In 2023, representatives of Washington and Caracas agreed in Doha, under the auspices of the Qatari government, to advance in the recomposition of their relations based on the lifting of the U.S. unilateral coercive measures and the resumption of Maduro’s dialogue with the extremist sector of the opposition. Although some progress was made, after the ratification of the disqualification of María Corina Machado, the U.S. State Department and Treasury reimposed the sanctions, alleging non-compliance by the Venezuelan side with the Barbados Agreements, a version that Caracas rejects.

On July 2, after reflecting for two months on a new U.S. proposal for a direct dialogue, Maduro accepted, exhibiting a strategic attitude, not an urgent need. A day later, negotiations were resumed, with the opposition marginalized from the dialogue table. The waning hegemony of the U.S. in the world is based on and has as its basis and purpose the domination of fossil energy.

With the largest oil reserves in the world (the fourth largest in gas and gold, the sixth largest in diamonds, the eighth largest in iron and ample water, coal and biodiversity resources), Venezuela is currently negotiating from a position of strength with the energy factor as a means of pressure (without forgetting, of course, the poisonous and artful strategies of the U.S. in the cases of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and the Minsk Agreements on Ukraine with Russia).

However, what reasons would Washington have for negotiating with a president who is about to lose the elections on July 28? Having overcome at this stage the multiform war, the toxic polarization of covert operations, hyperinflation in the economy and with an agro-industry that is now supplying 98% of the food to consumers, Chavism has accumulated institutional strength from deep Venezuela, and the forthcoming entry of the country into the BRICS will insert it into the new international order in the making. Hence the geopolitical importance of the elections.