This Is How Washington Is Stabbing the Opposition in Venezuela in the Back

Not that long ago, Washington still considered Venezuela’s autocrat Nicolás Maduro to be Latin America’s despised political pariah. Now, the U.S. is moving closer to the socialist regime in order to get a replacement for Russian oil and gas. That is not credible.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is against international law, is leading to staggering dynamics not only in Germany but also on the American continent. One of those is the U.S. moving closer, diplomatically speaking, to the socialist regime of the Venezuelan autocrat Nicolás Maduro. That’s because he has something without which the U.S. will have a hard time supporting its import ban on Russia: oil.

Until a few days ago, Washington still considered Maduro to be Latin America’s despised political pariah. According to human rights organizations, Maduro, inciting his death squads in the slums against members of the opposition, is responsible for extrajudicial executions and severe repression. Incidentally, Venezuela has also developed into a lucrative hub for the illegal drug trade.

Since Maduro’s assumption of office as the political heir to the revolutionary leader Hugo Chávez, 6 million people have fled from the South American country. As a result, the U.S. has imposed hard sanctions, dramatically reduced oil imports from Venezuela and backed Juan Guaidó, the interim president of the opposition, though that has come to be nothing more than a symbolic role for almost three years now.

Guaidó now has to witness how the U.S. is not negotiating with him but, for the first time in years, with Maduro. From an objective point of view, it is recognition of political reality. From a diplomatic point of view, it is a sort of political double betrayal: As a counter-maneuver to Maduro withdrawing his allegiance from his Russian patron Vladimir Putin and partly compensating for the oil supply boycott, Washington is stabbing Guaidó in the back and giving Maduro new political recognition.

To put it mildly, that is a dangerous balancing act because, with this, U.S. diplomacy is disclosing that ethical principles are abandoned as soon as it is convenient. All of this, however, seems to be part of a strategy to cut Latin America off from Putin’s influence. Whatever it takes — even its own credibility.

Clearly, the fear of angry drivers in the U.S. in light of rising gas prices is so great that all of those who have been killed, expelled and imprisoned by Maduro now count for nothing. Such an about-face can only be justified if U.S. diplomacy manages not only to guarantee the security of supply to the American gas pumps, but also force Maduro into a successful, transparent dialogue with the duped opposition, at the end of which there will be internationally, independently monitored presidential elections. If that goes wrong, some opposition groups in Latin American leftist dictatorships may ask how much they can still rely on Washington.