“A major oil agreement has been announced between the government of the United States and the [Venezuelan interim] regime of Delcy Rodriquez. I know what you [Venezuelans] are feeling, sadness, anger and that painful sense so familiar throughout our history that someone else is making decisions about what belongs to us in our name, without us. The true scope of this agreement is still unknown. Who is signing it? What exactly is being signed? Who is providing the funds? Who is offering the guarantees? How does this benefit Venezuelans? Quite rightly, this has sparked deep concern about its implications for our country's future.”

That was part of a statement to the Venezuelan people released last Thursday by María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan politician, activist, and prominent leader of the opposition to Venezuela’s interim-President Delcy Rodriguez. These were Machado’s first extended remarks about what President Trump has called “the biggest oil deal in world history.”

But as Machado so accurately observed, “We still do not know the true scope of this agreement,” nor, I will add, does anyone know if this deal will ever go into effect.

First, a bit of history, since I believe the Trump administration initial plan was described publicly back on January 9, when the President met with executives of 17 oil companies at the White House.

At that time, with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro locked in a New York City jail, President Trump said, “American companies will have the opportunity to rebuild Venezuela's rotting energy infrastructure and eventually increase oil production to levels never ever seen before.”

“Our giant oil companies,” Trump said, “will be spending at least $100 billion of their money, not the government's money. They don't need government money, but they need government protection and need government security that when they spend all this money, it's going to be there.”

He added, “Venezuela [meaning interim-President Delcy Rodriguez] has also agreed that the United States will immediately begin refining and selling up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil, which will continue indefinitely.”

Trump then made his pitch saying, “All of the companies here today are going to be treasured partners in bringing the nation of Venezuela back to life, restoring its economy and generating…tremendous wealth for the companies that are going in.”

At that session, Mark Nelson, vice chairman of Chevron, when called upon said, “For more than a century, Chevron has been a part of Venezuela's past. We are certainly committed to its present. And we very much look forward, as a proud American company, to help it build a better future.”

However, when Trump asked ExxonMobile Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods to “say a few words,” the response was different.

Woods explained, “We have a very long history in Venezuela. In fact, we first got into Venezuela back in the 1940s. We've had our assets seized there twice. And so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we've historically seen here and what is currently the state.”

Apparently, over the past seven months more negotiations took place and on August 28, Trump announced on TruthSocial, “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY! At my direction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working closely with Highly Respected Interim President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, and, through a partnership with private business, have secured majority U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer.”

Three days later, on August 31, the White House released a fact sheet with more details.

The fact sheet disclosed the Venezuelan interim government [Interim-President Delcy Rodriguez] has granted a privately-held oil company, North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), 100-year concessions for 17 oil fields with proven reserves of approximately 65 billion barrels.

I should point out that Venezuela has some 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the largest in the world, with Saudi Arabia second with 287 billion barrels. On the other hand, as of this year, the U.S, has only some 46 billion barrels of proven reserves, although this country is one of the world’s largest oil producers.

NABEP, based in Barbados, already was Venezuela’s second-largest private oil producer run by Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt López. According to press reports, the 46-year-old Betancourt has a checkered background, but nonetheless was used by the Trump team in planning the U.S operation that seized former-President Nicolas Maduro, and afterwards served as a liaison figure with Delcy Rodriguez.

The White House fact sheet also said, “At no cost to the American taxpayer, NABEP has granted the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) a 35% equity stake in its corporate parent, representing up to hundreds of billions in value and dividends for the United States.”

The OSC, started under the Biden administration, has up-to-now funded private companies developing certain needed military technologies. The Trump administration last year increased its legislative authority to support up to $200 billion in loans and loan guarantees, and recently has grown its staff to near 100 people.

But the OSC has never been prepared to deal with the role apparently to be required if, as the agreement apparently states, it would be a major stockholder in what could be one of the largest oil companies in the world.

Perhaps because of the proposed Venezuela deal, the OSC announced on August 17, it was going to establish “a panel of pre-qualified law firms (“Firms”) to act as its external transaction counsel.” The selected firms would then represent borrowers or others doing business with the OSC on a “Sponsor Pay Basis,” meaning that the legal fees and expenses of OSC for a transaction will be borne solely by the borrower or another third party and not by OSC, or any U.S. government entity.

