Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would revoke the licenses that allowed companies such as Chevron to sell Venezuelan oil in the United States and international markets, which were granted under former U.S. President Joe Biden. On March 4, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) followed through by mandating that Chevron wind down all its activities in Venezuela during the next month. OFAC is also likely to revoke authorizations given to non-U.S. oil companies to do business with Venezuela in coming days.
These sweeping changes appear to mark a return to the failed maximum pressure strategy promoted and implemented during Trump’s first term by then-national security advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. They also come amid pressure from members of Congress from Florida who favor a hard-line approach popular among Venezuelan American voters.
This decision contrasts strongly with the approach pursued by Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy for special missions, whose mandate includes relations with Venezuela. On Jan. 31, Grenell met with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and came away with the release of several U.S. prisoners and a deal for Venezuela to collaborate with deportations of irregular Venezuelan migrants in the United States. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Grenell said, “Under Donald Trump, we don’t do regime change.”
Yet regime change was at the center of the first Trump administration’s approach to Venezuela. In his White House memoir, Bolton recounts how the decision to impose oil sanctions in 2019 was premised on the idea that the Maduro regime would not survive them. Bolton wrote, “I thought it was time to turn the screws and asked, ‘why don’t we go for a win here?’” The U.S. government even went so far as recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the president of Venezuela, granting him control over the country’s sizable offshore assets. Washington refused to engage with Maduro, whom U.S. officials referred to as “former president,” despite his full control of Venezuela.
The strategy ended in unmitigated disaster. As I show in my new book, The Collapse of Venezuela, sanctions contributed to the largest economic collapse outside of wartime and the largest migration exodus in the history of the Western Hemisphere. They failed to drive Maduro from power, allowing him to further crack down on dissent and consolidate his authoritarian rule.
Interestingly, Grenell’s approach has similarities to the approach during the second half of the Biden administration, which is most associated with then-U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Juan González. Grenell’s visit mirrors one made by González in 2022; both recognized the importance of engaging on key issues of mutual interest, including migration and Venezuela’s reintegration into global oil markets.
If Trump wants to get Venezuela right this time, he should recognize that a policy of targeted engagement, rather than a return to maximum pressure, offers a better prospect of addressing both countries’ urgent challenges. The administration should build on the progress in engagement with Venezuela attained under Grenell’s tenure to also prioritize improving living conditions in Venezuela and promoting gradual democratic reforms. A strategy centered on pragmatic engagement, rather than broad-based economic pressure, would align with a foreign-policy vision that seeks to effectively prioritize U.S. security and economic interests.
Advocates of a hard-line approach to Venezuela have long criticized attempts at engagement, arguing that the United States should continue to actively try to drive Maduro from power. However, the previous U.S. strategy did nothing to bring Venezuela closer to democracy, despite the hard talk. Instead, after nearly a decade of punitive sanctions, Maduro remains more entrenched than ever.
Yes, Venezuelans live under a dictatorship—as do 5.7 billion people across 87 other countries led by authoritarian regimes. Democracy promotion through regime change may sound noble, but it selectively targets adversarial regimes while shielding authoritarian allies. Such an approach does nothing but undermine the standing of the United States in the international community.
Venezuela’s political conflict is more complex than the simplistic narratives often presented. These include that Venezuela’s economic collapse was caused only by corruption and mismanagement by Maduro and his predecessor, late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and that a ruthless dictatorship confronts a democratic opposition in a good-versus-evil epic. Nevertheless, the evidence shows that U.S. sanctions have been as important as misguided domestic policies in driving Venezuela’s economic implosion.
Chavismo, the political ideology started by Chávez and now led by Maduro, was popular for decades, with many Venezuelans seeing it as redressing historical inequalities and giving marginalized groups a voice. Support for Chavismo has waned in the last decade as Venezuela plunged into economic crisis. The country’s political conflict has been fed by an institutional framework dating to the late 1990s that grants excessive presidential power, ensuring that any electoral winner can effectively obliterate their opponents. This has created a political stalemate, deepening the country’s economic and humanitarian crisis.
The conflict came to a head in Venezuela’s presidential elections last July. The opposition has credibly shown that its candidate, Edmundo González, defeated Maduro by a 2-to-1 margin. However, electoral authorities declared Maduro the winner and refused to publish the disaggregated polling station tallies that would allow verification of the results.
Attempts at mediation promoted by Venezuela’s neighbors broke down, and the Maduro government embarked on a campaign to repress political dissent while consolidating its control over the military.
