U.S. officials defend their Venezuela strategy after Maduro claims election victory

The Biden administration was on the defensive Monday over its policy bet that elections in Venezuela would dislodge strongman Nicolás Maduro, a day after he was declared the winner in presidential elections despite several irregularities and polls indicating his defeat.

In a call with reporters, senior administration officials fielded questions about what the United States would do next and whether the Biden administration’s negotiations with Maduro, which included lifting some oil sanctions and releasing prisoners, had failed to deliver democratic change in the South American country.

The officials defended those decisions as having made it possible for an opposition candidate to be included on ballots — and said they were prepared for the possibility that Sunday’s elections would not lead to change in Venezuela’s government.

“I would like to underscore that despite all the problems, which we’re discussing now, the fact that Venezuela did, in fact, hold an election yesterday, which allowed an opposition candidate to be on the ballot and for the voting process to unfold, only came about as a result of the calibrations that we’ve done with our sanctions policy over the last year,” one of the officials said.

The officials said their principal concern was that the Venezuelan National Electoral Council announced a result “that does not track with data that we have received through quick count mechanisms and other sources, which suggests that the result that was announced may be at odds with how people voted.”

The electoral council, under Maduro’s control, said he beat opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez 51.2% to 44.2%, based on data obtained from 80% of the voting stations. Edison Research, a trusted pollster that conducts Election Day exit polls in the United States, projected that Gonzalez had won in a landslide with 65% of the vote.

Earlier on Monday, White House National Security Advisor John Kirby said the United States would not rush to react to the results until the situation was clearer.

“We’re going to hold our judgment until we see the actual tabulation of the results,” he said, urging Venezuelan electoral authorities to release the data.

U.S. senior officials told reporters it was still early in the process and that they were waiting for reports from international observers. But they did not say what the U.S. response would look like if the accusations of fraud are proven correct.

Buying Time

Sunday’s election was an important benchmark for the Biden administration in its dealings with Maduro.

Eager to reject the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy, which imposed heavy sanctions on the country’s oil industry and rallied international diplomatic support for an alternate opposition-led interim government, Biden officials sought a different course.

Under Biden, support for the interim government led by opposition leader Juan Guaidó dwindled until the Venezuelan opposition got rid of it altogether. Biden officials also engaged in talks with Maduro’s representatives to negotiate the lifting of oil sanctions in exchange for Maduro agreeing to allow opposition figures to run in presidential elections that were supposed to be fair and monitored by neutral international observers.

The “carrots” extended to Maduro, which included releasing two of his wife’s nephews imprisoned for narcotrafficking in the U.S. and Alex Saab, his financier and frontman accused of money laundering, were enough to make the Venezuelan leader return to the negotiating table with the opposition. An agreement was signed between the two sides in Barbados in October last year, with U.S. blessing.

The Venezuelan opposition, a notoriously fractured movement, managed to unify under long-term Maduro opponent Maria Corina Machado, who ran a campaign so successful that Maduro’s controlled Supreme Court did not allow her to be on the ballot. Bending to last-minute international pressure, elections authorities allowed Gonzalez to run in her place.

As the harassment against Machado and her campaign staff continued, it was clear ahead of Sunday’s election that Maduro was walking away from the agreement.

For several months, the Biden administration has been facing criticism for supporting an election that many said was likely to be a sham, risking legitimizing the process. Several Cuban American politicians, including Senator Marco Rubio, who was involved in drafting policies toward Latin America during the Trump administration, had warned that Maduro would use negotiations to buy time and get concessions from the United States.

In a February report, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that Maduro was likely to cling to power and not concede defeat in the presidential election.

On X, Rubio said the Maduro regime “carried out the most predictable and ridiculous sham election in modern history,” and blamed the Biden administration for easing sanctions as part of a deal for elections in Venezuela.

On Monday, Biden administration officials were asked if they regretted releasing Saab or if they thought their policy had failed. Responding to their critics, they revealed that the administration had also planned for the election not to lead to a power transition in Venezuela.

“We always knew there were a variety of scenarios for this election as they unfolded,” one of the officials said. “And the events as they took place this week were certainly among those scenarios considered and for which we have been planning.”

But if this scenario was anticipated, then the administration should have had a response ready to go last night, said Eric Farnsworth, the vice president of Americas Society-Council of the Americas.

“They should have had a coordinated response,” he said, noting that regional governments responded to Maduro’s reelection announcement in various ways, from open rejection to calling for more information to open support. Meanwhile, he added, the United States is calling for electoral authorities to release the official ballot counting acts, which could take months or could be falsified.

“But the timeline is accelerating, and Maduro is already moving to threaten Machado and others,” Farnsworth. “The response needs to be immediate, or it’s going to be too late.”

Some Venezuelan observers have said there is still a chance that the election could lead to changes in the country because some members of the Venezuelan government might realize that Maduro staying in power after a fraudulent election will be an obstacle to seeking international legitimacy and access to financial resources.

A senior U.S. official said that these views also inform U.S. policy.

“I think that the Maduro authorities understand that if it is proven that they committed fraud in holding this election, then that is not good for their longer-term objectives of normalizing Venezuela’s broader diplomatic and political relations in the region,” the official said. “And, frankly, it’s not good for their own political position within Venezuela. That is all part of the calculus here.”