Biden is empowering the Maduro regime and enabling other countries to do the same | Opinion

President Biden boasts about his efforts to defend worldwide democracy against the evils of authoritarianism. But here in our own hemisphere, he is granting legitimacy to a brutal dictatorship at the expense of important democratic allies.

In 2019, the world watched in horror as agents of Venezuelan narco-dictator Nicolás Maduro beat, murdered and imprisoned protesters to maintain his illegitimate grip on power. Under President Trump’s leadership, and with bipartisan congressional support, the United States refused to recognize Maduro’s regime and made a public commitment to support Interim President Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader.

Fast forward to today, and Biden is on the verge of abandoning Guaidó to appease his party’s progressive base.

In March, Biden sent a secret delegation to Caracas, offering to lift U.S. sanctions if Maduro would return to negotiations with the Venezuelan opposition. The expedition caused serious damage to Guaidó’s international standing, divided and weakened the opposition and awarded Maduro a massive PR boost.

Close allies such as Colombia were stunned by Biden’s naivete and miscalculation. Unsurprisingly, they are now questioning how much they can rely on American support in the future.

Meanwhile, other leaders have taken Biden’s engagement with Maduro as a cue to reestablish ties with Caracas. Already, in April, Argentine President Alberto Fernández announced he would officially recognize Maduro as the legitimate leader of Venezuela and publicly called on “all Latin American countries to do the same.” Approximately 34 states from around the world have since resumed diplomatic relations with the Maduro regime.

And now, the Biden administration is about to make things worse by opening the door to Venezuela’s oil industry and lifting sanctions on Maduro’s nephew-in-law, Carlos Erik Malpica-Flores. This decision further legitimizes Maduro on an international scale, and it could strengthen his illegitimate grip on the Venezuelan people by bringing more resources to his narco-regime. It happened because Biden is surrounded by Obama-era regime apologists and Marxist sympathizers looking to cozy up to dictators across Latin America, including Cuba’s Miguel Díaz-Canel and Nicaragua’s Ortega. In the case of Venezuela, the oil trade is just a convenient excuse for reestablishing ties with an authoritarian.

There’s nothing to be gained from Venezuelan oil. Corruption and incompetence have driven Venezuela’s energy industry into the ground, to the point where its production is barely over 5% of Russia’s. If we want to increase our energy supplies, the logical thing to do is enable American oil and natural gas production, not look for help from an illegitimate thug.

But logic and reason don’t count for much these days. Time and time again, this administration has sided with the Democratic Party’s radical, far-left base. This does not bode well for future U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere.

To the best of our knowledge, the Biden administration has not invited Maduro to the Ninth Summit of the Americas taking place in Los Angeles in June. But it will take much more than that to reverse the damage done to Guaidó and democracy advocates in Venezuela.

There remains only one right way forward for Biden. Rather than listen to the far left and make further concessions to dictators, he must publicly reaffirm our nation’s support for Guaidó and continue to insist on free and fair elections and the immediate release of all political prisoners in Venezuela. Continuing to legitimize Maduro will have disastrous consequences for U.S. national security and the region as a whole.

In the meantime, Congress must do what Biden will not. I call on my colleagues to pass my Preempting Misguided Appeasement and Financing of Destabilizing Regimes Act to prevent the United States from buying Venezuelan oil and empowering authoritarianism in our own hemisphere.

Sen. Marco Rubio is Florida’s senior U.S. senator.