Regarding Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s “Meet Trump’s Partners in Venezuela” (Americas, Jan. 26): If President Trump cared a lick about toppling Venezuela’s autocracy, then his sudden infatuation with Delcy Rodríguez—Nicolás Maduro’s former second-in-command—and lukewarm treatment of opposition leader María Corina Machado could be perplexing. But Mr. Trump has never been especially interested in democracy promotion—a resource-intensive endeavor the success of which isn’t guaranteed.
Rather than transforming Venezuela into a free country with strong, durable and transparent institutions, Mr. Trump’s aim seems to be to turn Venezuela into a U.S. client state. He wants the ruling authorities to take direction, if not carry out orders, from Washington on the big strategic issues on which he is fixated: permitting U.S. oil companies to effectively run Venezuela’s most lucrative economic sector; kicking Cuban intelligence officers out of the country and downgrading its relationship with Havana; and locking out Russia and China. Whoever is in the best position to meet those demands will earn Mr. Trump’s support—until, of course, he grows tired of them.
Ms. Rodríguez is a nasty, high-profile figure in a government that has arrested hundreds of political prisoners, enacted a massive domestic surveillance regime and keeps its citizens in line through fear and repression. But it isn’t like the U.S. hasn’t dealt or maintained security ties with these kinds of states before. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are arguably some of the most restrictive countries on the planet whose human rights records are abominable, yet U.S. presidents from both parties have suppressed their moral scruples for the sake of pragmatism. Viewed in this way, Mr. Trump isn’t doing anything that his predecessors haven’t.
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