Should Biden change his Venezuela approach?

Venezuela has been leading the United States on, maintaining the pretense that they will ensure that the upcoming presidential elections are free and fair. That’s despite the US relieving sanctions, releasing prisoners and months of “diplomacy.” The Nicolás Maduro regime has also gone on offense, threatening to take back the Esequibo, an area now under Guyana’s jurisdiction, where American oil companies have invested billions. This Wednesday, Maduro mocked the Biden administration once again, arresting two high-level officials from opposition candidate María Corina Machado’s team and issuing arrest warrants against several others. 

Henry Alviarez, Machado’s campaign’s national organization coordinator, and Dignora Hernández, her political coordinator, were the subjects of Wednesday’s arrests. The warrants, issued by attorney general Tarek Saab, also target many others, including Machado’s campaign chief Magalli Meda, who has been discussed as an alternative candidate considering the continued barring of the opposition leader from running for office.

In a statement, assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs Brian Nichols said, “We condemn the arbitrary arrests and warrants issued… for members of the democratic opposition in Venezuela. We call for the immediate release of these individuals and all those unjustly detained.” 

The arrests are set to further complicate the prospects of an already-dubious democratic election in July. This is bad for Venezuela, of course, but it is also a slap in the face for the US, which developed an entire rapprochement strategy that has evidently backfired. 

Maduro’s steadfastness in keeping Machado out of the election may surprise some White House policy experts. Not Florida senator Rick Scott. “It was obvious that the dictatorship was going to respond in this way to President Biden’s weak appeasement and reduction of sanctions,” he told The Spectator. “This is what happens when you give a genocidal dictator what he wants.”

When asked about what the White House could be doing better, Scott said, “President Biden must re-impose severe sanctions on the illegitimate Maduro regime now. Now.”

“No more excuses, second chances for Maduro or ‘revisions’ that only fuel the regime and undermine our fight for freedom and democracy in Venezuela,” Scott said. “America should never trust a genocidal tyrant and a liar like Nicolás Maduro — that should hold true regardless of which party is in power.”

Accompanied by Senators Marco Rubio and Bill Cassidy, Scott sent a letter back in January demanding that the White House abandon their appeasement attempts. The latest developments appear to vindicate their stance. Scott suggests that US policy must be consistent in refusing “concessions with the Maduro regime and any appeasement policies, like lifting sanctions, that benefit the regime while doing nothing to advance the cause of freedom and democracy.” He suggests that the US should do more to back Machado, arguing that an election without her cannot, by definition, be democratic.

“Let me be clear: Nicolás Maduro’s regime is a narco-dictatorship that commits genocide against its own people and works with all the evil regimes that hate America,” the senator said.  “Iran and its Islamic Jihad proxies, Russia, communist China and Cuba” are some of the countries he says are working with Maduro to “destabilize the Western Hemisphere.”

“From the release of Maduro’s nephews, lifting sanctions and granting clemency to Maduro’s crony, Alex Saab,” Scott says, the Biden administration has “turned its back on freedom and democracy, putting the stability of the region and America’s national security at risk.”

Will the Biden administration change track? His foreign policy record in his first term has proven mixed at best — and he can ill afford another blunder abroad in an election year.