Democracy discount by Mia Rodríguez

There is a revealing contradiction at the heart of Donald Trump’s Venezuela policy, Washington says it wants democracy, while constructing an economic arrangement that may give powerful Venezuelans a very good reason to postpone it. That is not a minor diplomatic inconsistency. It is the sort of contradiction that can quietly become policy.

Oil has always been Venezuela’s blessing and curse. It made governments rich enough to avoid accountability and created fortunes large enough to purchase influence, loyalty and silence. Now Washington appears to be building a new political economy around that same resource. If the oil money begins flowing before Venezuelans have freely chosen their government, the people benefiting from the arrangement will have a powerful interest in keeping the political system exactly as it is.

This is where Alejandro Betancourt matters. He is not merely an oil businessman who happened to win a remarkable contract. He has emerged as an intermediary between Caracas and Washington, with connections valuable enough to make him central to the new arrangement. That creates an obvious danger: when access to billions of barrels depends on political relationships, democracy becomes an inconvenient variable.

Imagine the conversation in a private room. Nobody needs to say, “Stop the elections.” They only need to say, “Not yet. The country needs stability. The institutions are fragile. Investors require certainty. We should not rush.” Those arguments can sound reasonable. They can also become the vocabulary of indefinite postponement.

Delcy Rodríguez has her own incentive to embrace that logic. Her government can present economic recovery and oil investment as evidence that political change can wait. Washington, meanwhile, can point to rising production and strategic energy gains and declare that Venezuela is moving toward normality.

But normality is not democracy. The most dangerous political arrangements are not always dictatorships announced with tanks in the streets. Sometimes they are systems in which economic interests become so deeply entangled with political power that everyone benefiting from the arrangement discovers a reason to fear elections.

Free elections introduce uncertainty. A new government might review contracts, investigate corruption, renegotiate concessions or demand a larger share of national wealth. Investors dislike that uncertainty. Oligarchs dislike it even more. Governments that depend on those oligarchs can begin to dislike elections too.

And suddenly democracy becomes the problem to be managed. That is precisely what Washington should avoid creating. If Trump genuinely wants Venezuela to become democratic, the sequence should be obvious: establish transparent institutions, protect political competition, hold credible elections and then allow elected Venezuelan governments to determine how their oil resources are developed. Instead, the oil arrangement risks turning the sequence upside down, money first, accountability later.

Oil can finance schools and hospitals, rebuild infrastructure and restore livelihoods. But without democratic oversight, the same wealth can finance something else: political permanence.

The irony is painful. The United States has spent years denouncing Venezuela’s authoritarian political economy, only to risk helping construct another version of it, this time with different beneficiaries and American fingerprints.

Venezuela does not need another elite bargain disguised as national salvation. It needs a political settlement in which Venezuelans, not businessmen, interim officials or foreign presidents, decide who governs them. Otherwise the greatest threat to Venezuela’s democratic transition may not be the old regime. It may be the new oil boom.