The ugly logic of sanctions is to make conditions so intolerable that people rise up against Maduro or the military removes him. That hasn’t happened and there’s no reason to think it will
With the war in Ukraine and a ban on Russian oil sales, the Biden administration has been seeking alternative sources of crude to try to ease prices at the gas pump. But a recent overture to oil-rich Venezuela was met with an immediate backlash from both Republicans and Democrats, who condemned the White House for negotiating with the country’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro. And last month, when the White House said that it would let Chevron begin talks with the Maduro government that could possibly lead to an expansion of its very limited activities in the country, there was a similar outraged response.
For all the noise generated by the outreach to Caracas, there has been virtually no discussion of why the US has an oil embargo against Venezuela in the first place or why, in the face of the failure of economic sanctions to alter political realities in the country, US politicians are so intent on keeping them in place.
William Neuman is the author of Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela