The U.S. military operation that removed Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in January has produced something without modern precedent: a government run by remote American command. Former Biden national security advisor Jake Sullivan called it "occupation by joystick, occupation by remote control" - with Maduro's deputy agreeing to follow Washington's instructions under threat of further military action.
Sullivan, speaking on the World Class podcast at Stanford University alongside former Trump national security advisor H.R. McMaster, argued the arrangement works only because American demands remain limited. "We pretty much only asked them for one big thing: let American oil companies go in and exploit Venezuela's oil resources," he said. As "Hvylya" reports, Sullivan added that this suits the Caracas regime fine - "they will get their cut, and getting their cut will allow them to continue to entrench themselves in power."
McMaster pushed back sharply. The demands are far broader than oil access, he said, citing Secretary of State Rubio's four points: release political prisoners, expel Cuban, Russian, and Chinese personnel, and produce a plan for political transition. McMaster drew an analogy to Poland's democratic transition - the Solidarity movement sitting down at a round table with the communists, backed by the Catholic Church. Venezuela still has its constitution and "a history of democratic governance," he said.
Sullivan remained cautious. He added that political prisoner releases have already been followed by re-arrests - "prominent media arrests" - and called the pattern familiar. "We have seen that movie before with Venezuela, where they do releases and then they round people back up," he said. More troubling, the administration has treated opposition leader Maria Corina Machado "as a nuisance as opposed to an ally in all this."
Host Colin Kahl identified the core dilemma: the current arrangement stays stable because regime insiders keep profiting from economic rents. But democratic transition means "suddenly some of these guys are going to face the prospect of going to jail. And a lot of these guys have guns." Sullivan acknowledged the scenario could easily lock in for years - "a dictatorship sitting in Caracas doing resource extraction deals with the United States."
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