U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested Sunday that the United States would not take a day-to-day role in governing Venezuela other than enforcing an existing “oil quarantine” on the country, a turnaround after President Donald Trump announced a day earlier that the U.S. would be running Venezuela following its ouster of leader Nicolás Maduro.
Rubio’s statements on TV talk shows seemed designed to temper concerns about whether the assertive American action to achieve regime change might again produce a prolonged foreign intervention or failed attempt at nation-building.
They stood in contrast to Trump’s broad but vague claims that the U.S. would at least temporarily “run” the oil-rich nation — comments that suggested some sort of governing structure under which Caracas would be controlled by Washington.
But Rubio offered a more nuanced take, saying the U.S. would continue to enforce an oil quarantine that was already in place on sanctioned tankers before Maduro was removed from power early Saturday and use that leverage as a means to press for policy changes in Venezuela.
The majority of the Americans who voted in the last election voted in favor of that government. That’s where our morals and values are, overall. You and I might care about the Venezuelan people, but we have been overruled.
I’m pretty sure about 19M eligible voters were convinced that their vote wouldn’t count, or otherwise outright prevented from voting. So I can’t really call it a majority. But sure if it makes you more comfortable, then I’m ok with you holding that viewpoint.
I’m not comfortable with any of this, but, like I said, I’ve been overruled.
Well, ultimately you and I are in the ‘under’ part of being overruled. So I can only wish you well as we do what have to in these next months and years. Sort of thing that makes me grateful for the gentle, consensual anarchy of my ‘small circle of friends’.