An additional benefit from the deal to the U.S., according to the fact sheet is: “NABEP has also granted the U.S. State Department the right to purchase, at production cost, a guaranteed 20% of the off-take [contracted oil purchased] from all current and future fields NABEP will operate.” The State Department was also given “the right of first refusal to purchase the remaining 80% of its [NABEP’s] production,” according to the fact sheet.

It’s unclear why the State Department has this role other than Secretary Rubio was a negotiator of this deal and the State Department was named on Trump’s January 15, Executive Order to administer funds from current Venezuela oil sales being controlled at that time by the U.S.

As for NABEP -- the company itself -- the U.S. government was given “veto power over the appointment of any member of the board of directors,” plus “a majority of NABEP’s board of directors must be U.S. citizens,” the fact sheet said. Additional, according to the fact sheet, “the U.S. government’s agreement with NABEP is governed by U.S. law and is subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.”

Naturally, questions about whether this agreement ever goes through have been raised.

On September 1, The Atlantic Council pointed out that the Pentagon’s OSC “has never been leveraged for a program like this or the management of such a vast equity stake in a foreign country’s national assets (assets which that country’s own constitution forbids the sale of).”

The Atlantic Council further said, “As in Venezuela, it is entirely plausible that future U.S. governments may likewise look askance at this agreement -- particularly if…it is not resulting in the massive oil production increases that are presently hoped for.”

For example, interim-President Rodriguez said during an August 29 television interview that the agreement could generate about $209 billion in ⁠revenue for Venezuela, based on a $65 per barrel oil price where some $19 per barrel would flow directly to Venezuela, to boost government revenue.

But others have questioned whether the Venezuelan government would actually get $19 per barrel if the U.S. exercised its right to buy 20 percent of production at cost.

Then there is the political opposition in Venezuela where leaders such as Machado have argued, “The wealth beneath our soil does not belong to an illegitimate regime. It belongs to the Venezuelan people.”

Machado added, “Venezuelans know there can be no development without strong institutions and a government elected by popular vote. That is the only real guarantee of success and stability for any large-scale investment.”

Last Wednesday, both Trump and Rodríguez brushed off questions about when the next Venezuelan election might be held.

Trump told reporters, “You had a very powerful, very nasty dictatorship in Venezuela – and they’re [the Venezuelan electorate] just not going to be ready for it yet, but soon.” With Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who was visiting Caracas, Rodríguez told reporters, “I have worked tirelessly to ensure that Venezuela is ready and prepared when the time comes for its electoral process.”

Elliott Abrams, who served as U.S. special envoy to Venezuela during Trump’s first term, has told the New York Times, “If an election is to take place in Venezuela, a nine-month runway for preparation is likely to be expected. Within the time period, Abrams said, “Here’s my fear: It makes us [the U.S.] Delcy’s partner, and gives the President a reason to want her to remain in power,” because she will do “whatever Trump tells her to do.”

Luis A. Pacheco, for 17 years an executive at Venezuela’s national oil company PDVSA and currently a nonresident fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, wrote last week in Americas Quarterly, “Little is known about how this deal will proceed, so important questions still need answers.”

Pacheco’s questions included, “Will NABEP sign this deal with PDVSA, the state oil company, making it more like a standard joint venture?...It’s still unclear whether NABEP can turn around and share ownership with the U.S. government, specifically with the Pentagon’s special unit originally designated as a counterpart to this pact. Beyond this critical aspect, there is also the question of NABEP’s financial and technical muscle. Will a firm that lacks these credentials be able to outsource to established oil companies to fulfill the contract’s scope?”

With experts raising such questions who can believe this “BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” is going forward as currently planned?

For example, back during his January 9 press conference with oil company leaders at the White House, Trump announced that Venezuela had already given the U.S. 30 million barrels of what had been previously-sanctioned oil that it had on hand.

“That's about $4 billion worth,” Trump announced back in January, adding, “And it's on our way to the United States right now. And we want to thank Venezuela for that. And we're working very well with them, obviously, or they wouldn't have been so generous.”

There has been no accounting that I know of for that first gift of $4 billion worth of Venezuelan oil.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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“We’re taking a lot of oil from Venezuela, and we’re getting along great with them. Billions and billions of barrels of oil is coming out of Venezuela, one of the most fertile places for oil in the world. And as you know, it was a forty-eight minute war, lasted forty-eight minutes. And we paid for the war with what we’ve taken out many, many, many times. Where have you heard that before? You haven’t heard that before. It’s the old fashioned way. Right? It’s the old fashioned way. To the victor belong the spoils. Right?”

