Venezuela today vividly represents the collapse of effective American foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere. Receiving unfortunately little attention, President Joe Biden’s misguided, dangerous efforts to lift economic sanctions against this oppressive regime will undermine Venezuela's democratic opposition and entrench the criminal syndicate now in power.

The United States and a solid phalanx of Latin American and European countries issued sanctions, particularly on the international sale of petroleum and related products, following Nicolas Maduro’s successful effort to steal Venezuela’s 2018 presidential elections and many other measures to suppress dissent. As foreshadowed by earlier Biden attempts to negotiate a deal, any deal, with Caracas, the White House is now effectively abandoning even the pretense of supporting the opposition coalition and toppling the heirs of Hugo Chavez.

While sanctions did not provide enough leverage for Maduro’s opponents to remove him, they succeeded in internationally ostracizing his regime both politically and economically. The Chavista autocrats had feasted on Venezuela’s declining petroleum revenues, diverting funds to their bank accounts rather than investing in oil development and production. The continuing decline in petroleum-related proceeds made Maduro and his cronies even more reliant on profits from illegal narcotics trafficking, especially those generated by the Colombian drug cartels. With the country in an economic death spiral, public opposition to Maduro remained strong.

Nonetheless, Biden has played into Maduro’s hands, dealing with Caracas over how to conduct ostensibly "free and fair" elections in exchange for easing the sanctions. Maduro knows full well he could not win a truly transparent, honest campaign and vote count, and he has no intention of risking that possibility. Faced with their strongest international ally now selling them out, the opposition parties had little choice but to go along with Biden’s policy shift.

What motivates the White House? Although consistently denied, all signs point to a nakedly political objective: lowering gasoline prices "at the pump" before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Democrats were rightly worried before the 2022 midterm elections that rising gas prices and inflation were much on voters' minds. While Republican mistakes and the negative Trump effect counteracted much of the economic pressure on Democratic candidates, Biden and Democratic campaign strategists understood the message well before Election Day. They are determined not to let that risk reemerge in 2024.

Last year’s initial efforts to negotiate with Maduro to suspend economic sanctions and return more Venezuelan petroleum to international markets were only part of the picture. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, America and many other countries sanctioned Moscow’s exports of hydrocarbon fuels, its main revenue and foreign currency generator. Washington and its allies also recognized, however, that sanctions would likely cause a significant spike in retail gas prices worldwide, not to mention increased production and transportation costs for innumerable goods and services. Seeking ways to prevent such increases, the Treasury Department produced a complicated price-control scheme for Russian oil sales. The plan was intended to stop Moscow from earning significant profits from its supposedly sanctioned sales but also to let enough Russian oil into worldwide channels to avoid unduly limiting total supply. This academic fantasy has proven a failure, neither significantly curtailing Russian production and sales nor holding down global oil prices.

That was just for starters. Even more importantly, Biden’s prior unhappiness with Saudi Arabia reversed itself with dramatic speed. He had castigated Riyadh as a global pariah for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi; ignored Saudi interests, and those of other Persian Gulf States, by backing climate change initiatives to reduce our dependence on oil and gas rapidly and dramatically; and ignored pleas by both Gulf Arabs and Israel not to give Iran a lifeline by resurrecting the catastrophic 2015 nuclear deal. Instead, Biden tried appeasing the Saudis.

He had also already considerably loosened enforcement of existing sanctions against Iran’s oil sales, particularly to China, and sought to end them entirely by rejoining the 2015 nuclear deal. His advisers simply ignored the likely result, as they did by trading $6 billion to Tehran to release five U.S. hostages, that any additional revenues to Iran simply increased its ability to support terrorism, advance its nuclear weapons and missile programs, and repress its own people.

These policy gambits and others, such as unwarranted releases of oil from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, share the common objective of keeping U.S. retail prices down through increased foreign oil and gas production. This approach also weakens our domestic hydrocarbon industry and limits opposition to Biden’s climate change policies.

Even worse, Biden’s policies have likely put Venezuela’s opposition in an untenable position. They can only hope Maduro’s regime is so unpopular that even massive cheating cannot keep it in power. Otherwise, widespread Chavista fraud and White House acquiescence will lead to Maduro’s 2024 reelection.

John Bolton served as national security adviser to former President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2019. Between 2005 and 2006, he served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.