Tuesday 05 Apr 2022 @ 10:38
Chatham House
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Venezuelan oily chess

There is an opportunity to revise a dead-end sanctions policy on Venezuela that would serve both US geostrategic interests and the goal of democratic transition.

Three days before President Joe Biden announced that the US was imposing a ban on Russian oil and gas, Justin Bieber’s  private jet set off from Washington, DC to Caracas, Venezuela with high-level Biden administration officials on a quiet diplomatic mission to meet with Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

The rumoured purpose of the trip was to offer relief to global oil markets and rising gasoline prices in the US – although later after a political backlash against a seeming oil for human rights trade, White House press secretary Jen Psaki denied it. 

The truth was more complicated. Nevertheless, as the original logic went and continues, by lifting US restrictions on investment in and export of Venezuelan crude can help resolve energy price spikes and peel Maduro away from his government’s alliance with an increasingly scorned and isolated Vladimir Putin.

None of those is true, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an important moment for much-needed shift in policy direction internationally regarding Venezuela.

Click here to continue reading the full version of this Expert Comment on the Chatham House website.

 

Channel website: https://www.chathamhouse.org/

Original article link: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/04/venezuelan-oily-chess

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