That was President Trump, speaking impromptu on August 5, during a campaign-style speech on the U.S. economy at the Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I use that quote as a way to get into the serious question of what has happened to the now estimated $13 billion worth of Venezuelan oil that’s been sold since January 9, when President Trump announced his Executive Order (EO), Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the Good of the American and Venezuelan People.

The EO set up so-called "Foreign Government Deposit Funds" meaning funds from the sale of Venezuelan oil or other natural resources from that country held by the U.S. Government in designated U.S. Treasury Department or other accounts in a “custodial and government capacity.”

Every six months, according to Trump’s January 9, EO, “The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, is hereby authorized to submit recurring and final reports to the Congress” about those funds.

Apparently, no such report has so far been sent to Congress, although it would seem at least one should have gone to Capitol Hill last month.

Venezuelan oil money has been generated and serious amounts have been received by the U.S., as Trump himself has claimed many times.

For example, back during his January 9 press conference with oil company leaders at the White House, Trump announced that Venezuela had already given the U.S. 30 million barrels of what had been previously-sanctioned oil that it had on hand.

“That's about $4 billion worth,” Trump announced back in January, adding, “And it's on our way to the United States right now. And we want to thank Venezuela for that. And we're working very well with them, obviously, or they wouldn't have been so generous.”

There has been no accounting that I know of for that first gift of $4 billion worth of Venezuelan oil.

On January 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that funds from Venezuelan oil sales in the “short term” would go to a bank account in Qatar, but he added, “Ultimately, it will be [held in] a U.S. Treasury blocked account in the United States.”

Rubio explained to the committee that the U.S. “at the front end [will] say this is what this [oil payment] money can be spent on, these things. We will submit [that list] to them [the Venezuelan government and] they will submit to us a budget request. We want to use this money for these things and part of the proceeds will go to fund an audit process to make sure that that's how the money is being spent.”

Rubio told the committee one payment of $300 million had already been made “to keep [Venezuelan] sanitation workers, police officers, government workers on staff,” and that it was from Venezuelan oil sales totaling $500 million. Of the remaining $200 million, Rubio said, “It's still sitting in the [Qatar] account is my understanding at this time [back on January 28].”

Rubio added that he thought this U.S.-control of Venezuelan oil sales funds might involve “another $2.5 billion-to-$3 billion” of Venezuelan oil income.

But Rubio made clear, “The permanent structure we want to see in the long term. We just want them to have a normal industry where the [oil] companies [U.S. and others] are involved in there. They're [the oil companies] selling it [Venezuelan oil] directly to the [world] market and we're [the U.S. government] out of that game.”

In March, the U.S. Treasury issued licenses to entities to do business with Petróleos de Venezuela S.A, or PDVSA, and handle, transport, refine, and market Venezuelan-origin oil under strict operational limits. One limit: All payments for the Venezuelan oil go to a special U.S.-controlled account and not to sanctioned Venezuelan entities such as PDVSA.

In other words, the U.S. would control the cash flow back to Venezuela for its oil sales.

On April 1, Bloomberg reported the estimated value of U.S.-controlled Venezuelan oil exports had increased from $600 million in January \ -- about 380,000 barrels per day -- to about $3.7 billion in April alone -- about 1.1 million barrels per day.

On April 16, the State Department’s Michael Kozak, a senior official from the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, disclosed “around $3 billion” of Venezuelan oil revenue had moved through the U.S. accounts “paying the salaries of government workers in Venezuela; buying supplies for their oil industry, and so on, other things that benefit the public.”

Kozak also said the U.S. accounting firm, KPMG would be making quarterly audit reports on the Venezuelan oil bank accounts and providing them to the State Department.

One day after Kozak’s appearance, on April 17, four Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Acting Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown, requesting “an audit of the United States-Venezuela energy deal that was announced by President Trump on January 6.”

They asked that “the review cover both the period of time that the funds were routed to accounts in Qatar, the current arrangement for funds to be routed to U.S. accounts controlled by the Treasury Department, and any other successor mechanism utilized by the Administration to facilitate the sale of Venezuelan oil, custody of these assets, and disbursement of these funds.”

The GAO has since confirmed they have an investigation underway.

On June 3, Roxanna Vigil, a former senior sanctions policy advisor at the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, raised questions about the Venezuelan oil funds in a Council on Foreign Relations article.

