The Bizarre Partnership Between the U.S. and Venezuela
The Atlantic · LC · trust 50/100
Responding to the recent earthquakes pushed the two countries’ new relationship out into the open.
A woman looks at the destruction as people search through the rubble of collapsed buildings in Caraballeda, La Guaira State, on June 25. ( Federico Parra / AFP / Getty ) July 14, 2026, 3:59 PM ET Share Save Listen − 1.0 x + Seek 0:00 13:20 James Story, America’s last chargé d’affaires in Venezuela before the embassy closed in 2019, left after the foreign minister passed along a message. The warning was stark, Story told me: If he stayed, he might be murdered.
When American diplomats raised the flag at the embassy in March, for the first time in seven years, they stood outside a building that had been festering in the tropical heat and taken over by black mold. The hostility between the two countries had been festering too, culminating in the moment that the Trump administration sent in special operators to snatch President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Since then, U.S. leaders and staff—many of them working out of a Marriott two miles from the embassy—have been racing to get reacquainted with one of the most repressive regimes in the hemisphere, filled with some of the same people whom the U.S. has put under indictment for drug trafficking or who have U.S.-sponsored bounties on their heads.
The humanitarian response to the deadly earthquakes in Venezuela last month has only deepened this bizarre partnership. U.S. Marines have become air traffic controllers at Venezuela’s main international airport and are helping run the port in La Guaira, the coastal state that was hit hardest. The State Department’s disaster-assistance team is distributing boxes, emblazoned with the American flag, of food, water, and other supplies.
People displaced by the June 24 earthquakes check the contents of a box of U.S. humanitarian aid at a shelter in Catia La Mar, La Guaira. (Martin Bernetti / AFP / Getty) Venezuelans have welcomed such lifesaving efforts after the earthquakes left at least 4,490 people dead and close to 18,000 homeless, according to Venezuelan authorities. But the Trump administration’s approach, in concert with Venezuelan officials who have spent years treating opponents brutally and are widely reviled, risks that goodwill. Last week, the leaders of the U.S. mission on the ground—Chargé d’Affairs John Barrett and General Francis Donovan, the commander of U.S. Southern Command—faced Venezuelans’ outrage after they met with Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister, who oversaw security forces that targeted political opponents. (Previously, the U.S. had offered a $25 million reward for his capture.)
Through multiple U.S. administrations, including Donald Trump’s first term, American diplomats followed relatively consistent tenets in Venezuela: finding common cause with opposition leaders, seeking to free American prisoners, pushing for democratic elections. Then Story, who served in both Trump terms and in the Biden administration, was told the extreme opposition was plotting to kill him and precipitate a war with the U.S.—at a time when relations were so hostile with Maduro’s regime that no one wanted to risk people coming over the embassy walls. Nonetheless, he left a note on his desk saying that he was “filled with optimism that Democracy is within reach.” Now Story worries that whatever tactical success came from Maduro’s capture would be squandered without a democratic transition. “And if that is delayed now because of the earthquake, at some point the frustration will bubble over to the United States,” he said. More of the quiet work the U.S. has been doing in Venezuela since Maduro’s capture is now out in the open, and the choice to decapitate the government without changing much else is being put to a test.
Barrett has maintained that, in the aftermath of the earthquakes, the U.S. government has been fully focused on the humanitarian effort and that Venezuela’s interim government “has been fully compliant of our requests.” At a briefing with reporters last week, he did not answer a question about whether Cabello remained a wanted enemy of the United States; he stressed that the Trump administration’s three-phase plan for Venezuela remains intact.
But those phases—first stability, then economic recovery and political reconciliation, and finally a democratic transition—also seem badly damaged by the earthquakes. No date has been set for democratic elections. The 180-day period defined by Venezuela’s constitution for a temporary presidential absence passed earlier this month with the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, still in charge. Some U.S. officials are optimistic that her government is acceding to U.S. pressure. Earlier today, her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, the president of the National Assembly, announced new negotiations starting next month with former opposition lawmakers as a way to “strengthen democracy,” after the earthquake. Also today, Delcy Rodríguez posted about “this new stage of dialogue, cooperation, and mutual respect” with the United States.
A State Department spokesperson told me that the U.S. focus remains on its humanitarian response and that “adding sensitive political issues to the mix at this time is counterproductive to our response efforts following this tragedy.” But Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged last month that the earthquakes complicated the path back to democracy: “It’s a setback in that regard,” he told reporters, before reiterating his belief that “Venezuela’s going to emerge stronger from it.”
Venezuelans seem less certain. They have complained about their government’s shortcomings in the nearly three weeks since the earthquakes: its absence in the crucial hours when rescues were still possible , bureaucratic hurdles that choked the flow of aid, soldiers and police looting amid the rubble. Rodríguez has defended her government’s response, saying that widespread reports of chaos were manufactured by “media laboratories” and blaming…
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