He shouldn’t be turning to an enemy in the tropics in a last-ditch effort to buoy Democrats’ midterm chances.
Ever since Joe Biden fell out of favor with Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia because of the president’s insistence on holding the crown prince to account over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the restless almost-octogenarian has been searching for a new source of fossil fuel to bring down gas prices without upsetting progressive climate hawks by doing what would actually bring down oil prices: unleashing American energy production. Now, Biden thinks he may have found a new friend in the Venezuelan autocrat, Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuela is one of the leading human-rights abusers and among our biggest adversaries in the Western Hemisphere, so to justify rapprochement, one must present a solid rationale. But the administration has not made an adequate case for détente.
Biden’s logic is as follows: With OPEC+ cutting production this month and Venezuelan migration to the United States skyrocketing, easing sanctions on the Chavismo regime could produce the fruits that the Trump administration’s hard-line approach failed to deliver. This is the height of indiscretion.
On the migration issue, his desire to provide a legal path for Venezuelan migrants is sensible given the acute nature of the humanitarian crisis and who these people are fleeing — a rogue socialist dictator. Helping these migrants does not necessitate a thaw in relations between Washington and Caracas or open borders. It’s a great way to undermine Maduro by hastening a Venezuelan brain drain, depriving his regime of the human-capital resources it needs to prolong its grip on power. Conservatives do themselves a disservice by ceding the mantle of anti-communism to the Biden administration by treating Venezuelan refugees like political pawns.
However, Biden’s prudential approach to the refugee problem does not elide him of the scorn he deserves for trying to prime the pump before the midterms by flooding the market with Venezuelan oil to help Democrats at the polls. Biden tried to do this with Iran, and now he’s giving it another go.
Cynicism aside, the plan is doomed to fail. Heritage Foundation Latin America researcher Mateo Haydar says, “Venezuela produces fewer barrels of oil per day than what the Keystone XL Pipeline that Biden canceled would have produced” and that “lifting oil sanctions is unlikely to make a dent in efforts to bring down gas prices.”
At this stage, there’s little Biden could do that would lower gas prices in time to help Democrats’ ailing prospects of maintaining control of both chambers of Congress. However, leasing more federal lands for oil production and improving our refining capacity, which he has deprioritized during his time in office, would put us on a path toward sustainable energy independence without relying on overseas despots in the future.
President Biden should have never snubbed Riyadh. But now that he has heedlessly done so, he shouldn’t be turning to an enemy in the tropics in a last-ditch effort to buoy Democrats’ midterm chances while selling out the Venezuelan people. What his administration is attempting to do with Maduro is nothing short of reprehensible. Yet somehow, the “norms crowd” must have missed Biden’s affinity for this foreign strongman.