GOP has no moral authority to slam Maduro meeting

The Biden’s administration’s poorly planned meeting with Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in Caracas has been rightly condemned by key figures from both ends of the political spectrum in Washington D.C.

But the outrage over the meeting may be a tempest in a teapot.

Several senior Biden administration officials met with Maduro on March 5. Judging from what I heard after talking with more than half a dozen people close to the proceedings, I doubt that we’ll see the United States lift oil sanctions on Venezuela’s dictatorship without democratic commitments from the Maduro regime.

Opposition leaders believe the Caracas meeting was prompted by lobbying efforts by the Chevron oil company, which reportedly is seeking a U.S. license to resume operations in Venezuela. According to a Feb. 7 report by Reuters, Chevron wants to return to Venezuela and begin collecting hundreds of millions in debt from the regime.

To be sure, there’s a lot of political hypocrisy from Republican critics, such as Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who are all over the media lashing out at the Biden administration for its meeting with the Venezuelan dictator.

Rubio didn’t complain when former President Trump met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un or when Trump recently praised Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin as a “genius.” And neither Rubio nor his Republican colleagues showed any sign of outrage when the Trump administration sent Richard Grenell, former acting national intelligence chief, to hold secret talks with the Maduro regime in Mexico in September 2020.

It’s not unusual for U.S. administrations — both Democratic and Republican — to hold secret meetings with unsavory regimes, ranging from Iran to the Taliban. This time, it was leaked to the media, which created a political uproar in Washington.

Critics said the Biden administration had decided to relax oil sanctions on Venezuela if Maduro resumed oil exports to the United States and helped make up for the suspension of U.S. oil imports from Russia.

U.S. officials first had said that several senior U.S. officials — including Juan Gonzalez, White House Latin America national security adviser, and Jimmy Story, U.S. non-resident ambassador to Venezuela — met with Maduro to obtain the release of several Americans imprisoned in that country, including Gustavo Cárdenas, a former executive at Citgo, arrested in 2017, and Jorge Fernandez, arrested in 2021; get the regime back to the negotiating table with Venezuela’s opposition; and discuss, presumably, oil-related “national security” issues. Cárdenas and Fernandez were released hours after the meeting.

Critics argue, rightly, that lifting U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s oil exports would be morally flawed and unrealistic. It’s wrong to reward one dictator — Maduro — to help punish another one, Vladimir Putin. Besides, it doesn’t make sense to lift sanctions without any concrete concessions from the Maduro regime, they say.

Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan opposition leader recognized by the Biden administration as interim president, told me on March 11 that, “Any lifting of sanctions should be done gradually and linked to an agreement [with the Maduro dictatorship] to hold free and fair elections.”

In addition, from a practical standpoint, Venezuela’s oil industry is so depleted from decades of neglect and corruption that it would take several years to get it to produce enough oil to make a dent in U.S. oil prices.

Critics also say the Biden administration envoys to Caracas sidelined Guaidó from the talks. Instead, they met a day later in Caracas with opposition negotiator Gerardo Blyde. But Guaidó participated in the meeting via video conference and had been told of the meeting two weeks earlier, Venezuelan opposition sources told me.

After strong criticism of the Caracas meeting by

Sen. Bob Menendez, DNew Jersey, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and others, the Biden administration seems to have changed its tune.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said on March 11 that the Caracas meeting had only two priorities — releasing the U.S. hostages and seeking a resumption of talks between Maduro and the opposition. He added that, “Our current Venezuelan sanctions remain in full effect.”

In other words, either the Biden administration is backpedaling or it never really intended to make an oil deal with Maduro, sidestepping the Venezuelan opposition. Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised if this goes down in history as a trial balloon that exploded before it went too far.

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