Vigil wrote, “In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports, almost one hundred million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight.”

She added, “While the Trump administration has repeatedly framed this control as benefiting both countries, it has not publicly disclosed how much Venezuelan oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds since seizing control of the country’s oil exports following the January 3, military intervention that deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.”

On June 24, earthquakes struck Venezuela leaving more than 5,000 dead, 16,700 injured and damage the World Bank estimated would cost some $19.7 billion to reconstruct. The Trump administration coordinated a humanitarian response including more than $386 million for which polls have shown Venezuelans are grateful.

However, those polls have also shown Venezuelans resent the poor handling of the disaster by acting-President Delcy Rodríguez and are troubled by the Trump administration’s open support of her relatively unpopular government.

On July 22, the Financial Times published a story that led by saying, “The Trump administration has collected more than US$13 billion in revenues from Venezuelan oil sales this year, according to FT calculations, but has said almost nothing about what has happened to the money.”

The FT story went on to say, “But six months after the U.S. seized control of the funds, economists say the evidence of a recovery in Venezuela is relatively muted — a potential sign that the U.S. has not sent all the revenues back to Caracas.”

The FT also said, “The Venezuelan government set up a website to track the revenue from U.S.-run oil sales, but it has only one entry — a transfer of US$300 million in March.”

Since the FT story, almost everyone has used the $13 billion figure as the amount of money that has passed through the U.S.-run accounts. However, Trump, himself, when asked about that figure on July 27, during a press interview on Air Force One, replied, “$13 billion, I think even more than that.”

On August 4, during an interview by Fox News, Trump said, “Venezuela’s really a totally different place. Right now we’re taking out hundreds of billions of dollars, they’re taking out hundreds of billions of dollars it’s actually a different place.”

Of course, Trump’s statement is not true, “hundreds of billions” is more than twice Venezuela’s annual gross national product. But there are billions of dollars from Venezuelan oil sales yet to be accounted for and neither the Donald Trump or Delcy Rodriguez governments are trustworthy when that kind of money is involved.

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The Trump administration’s response to the catastrophic earthquakes that hit Venezuela seven weeks ago was impressive: timely, massive and appropriate. This should reassure those who worried that the administration’s efforts to downsize and reorganize the U.S. government early in this second term in office had all but eviscerated our capacity to respond to foreign natural disasters. It was also not surprising. The Trump administration made Venezuela an early priority and has undertaken its economic and political rehabilitation since removing dictator and de facto president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia. It has been clear since January that the post-Maduro effort would be complicated, time-consuming and closely watched by the world community and, especially, by the rest of Latin America.

Following the successful military operation to remove the Venezuelan dictator, the Trump administration articulated a three-phase plan for rebuilding a country devastated by decades of economic incompetence, corruption and, especially since 2013, increasing authoritarianism. Unfortunately, the two earthquakes that rocked the country on June 24 set back the Trump administration’s near and mid-term plans. The twin disasters also cast into sharp relief the extent of the long-term damage done to the country’s economy, institutions and infrastructure by the regime led by, first, Hugo Chavez, then Maduro and now Delcy Rodriguez.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Trump team opted to leave in place Maduro’s long -time collaborator and vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as interim president even as it undertook the daunting task of trying to reverse the damage from 30 years of Chavista/Madurista malfeasance. This was a risky decision. Among other things, it marginalized the overwhelming winner of Venezuela’s 2024 election whom the U.S. had recognized in late November of that year as ‘president-elect.”

Not surprisingly, the Venezuelan public was mortified by the regime’s ineffectual initial response to the catastrophic damage caused by the two earthquakes and disgusted by the dismal state of the country’s infrastructure. Venezuelans, on the other hand, were grateful for the international assistance that was surged into the country after the quakes, especially from the U.S. At the same time the scope and effectiveness of international support stood in sharp contrast to what the public saw as the fecklessness of the interim government’s efforts. Worse yet, the inevitable willingness of foreign first responders to work with the de facto Venezuelan government generated concern that Delcy Rodriguez, Interior Minister Diosdado and others were being legitimized by their cooperation with international relief contingents especially those from the U.S. Despite the regime’s best efforts to placate the public, frustration with the regime and Rodriguez erupted into public view as relief efforts were ongoing.