This outcome should not come as a surprise. The United States has offered a $25 million reward for information leading to the arrest or capture of Maduro (the same amount that it offered for al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri), making clear its intent to attempt to jail the Venezuelan leader if he steps aside. Opposition leader María Corina Machado’s campaign framed the conflict with Chavismo as a fight “to the end,” fueling fears that the opposition would launch a full-fledged persecution of Chavista leaders if it came to power. In this light, it is not surprising that Chavista leaders in the military rallied behind Maduro.
Fostering democratic change requires more than strong-arming authoritarian leaders into relinquishing power. Stable democracies are built upon a social contract in which competing political groups agree to coexist and settle disputes through electoral means, safeguarded by institutional checks that prevent winners from persecuting the losers.
As I have argued, the way out of this impasse is through a negotiated political settlement. Given the deep mistrust and external threats facing the Maduro government, the only feasible path toward such a transition is a power-sharing arrangement followed by a gradual return to electoral competition. Similar negotiated transitions have succeeded in countries including Brazil in 1985, Poland in 1989, and South Africa in 1994.
To work toward such a resolution, a new framework for engagement must be established. Unlike the failed Mexico and Barbados talks between the Maduro government and opposition from 2021 to 2024, in which negotiations focused on attempting to determine who would control Venezuela’s all-powerful executive branch, future engagement should focus on institutional and constitutional reforms that create a fair playing field with guarantees for all political actors.
The Trump administration should seize the opportunity to promote negotiations that could lead to a lasting political agreement in Venezuela. As Trump has correctly intuited, mediating an end to conflict requires setting aside the active defense of one side’s position to create space for negotiations. Much like in the case of Ukraine, recognizing that political settlements require compromises can be the most direct—and sometimes the only—route to saving millions of lives.
When historians look back at these years in Venezuela, they will contend with multiple voices—ranging from neoconservative foreign-policy hawks to hard-line Venezuelan opposition leaders—that called on the United States to actively damage the Venezuelan economy on the thesis that doing so would lead to the downfall of Maduro’s regime.
The idea that U.S. foreign policy would intentionally make Venezuelans hungrier by blocking oil exports, which generate the near totality of the country’s foreign currency revenue, is abhorrent and needs to be abandoned. Regrettably, there are multiple examples of U.S. economic sanctions leading to severe deteriorations in living standards without achieving the intended leadership change, including in Cuba, Iraq, and Iran.
A policy of engagement toward Venezuela should be accompanied by a more nuanced policy when it comes to deportations. The United States has both the right and the responsibility to adjust its immigration policies to reflect the will of its citizens. Washington should continue to deport Venezuelans and people of other nationalities who have been demonstrably engaged in criminal activities. In fact, this is an area where U.S. engagement with Venezuelan authorities is necessary and has been productive.
However, the recent decision by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans needs to be reconsidered. Venezuelans who have fled their country in the last decade have sought escape from a massive economic crisis, as well as political repression and persecution—a harrowing reality for opposition supporters. Trump captured around two-thirds of the Venezuelan American vote in the swing state of Florida. That support was founded on the belief that he would help Venezuelans who had been forced to come to the United States.
One way in which the Trump administration could convey its commitment to helping Venezuelans inside and outside the country is by passing the Venezuelan Adjustment Act (H.R. 1348), introduced by Reps. Darren Soto, Maria Elvira Salazar, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Frederica Wilson last month. This bipartisan initiative mirrors the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which offered similar provisions to Cuban nationals fleeing political turmoil.
Enacting such legislation would affirm the U.S. commitment to supporting individuals escaping oppressive regimes, demonstrate a bipartisan effort to address a pressing humanitarian issue, and convey that the shift toward a policy of limited engagement does not diminish the U.S. commitment to lend a hand to the Venezuelan people.
The recent decision on the Chevron license illustrates how two diametrically opposed views on how to deal with Venezuela still coexist in the Trump administration. One view, which appears to be supported by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security advisor Michael Waltz, advocates for a return to the failed maximum pressure strategy.
In contrast, Grenell’s approach of targeted engagement has opened the door to a fresh strategy that prioritizes economic recovery, alleviates humanitarian suffering, and fosters the kind of long-term political reforms necessary for a genuine democratic transition in Venezuela.
Such an approach holds much greater promise for rebuilding democracy in Venezuela than the worn-out, unrealistic, and dangerous pipe dreams of foreign intervention or of sanctions-induced political and economic collapse.
The post How Trump Could Still Get Venezuela Right This Time Around appeared first on Foreign Policy.
