Venezuela’s new leader has a narrow path to survival: Appease both the hard-line remnants of Nicolás Maduro’s regime and President Trump at the same time.
Delcy Rodríguez’s dilemma was illustrated in the hours after Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were snatched from their bedroom by U.S. commandos on Saturday. Rodríguez, a true-believer socialist, hit the airwaves with a defiant tone, denouncing an imperialist attack and declaring that her boss remained the nation’s rightful leader.
By the next day, Rodríguez appeared on television leading a cabinet meeting as the acting president and seemed to offer an olive branch to Trump, an archnemesis who has threatened stronger actions unless the regime in Caracas submits.
“We prioritize moving toward balanced and respectful international relations between the United States and Venezuela,” Rodríguez said, “premised on sovereign equality and noninterference.”
Rodríguez’s tone shift highlighted the balance that her shaky interim leadership is testing out as she tries to withstand U.S. pressure while keeping the country’s so-called revolutionary government from dissolving into factional infighting.
On the one hand, Rodriguez is hoping to appeal to Trump’s transactional tendencies by granting U.S. firms new deals in Venezuela’s vast oil fields. In doing so, Rodríguez, once Maduro’s top economic adviser, would want to relieve U.S. pressure on the country without having to make deep democratic reforms.
But at the same time, concessions to Washington could threaten stability and the unity between the regime’s main power brokers. For hard-line leftists and self-proclaimed anti-imperialist figures such Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino—who control the nation’s police, army and paramilitary forces—surrender to the U.S. is the ultimate form of treason.
“She’s sandwiched between U.S. firepower and Venezuelan firepower,” said David Smilde, a professor who tracks Venezuelan politics at Tulane University. “She can’t kowtow too much.”
Trump says the U.S. will effectively run Venezuela. That includes maintaining a military encirclement of the Caribbean waters that the country uses to export oil while coaxing what’s left of Maduro’s government to hold together and pave the way for American energy companies to return to the South American country. Pressing for democratic transition in the country—in the past a cornerstone of the U.S.’s policy toward Venezuela—appears to have been put on the back burner, political analysts said.
Trump’s demands are vague beyond wanting more oil production from Venezuela, with American companies at the center of it. U.S. officials have also said they want drug flows through the country to end and they want to cut off help for U.S. adversaries.
If Rodríguez fails to follow through, “she will face a situation probably worse than Maduro,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday.
Washington’s gamble on Venezuela is unique compared with the interim governments that the U.S. propped up in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. was engaged in a state-building operation and control was kept with American boots on the ground. “Here, the only precedent is the old 19th-century gunboat diplomacy where you’re telling people you have to do what we want or we’re coming in,” said Smilde. “I have my doubts over how effective this can be.”
Maduro, who the U.S. has accused of narcoterrorism, had tried to negotiate with the White House by dangling the prospect of tantalizing oil deals for American investors but had little luck. Maduro denies the charges and pleaded not guilty Monday in federal court.
Now, it is Rodríguez’s turn to see if she can meet Trump’s business demands. In some ways, she and Trump might be on the same page.
Since becoming vice president in 2018, the 56-year-old has consolidated influence as Maduro’s top interlocutor with the private sector and trade partners. She has long advocated for American oil companies to pump crude in the country and says the only thing keeping them out are the economic sanctions leveled during Trump’s first term that bar companies from working in Venezuela’s energy sector.
One person close to Rodríguez said Trump’s comments are a sign that the U.S. sees her as the most viable replacement to Maduro, one who could keep the country from breaking into conflict. To fulfill Trump’s vision, the U.S. might need to relax some of its economic restrictions on Venezuela as well as the enforcement of its partial oil blockade, a potential boon for the economy and Rodríguez’s leadership prospects, said the person close to her.
Making the oil industry attractive to American investors, however, will require large-scale changes to industry regulations that were drafted during the tenure of Maduro’s mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chávez. Chávez gave the state majority control over oil projects, services and distribution. Those laws also must be modified by Venezuela’s National Assembly, the regime-controlled legislative body that the U.S. and its allies deem as illegitimate.
New regulations must loosen terms for private ownership of energy facilities, potentially unsettling members of the regime, especially the armed forces, who under Maduro’s reign received lucrative contracts and deals from state energy company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PdVSA, oil analysts say.
“They need to depoliticize PdVSA,” said Cesar Mata, an energy consultant who has advised the Venezuelan National Assembly on oil policy. “There’s a lack of credibility and confidence. As much as you may be friends with Trump, there’s a bureaucratic procedure that has to be followed.”
On Monday, Rodriguez was formally sworn in as acting head of state at the National Assembly in Caracas, which is led by her brother Jorge Rodríguez, who has long served as Maduro’s top negotiator with the U.S.
Jorge Rodríguez and other ruling-party loyalists in speeches called for national unity and political compromise. But they also said they would not stray from the socialist principles that have guided them during their more than two decades in power.
“We are the guarantors of the prosperity we must construct for all,” Jorge Rodríguez said before adding that his main priority will be “to bring back my brother, Nicolás Maduro, my president.”
As government honchos gathered at the parliament building, the regime was simultaneously ramping up repression on the streets. A new decree published in the Official Gazette on Monday called on police and security forces to immediately begin searching for and arresting dissidents accused of supporting U.S. intervention.
Checkpoints popped up around Caracas with police and paramilitary forces wearing black balaclavas and stopping motorists and pedestrians before going through their phones. At least 14 journalists and photographers were arrested around the city, according to the national press workers’ union.
For many, it was a sign that while Maduro may be gone, most of his underlings remain in charge for now.
“It’s very confusing what direction the government is trying to take this,” said Carlos Romero, a retired political science professor and author in Caracas. “There’s a side that’s insisting the regime and the revolution will continue, and then there are those who want its demise, something new. We are facing very difficult days ahead.”
Write to Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com