Why Rubio's selection as secretary of state spells trouble for Venezuela and Maduro

President-elect Donald Trump’s expected nomination of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state signals a dramatic shift from the current U.S. policy toward Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro. For years, the Cuban American senator from Miami has been advocating for the U.S. to take off the gloves when dealing with what he denounces as a cruel dictatorship run by a drug cartel.

Rubio, one of the most knowledgeable voices in Washington on the risks that the Havana and Caracas regimes pose for the hemisphere, has been an intense critic of the Biden administration’s attempt to negotiate a democratic transition in Venezuela with Maduro, claiming the outgoing president gave away the store in exchange for empty promises.

In a statement he gave after Venezuela’s controversial election on July 28, which the U.S. and a number of nations believe was once again stolen by Caracas’ socialist regime, Rubio claimed that its outcome was not only easy to foresee but also facilitated by the current administration’s efforts to lure Maduro into allowing a democratic transition in the country.

Through a series of engagements between U.S. officials and top Maduro lieutenants, which included secret meetings in Qatar during 2023, the Biden administration agreed to release officials and family members close to Maduro convicted or facing charges in the U.S. on corruption or drug-trafficking charges and to begin lifting the U.S. sanctions imposed on the regime. In exchange, Maduro committed to holding free and fair elections and to release a number of American citizens being held in Venezuela whom Washington believed had been arrested unjustly.

Those efforts, Rubio sustained, were ill-conceived.

“The Biden-Harris administration met secretly with the Maduro regime and made an arrangement in which Biden gave the following: Alex Saab, a criminal that we had here in this country; Maduro’s nephews, who were convicted drug traffickers and were in a federal prison, and the removal of the oil sanctions and that is generating billions of dollars a month for the Maduro regime”, Rubio said.

In exchange, the administration obtained the regime’s promise to hold the presidential election, “which we all knew that Maduro was going to steal”, Rubio said, before adding that Trump’s election would immediately lead to a “very different” approach towards Venezuela.

Many countries believe that the Venezuelan presidential election was won by former diplomat Edmundo González, with the help of opposition leader María Corina Machado, who had been barred by the regime from competing in the election in what was seen as one of the firsts violations to the promises Madur had made to the Bidel administration.

Gonzalez was forced to flee Venezuela after the election, when the regime made it clear that his arrest was imminent. Machado has remained in hiding inside the South American country, from where she congratulated Trump for his victory last week and asked him not to forget the Venezuelan people. “We have always counted on you,” she said.

The Venezuelan opposition had for long counted Rubio among its friends in Washington. The Florida senator had a close relationship with opposition leader Leopoldo López and was a major supporter of the first Trump administration’s policy backing opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela in 2019.

Rubio was also one of the main voices reminding Washington that the Maduro regime was not a typical South American dictatorship, claiming that it is headed by a criminal consortium made up of high-ranking military and regime officials involved in a series of illicit operations, ranging from drug trafficking and money laundering to gold smuggling and widespread embezzlement of government funds.

When talking about the leadership of the Caracas regime, Rubio is often quick to point out that they are wanted fugitives of the U.S. justice system, with rewards for their capture.

“The United States is offering $25 million for Maduro and Diosdado Cabello,” the regime’s number two man, the senator said through his social media accounts back in July. “You can help us make Maduro and Cabello new residents of the U.S. federal prison system.”

The statement was not the first time Rubio called for Maduro’s arrest. In 2022, Rubio asked U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to request an Interpol red alert notice for the arrest of the Venezuelan strongman so he could be brought to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges.

Both Maduro and Cabello have been indicted in the U.S. on charges of heading Venezuela’s Soles Cartel, which according to U.S. officials exports between 250 and 350 tons of cocaine each year, going mainly to the United States and Europe.

In Caracas, Rubio’s nomination reinforces an omen of things to come for the Venezuelan regime that started immediately after it became clear that Trump had won the election.

Even while Maduro claimed publicly that Trump’s election can serve as a “new start” to the troubled relationship between Washington and Caracas, sources in Venezuela told the Miami Herald that there is growing concern within the regime that the country will soon be slapped with even tougher sanctions than the ones implemented during the first Trump administration. Those included putting dozens of high-ranking regime officials on a Treasury Department list of leaders accused of corruption and drug trafficking, dismantling the country’s democratic system or committing brutal human-rights violations.

The Trump administration also imposed sanctions in 2017 and 2019 that closed off the U.S. market to state-run oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela, known as PDSA, and froze $7 billion of the company’s U.S. assets, sending the already faltering Venezuelan economy, which depended heavily on oil exports to the U.S., into a tailspin.

Some of those sanctions were partially lifted in 2022, when the Biden administration began to grant licenses to Chevron, which had assets in Venezuela, to increase oil production in Venezuela.

Following the negotiations held in Qatar last year and Maduro’s commitment to holding free elections, the U.S. lifted oil sanctions even further — but these were reimposed soon after it became clear that Maduro had no real intention of fulfilling his promises.

As of now, Chevron is the only U.S. company allowed by the U.S. to sell Venezuelan oil, but this licenses constitute an important source of income for the cash-strapped socialist regime.

While new sanctions would further hurt the regime’s finances, there are also worried at the Miraflores presidential palace that the new administration might go much further, a fear that weighed heavily on Maduro’s mind during the first Trump presidency when he invoked the Vatican and Pope Francis for help.

“May the pope help us prevent Trump from sending his troops and invading Venezuela,” Maduro told reporters back in 2017. “I ask the pope for help against the military threat from the United States. May he not abandon me. May he not abandon us.”