The sharp domestic criticism of the regime’s leadership even as it responded to the earthquakes suggests the difficulty of the United States’ challenge in Venezuela. Specifically, it suggests that the Achilles heel of the administration’s plan to rebuild the country may have been its decision to leave the Maduro regime in place while announcing that restoring democracy would be postponed to some point in the future.

It would be a serious miscalculation to assume Delcy Rodriguez, Diosdado Cabello and the rest of the surviving Maduro cabal share the U.S. commitment to a democratic future for the country. It is true that the regime has taken some steps to ease domestic tensions and encourage economic recovery as U.S. authorities have acknowledged. Oil is flowing, the refugee crisis has abated and some political prisoners have been released. That said, much of the Venezuelan public believes Rodriguez has orchestrated these changes only because she has no choice and that the U.S. is really calling the shots. This is important for at least two reasons.

First, if the U.S. appears too comfortable with Rodriguez and the Venezuelan regime does not believe the U.S. fully supports an early return to democracy, it may opt to slow roll any reproachment with the opposition and hope that President Trump’s attention will be absorbed by other crises or they may opt to try try to wait out the Trump administration. Second, under those circumstances, the simmering resentment toward the repressive and criminal regime the administration left in place after apprehending Maduro could quickly morph into something much stronger, undermine confidence in the U.S., and discourage both investors and other partner nations in the region.

Publicly accelerating the U.S. strategy for reviving the country’s political institutions would be the first step to a solution to this problem. The administration already understands this and has endorsed initial talks between the regime and representatives of the democratic majority. However, representatives of the unified opposition which won an overwhelming victory in the elections two years ago were not at the table. To the Venezuelan public this may look like the regime is continuing to do everything it can to divide the democratic opposition and marginalize the winners of the July 2024 election, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, and the wildly popular opposition leader and Nobel prize winner, Maria Corina Machado.

A recently released poll by AtlasIntel in association with Bloomberg shows that if elections were held now Machado would win by a substantial margin. In also shows that approval of Delcy Rodriguez hovers around 22 percent while Machado’s approval level was comfortably above 70 percent. If the U.S. administration wants to renew confidence in its commitment to restoring Venezuelan democracy, Trump should insist on Machado’s proximate return to the country and guarantee her security. Machado’s presence would be an unmistakable signal of the United States’ determination to foster democratic legitimacy. Doing so would also do much to advance President Trump’s goal of reestablishing U.S. leadership in the region as well as underscoring the U.S. ambition once again to be seen as the economic partner of choice for Latin America.

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When the two earthquakes struck Venezuela last week, killing more than 1,400 people and leaving tens of thousands missing, there was a silent pause in Washington with everyone wondering: with no USAID, how will the U.S. respond to this disaster?

Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, USAID surged resources, with urban search-and-rescue teams wheels-up within hours. Naval vessels steamed to Haiti’s capital. President Obama placed USAID as the lead agency. The machinery of American humanitarian response was moving. The Trump Administration has now responded: multiple USAR teams from Fairfax County, Los Angeles, and Miami-Dade are on the ground, the State Department has pledged $300 million in assistance, with more promised, and the Department “of War” is providing C-17 airlift and Marine Osprey support. This is deja vu all over again.

Now the question is whether we have learned anything since Haiti.

I've seen this machinery up close. I coordinated the U.S. response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake from Washington — the then largest American humanitarian mobilization in a single country. We had genuine resources, genuine commitment, and genuine failures. Fifteen years later, as Venezuela's crisis unfolds, the lessons we learned are likely to be repeated again.

The most effective humanitarian tool is also the least glamorous: cash. It lets organizations buy exactly what is needed immediately, spurs local markets rather than undercutting them, and reaches beneficiaries faster. The new Trump Administration partnership with Walmart and Global Empowerment Mission to collect in-kind donations — clothing, toys, household goods - will be a time-consuming logistical mess.

We saw NGOs with more experience than GEM make the same mistake in Haiti. Those items filled valuable warehouse space while people went without shelter; sorting and distribution consumed staff time and resources. In Venezuela, that same supply chain runs directly into CLAP — the Bolivarian food distribution network that conditions assistance on political loyalty. Cash allows organizations and individuals to purchase locally what they need, building up the local markets.

