bodies for 16 years, equivalent to four presidential terms. The National Front pacified over a hundred years of partisan conflict, though it ironically contributed to the formation of left-wing guerrillas like the ELN and FARC which had been excluded from the two-party duopoly.
Curiously, Venezuela embraced a similar if more informal agreement in 1958 following the overthrow of contemporaneous military dictator Marcos Pérez Jimenez; the duopoly of the National Action (AD) and Social Christian Party (COPEI) agreed to respect electoral results and avoid a single party accumulating too much power under the so-called Puntofijo Pact. AD and COPEI dominated Venezuelan politics for four decades, with AD winning the presidency in 1958, 1963, 1973, 1983, and 1988.
Neither the National Front nor Puntofijo is fully apt for Venezuela’s current reality, but elements from both agreements could prove useful for facilitating a stable transition in Caracas. Were the administration to pursue this course, it may find unlikely allies in Colombia’s Gustavo Petro and Brazil’s Lula. Both leaders have advocated for a power-sharing agreement in the lead-up and aftermath of Maduro’s fraudulent 2024 reelection over a Machado stand-in, Edmundo Gonzalez. A diplomat who served as a pre-Chávez ambassador to Argentina and Algeria, Gonzalez appeared receptive to Lula and Petro’s counsel and even expressed openness towards an amnesty for members of the regime during the election.
Alternatively, the Venezuelan military could be granted a temporary–ideally small–share of seats in the National Assembly and retain oversight over parts of the oil industry. To be sure, any such development would elicit justified ire from victims of the regime in and outside of Venezuela, especially in Miami. Trump would need to expend significant political capital in order to corral the approval of respective parties.
Lula is due to travel to the White House in the coming weeks. Trump has secured something of a rapprochement with Petro, who visited last week. This may prove particularly vital for securing cross border operations against the ELN in Colombia and Venezuela. The president could also recruit both leaders as mediators for an eventual Venezuelan transition. It remains to be seen whether the realism of the so-called Donroe Doctrine extends to diplomacy with ideological rivals in the American sphere of influence. Much, unfortunately, will depend on the goodwill of Miami.
Venezuela’s current state of limbo will eventually and necessarily morph into any of the scenarios previously described. Whatever the outcome, it will almost certainly make or break the political career of the president’s Miami-born secretary of state.
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