This is part of where Delcy Rodriguez’s track record as a more pragmatic leader comes into play. It is funny that Venezuela is so deeply in the hole and screwed up that the massive improvement is that she’s hired economic consultants from Rafael Correa’s Ecuadorian government. He’s not exactly the gold standard for responsible management in the region, but in Venezuela “not totally insane management” would be a regime change of its own.
Zooming out and considering this in terms of the Trump-Monroe Doctrine, there may eventually be some payoff for the US in having more allies who can flood the world with cheap energy when we want them to. That’s supposed to be the deal with Saudi Arabia, but then they just didn’t do it when the Ukraine War broke out because of Biden/Kashoggi beefing.
I leave you with a profound irony, the kind that only geopolitics can provide. As Latin America freaks out about the first outbreak of open war between states in a very long time, we can recall that the most recent person to threaten this was… Nicolas Maduro. He planned to invade Guyana in 2023. Why? For oil.