The U.S. military performed heroic and essential functions in the early days of the Haiti response. But it performed them at defense-budget rates, and they continued humanitarian tasks long past the point where cheaper civilian alternatives were available. The USS Comfort hospital ship sat in Port-au-Prince harbor for months at approximately $1 million per day — with no patients on board. The full cost of the military response was obscured across multiple budget authorities, making honest accounting impossible. In addition, with 23,000 personnel on the ground, it made coordination impossible across all the other actors on the ground.

USAID formally recommended transitioning military operations out after 8 weeks. Political leadership pushed back, and the military footprint persisted until summer, costing more money and crowding out the civilian and longer-term programming that should have taken its place.

Within days, USAID surged experienced officers to Haiti with decades of technical expertise in civilian response to humanitarian crisis, honed after the Asian tsunami, the Pakistan earthquakes, and other relief efforts. Without USAID’s experienced coordination and personnel, the default to military logistics in Venezuela will be even stronger. And with Venezuela's acute sovereignty sensitivities — a country where 25 years of Bolivarian politics have institutionalized resistance to U.S. military presence as a founding national narrative — a visible American military footprint isn't just expensive, it is politically combustible. The Delcy Rodriquez government is already unpopular, and such a presence could further delegitimize the very transitional government it is meant to bolster.

The Trump Administration has starved the UN of resources, and ironically is now relying almost entirely on the UN for relief efforts in Venezuela. Of the U.S.’s $300 million commitment, $200 million flows directly through OCHA’s Venezuela pooled fund — an institution the Administration has simultaneously been defunding.

In Haiti, within weeks of the earthquake, political pressure prioritized permanent housing construction over temporary shelter. The reasoning was politically driven — the donor community wanted houses built. There was a concern that anything less than permanent wasn’t good enough. The consequence was catastrophic - hundreds of thousands of displaced Haitians remained in tent cities for years, because the "permanent" programs moved slowly through land disputes and contractor delays while the temporary shelter that could have housed them in months went underfunded.

The simple missing answer we neglected was to surge supplies – plywood, lumber, cinderblock corrugated metals, plastic sheeting – to affected areas and provide support to local entities who could rebuild structures to last two to three years. Supplies should be purchased on the local market to further spur the local markets.

The failure to prioritize the removal of rubble was a strategic miscalculation. The Haiti earthquake generated an estimated 10 million cubic meters of debris. Rather than treating its removal as a strategic prerequisite — clear the roads, open the sites, enable everything else — it was treated as a logistics afterthought. No single agency owned it. Only one disposal site was identified, requiring trucking rubble through the broken downtown on narrow urban roads. Dump trucks spent 8-10 hours on each load of rubble. The bottleneck cascaded across the entire response for years.

Venezuela's cities, particularly Caracas and the coastal communities near the epicenter, face similar dynamics. The pressure to show reconstruction will arrive before the rubble is cleared. The pressure to build permanent housing will arrive before anyone has mapped who owns the land — a question made vastly more complicated by 25 years of Chavista-era property redistributions. Permanent housing takes years to complete even when the land is easily available; people will need shelter good enough to live in while a permanent solution is created.

Corruption is a cancer that will bring down governments and create long-term instability (just look at Haiti), and establishing mechanisms at the outset is a core design requirement for any response. Corruption in Venezuela is categorically harder. The Bolivarian state has spent 25 years building sophisticated infrastructure for capturing and redirecting resource flows. The CLAP food distribution system — the government's commodity network — is a documented political control tool, conditioning food on political loyalty.

The same sanctions-evasion architecture that moves Venezuelan oil revenue through front companies and cryptocurrency channels is fully available to divert humanitarian cash.A response that doesn't build independent financial oversight, beneficiary verification, and distribution channels explicitly designed to bypass state capture mechanisms before the first dollar is obligated will hemorrhage resources.

The window to get the architecture right is now. That is the lesson Haiti burned into everyone who was there: the cameras arrive before the coordination does, and decisions made in the first two weeks shape outcomes for the next ten years.

Venezuela is not Haiti. It is more complex and more fraught diplomatically — and this time, the agency built to apply these lessons no longer exists to apply them. Haiti was not a failure; lives were saved, a devastated capital came back to life, and a generation of practitioners learned hard truths about sequencing, cost, and corruption. The risk now is that we forget it and make the same mistakes again, because the institution that absorbed those lessons is gone, and no one has rebuilt the muscle memory to apply them.

The people of Venezuela deserve the benefit of what we learned in Haiti, not a response built from scratch. So does American credibility.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

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