Late this summer, James Story, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela for three years of Donald Trump ’s first term and for two of Joe Biden ’s, felt that anything was possible in the relationship between Washington and Caracas. It had been six years since the U.S. closed its Embassy in Venezuela, to protest the rule of the Socialist authoritarian Nicolás Maduro. The issue of how to dislodge Maduro’s regime has been an American political conundrum for at least a decade. Trump had wanted to overthrow it but couldn’t figure out how; Biden tried to find compromise, in large part because of a steady exodus of Venezuelan migrants coming to the U.S. But Maduro remained in power, despite appearing to have lost elections handily last year. “If you had asked me two months ago,” Story said,

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