Venezuela has long been a country of dilemmas, defined less by decisions than by the consequences of postponing them. For more than two decades, its politics have revolved around choices with no clean exits: negotiate or resist, reconcile or repress, participate or abstain, sanction or relieve. None of these debates ever really end, they just get deferred.
The last few days have reinforced that pattern. There have been signals, rumors, half-measures, and a noticeable effort to avoid clear moves. If the Maduro era ended with spectacle, what followed has been quieter and harder to read. Not resolution, but something closer to managed uncertainty.
Those dilemmas do not look the same from every vantage point. They look one way from inside the arrangement now led by Delcy Rodríguez, another from an opposition that gained recognition but little control, and another still from Washington, where the Trump administration is trying to recalibrate pressure without fully owning the consequences. The common thread is simple enough. Everyone wants leverage, but no one has very much of it.
A managed opening under Delcy ?
For Delcy Rodríguez, the central question is not whether to open the economy, but how far she can go without touching the political core of the system. Economic normalization is safer terrain. It can be adjusted, slowed, or reversed. It reassures business actors, eases currency pressure, and creates the impression of movement without challenging the security apparatus that ultimately sustains power.
Nothing announced in the arrangements with the United States alters the centrally planned nature of the regime. At most, they shift the locus of external influence, moving it from Beijing to Washington, without changing who makes the decisions at home.
As stability is increasingly purchased through economic relief and diplomatic accommodation, rather than fear alone, Cabello’s role becomes less structural and more transactional.
Rodríguez and her brother Jorge may believe that selective compliance with Washington strengthens their hand against the opposition. Releasing a handful of high-profile political prisoners could be presented as progress, while house arrest can be easily revoked. But that calculation only goes so far. Colectivos are still active, police checkpoints remain, and the revolving-door logic of repression has not disappeared, it has simply become less strident.
Political reform is a different problem. Whatever broader strategy is being attempted, removing figures like Diosdado Cabello or Vladimir Padrino López too early would be costly. Their role is not symbolic. It is structural. They sit at the intersection of civilian authority and coercive power. Moving against them risks fragmentation and instability, outcomes no “transitional” figure wants to test.
The result is familiar. Economic flexibility paired with political stasis. Markets are easier to manage than men with guns. The opening exists, but it remains narrow.
Diosdado Cabello and the logic of repression
Diosdado Cabello remains central to that arrangement. He is still a key pillar of the repressive structure and an enforcer of internal discipline. Without figures like him, maintaining order during any attempt at reshuffling would be far more difficult.
That same visibility, however, makes him vulnerable. As the government looks outward, seeking normalization and legitimacy, Cabello’s profile becomes a liability. He is an obvious candidate for scapegoating or bargaining, a way to signal change without altering the underlying balance of power.
For now, collaboration makes sense. A premature break would require fractures within the elite and firm backing from the security forces, conditions that do not yet seem to exist, and he would be crazy not to explore. But waiting has its own risks. Each step toward economic normalization changes the political economy of repression. As stability is increasingly purchased through economic relief and diplomatic accommodation, rather than fear alone, Cabello’s role becomes less structural and more transactional. Still powerful, but easier to sideline, trade, or sacrifice when the balance shifts.
His dilemma is less about ambition than risk and timing. Wait too long and become expendable. Move too soon and stand alone.
An opposition without leverage
If the government’s problem is how much to concede, the opposition’s is how to act when it cannot force concessions at all.
The old debate about whether to participate in elections has faded, at least for now. The more pressing question is how to push for outcomes without alienating the Trump administration, while also avoiding being sidelined from a process largely run by others.
This is a less comfortable position than the clarity of boycott politics. The opposition retains international recognition and moral legitimacy, but little control over sequencing, guarantees, or enforcement. Its leverage is mostly external, and even that is constrained by how limited Venezuelan political capital has become in the United States.
For the opposition, every week of managed calm narrows the space in which democratic demands can still be enforced rather than negotiated away.
María Corina Machado’s influence depends in part on US backing, and that backing is not unconditional. Public confrontations, whether in Washington or Caracas, would likely benefit the Rodríguez camp, which has positioned itself as cooperative and pragmatic. An opposition better at public gestures than quiet lobbying now relies on a shrinking circle of intermediaries with access to decision-makers.
Migration fatigue, shifting priorities, and domestic politics in the United States all limit how long Venezuela can command attention. As the adage goes “no one is ever out with Trump” but at this point Zelenky’s position after his first visit to the White House probably seems enviable to Machado and Gonzalez right now.
Washington’s shrinking margin for error
For the Trump administration, Venezuela has become a problem of rising cost and narrowing options. Sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and conditional engagement are still on the table, but their effectiveness has been weakened by the political fallout from the operation to arrest Nicolás Maduro.
The Senate’s advance of a War Powers resolution signals discomfort with further unilateral action. Even if ultimately blocked, it exposes real limits. In an election year, threats of escalation carry less weight when Congress is signaling restraint.
Energy policy only adds to the tension. A push to keep oil prices below $50 makes Venezuelan crude less appealing to US firms, even with better terms. Heavy oil requires investment and time, and neither is attractive if companies fear policy reversals. At a moment when the administration is already paying a political price for its actions, the economic upside looks increasingly thin.
For now, the country sits between openings that do not transform and pressures that do not resolve.
Pressure also brings secondary effects. Migration, regional instability, and bureaucratic strain all factor into the calculation. Reopening the US embassy in Caracas reflects this shift. It lowers the temperature, but it also makes the threat of renewed escalation harder to sell.
The trap of managed drift
What this produces is not paralysis, but a carefully managed drift. It is quiet enough to be mistaken for stability. But the drift feels bloodless, and its costs are being deferred, accumulated, and quietly transferred. Venezuelan democracy is the one paying them.
Delcy Rodríguez can offer economic relief without altering the political core of the system. Washington can sustain pressure without fully committing to escalation. Even the opposition, trapped in its weakest position in years, can remain present without being decisive. In a configuration where no one secures what they want, everyone convinces themselves they have avoided catastrophe.
That is the danger. Drift rewards those who can wait, those who control force, those who can absorb time. It punishes those whose leverage depends on urgency, legitimacy, and momentum. For the opposition, every week of managed calm narrows the space in which democratic demands can still be enforced rather than negotiated away.
Venezuela has lived through this logic before. What makes the current moment distinct is not the structure of the dilemmas, but their accumulation. Each unresolved choice makes the next one harder. Each postponement raises the political price of action while lowering the expectations attached to it.
For now, the country sits between openings that do not transform and pressures that do not resolve. Not because options are exhausted, but because every option carries a cost someone else is being asked to bear. And in this version of stability, it is not the regime, nor Washington, that pays first. It is the possibility of Venezuelan democracy itself.
