{"id":40089,"date":"2022-06-25T08:22:50","date_gmt":"2022-06-25T16:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=40089"},"modified":"2022-06-25T08:22:50","modified_gmt":"2022-06-25T16:22:50","slug":"biden-needs-to-get-out-of-the-defensive-crouch-on-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/25\/biden-needs-to-get-out-of-the-defensive-crouch-on-venezuela\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden Needs To Get Out of the Defensive Crouch on Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christopher Mott makes<\/a> the case for restoring normal relations with Venezuela:<\/p>\n

With attachment to Guaido fading, Washington should now disavow interference in Caracas\u2019s internal affairs and offer sanctions relief as an easy price to pay for setting up a full and robust exchange of commerce, oil, and gas between Venezuela and the United States. <\/i><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the Biden administration\u2019s attachment to Guaid\u00f3 remains weirdly strong. The president\u2019s wife posted<\/a> a photo with Guaid\u00f3\u2019s wife this week and refers to her as the First Lady of Venezuela. This is just the latest sign that U.S. Venezuela policy remains on Trump-era autopilot. I suppose it is fitting that our farcical fantasy Venezuela policy should remain tied to the fantasy that Guaid\u00f3 is president, since they both lack any connection to the real world. <\/p>\n

This week on our podcast, my colleague Kelley Vlahos and I spoke<\/a> with William Neuman, the author of the new book Things Are Never So Bad That They Can\u2019t Get Worse<\/a><\/em>, which covers the ongoing crisis in Venezuela. In our interview, he talks about the political reasons why Biden and the Democrats don\u2019t want to rock the boat on Venezuela policy. He writes about the effects of the 2020 election in the book:<\/p>\n

Democrats were stunned by their shellacking in Florida. Besides losing the presidential vote in the state, two incumbent (and moderate) Democratic congresswomen lost their seats in majority Hispanic Miami-Dade County, where Republicans has aggressively pressed their \u201call Democrats are socialists\u201d campaign (there were other factors, as well, including a better Republican get-out-the-vote effort). This meant any administration move toward Venezuela that could be portrayed as an overture toward Maduro or a softening of support for Guaid\u00f3 could cost the Democrats votes in the midterm election and beyond.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cThey see it as a third rail,\u201d said a person who discussed Venezuela policy with an administration official. \u201cThey know nothing good is going to come of this.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Read the rest of the article at SubStack<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia<\/a>. He is former senior editor at<\/i> The American Conservative. He has been published in the<\/i> New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and<\/i> Culture11, and was a columnist for<\/i> The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher Mott makes the case for restoring normal relations with Venezuela: With attachment to Guaido fading, Washington should now disavow interference in Caracas\u2019s internal affairs and offer sanctions relief as an easy price to pay for setting up a full and robust exchange of commerce, oil, and gas between Venezuela and the United States. Unfortunately, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-40089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Running on an echo of Marco Rubio\u2019s regime change idiocy isn\u2019t going to win you any elections, either."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40089"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40091,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40089\/revisions\/40091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40089"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=40089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}