Yesterday the Quincy Institute’s excellent Responsible Statecraft blog published a piece of mine on Venezuela. With a little help from some friends, I put together a series of recommendations to a future Biden administration about what a better Venezuela policy might be. Here is my final suggestion which undergirds everything else:
Undergirding whatever policies a Biden administration might take should be a change in discourse. Behind the Trump administration’s miscalculations has been an assumption that the Maduro government’s fall is imminent and that a sharp push would provide a quick foreign policy victory. A Biden administration would need to assume that Venezuela is beset by a complex, long-term crisis that will not be “solved,” but which could be re-channeled into democratic mechanisms that will allow the Venezuelan people to exercise actual sovereignty over their government.
The blog is open-access and can be accessed here.
