Unwinding Venezuela’s CRINK Ties in the Western Hemisphere

Commentary by Ryan C. Berg

Published January 29, 2026

The extraordinary U.S. military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and whisk them to the United States has opened a multitude of possibilities for rewiring Venezuela's geopolitical alliances with U.S. adversaries. As the United States opted to leave remnants of the Maduro regime in place, it is now engaged in "regime management" of the ruling cúpula (the regime's inner circle of elites left in charge). Indeed, through coercive pressure and the ongoing naval quarantine of vessels carrying Venezuelan crude, U.S. officials have stated their goal of seeing Venezuela cut ties with U.S. adversaries as a precondition for other objectives, such as increasing oil production or restoring relations with the United States. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated the goal of reducing China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba's presence in Venezuela. And as CSIS has written before: "Although the strongman was the prime target of the U.S. snatch-and-grab operation, China, too, was one of its principal audiences." The same can be said of Russia and Iran, sometimes grouped with North Korea to form the acronym CRINK (China-Russia-Iran-North Korea), as well as a fellow CRINK beachhead in Latin America, such as Cuba. In other contexts, CSIS has referred to Venezuela's support countries as the "Fabulous Five," including Turkey for its role in propping up the Maduro regime.

However, recent publicly released intelligence assessments have cast doubt on interim president Delcy Rodríguez's commitment to severing ties with CRINK. These intelligence assessments note U.S. demands for the expulsion of diplomats and advisers as early signs of compliance. Yet representatives and ambassadors of CRINK were present in the front row at Rodríguez's swearing-in ceremony in early January. Several weeks later, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe made a rare visit to Caracas to talk with Rodríguez about the country's future. Of course, a democratic transition in Venezuela would likely usher in an era of warm ties with Washington; opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado has described a democratic Venezuela as "profoundly pro-American," while speaking of reducing Venezuela's problematic ties with CRINK.

Yet U.S. policymakers want to see these changes commence before the transition phase of Washington's three-pronged plan. So far, the United States has compelled Venezuela's cooperation on oil sales in the international market, but it has not managed to begin disentangling the Venezuelan regime from a web of relationships with CRINK. Without contemplating key questions and developing firm metrics, the United States is at risk of losing the opportunity to make significant security gains in the Western Hemisphere by denying Venezuela to extra-hemispheric rivals.

The "Trump Corollary" and the Broader Context

The desire to reengineer Venezuela's partnerships transpires in the context of the Trump administration's recently released National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. Both documents prominently feature the Western Hemisphere and contain mentions of a "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, proof of the United States' growing competitive instincts in the Western Hemisphere. Fundamentally, the Trump Corollary is a strategy of denial to U.S. extra-hemispheric rivals in the Western Hemisphere.

Within that context, the Venezuelan regime represents the most immediate challenge to the idea of a Trump Corollary, given that it is the Western Hemisphere's most important staging ground for China, Russia, Iran, and for Cuba's presence in South America. Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro both spent decades in power nurturing relationships with U.S. adversaries. The stakes are high. Indeed, what happens in Venezuela is so important to challenging extra-hemispheric rivals in the Western Hemisphere that getting it wrong may well foreclose opportunities for the United States to meet its objectives of rolling back the influence of CRINK elsewhere in the region.

Tradeoffs and Key Questions

The Trump administration endeavors to realign Venezuela's geopolitical alliances, and in particular, sunder relations with CRINK. Few historical templates exist for such an ambitious endeavor to reengineer a country's alliances. Four key tradeoffs present themselves as major questions critical to success.

Rapid Rupture vs. Gradual Realignment

A rapid rupture may be most satisfying. It would certainly serve as an example of how Washington's Venezuela strategy is working. However, gradual realignment may augur better for Venezuela's stability, which clearly guides much of the Trump administration's thinking toward the country. Gradual realignment does not mean indecision. It could include reductions in military cooperation, joint economic planning with the United States in key sectors (as is already underway), and the review, renegotiation, or termination of legacy contracts with problematic foreign investors. An incremental approach would allow Caracas to manage political risk before a transition phase to democracy, while a rapid rupture would likely make ties more difficult to reconstitute under a future government, lending a degree of permanence to Venezuela's realignment.

Reduction vs. Full Severing

Relatedly, the Trump administration should contemplate how deeply it wants to extricate the presence of extra-hemispheric rivals in Venezuela. In other words, does the United States seek to reduce the presence of CRINK in Venezuela to an acceptable level consonant with U.S. national security objectives, or does it endeavor to completely sever Venezuela from CRINK entirely? Furthermore, the United States should consider the factional politics of Chavismo. Maduro managed complex coalitions of regime insiders for more than a decade, a challenge now confronting interim authorities in Caracas. The extent to which the United States can extirpate CRINK from Venezuela will likely be a complex process of managing internal coalitions and factional politics within the regime, some element of public opinion, and appeasing power brokers such as Minister of Interior Diosdado Cabello and Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López.

Symbolic vs. Strategic

In nearly three decades in power, the Venezuelan regime has honed an expertise in performative and symbolic actions. The best example is frequent yet stolen elections that provide a simulacrum of democracy to the outside world. In this case, too, the Venezuelan regime may offer symbolic actions meant to placate the U.S. desire to unwind relations with CRINK. Washington will have to decide whether it prefers highly visible actions moving Venezuela away from the remit of Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Havana, or if it prefers less visible actions that may in fact be more strategic. For instance, Caracas may be tempted to make a public display of sending diplomats or advisers packing, but a less visible yet more meaningful move toward realignment would be a reduction in the economic footprint of CRINK in Venezuela.

Flexibility vs. Metrics

As part of any realignment, Washington will likely place incentives on the table. Phased sanctions relief remains of greatest interest to the Venezuelan regime. Washington should decide how flexible its approach will be to measuring changes in Venezuela's alliances. President Donald Trump's desire for flexibility-and therefore optionality-is well documented, and there are real benefits to such an approach. On the other hand, an endeavor this complicated could benefit from a meaningful set of indicators or metrics to earn sanctions relief. For instance, the Trump administration could seek to tie sanctions relief to a reduction in the intelligence and military footprints of Russia and Cuba in Venezuela, public commitments to expel the security footprints of these countries, and, more broadly, transparency in the Venezuelan regime's contacts with foreign adversaries. Sanctions relief tied to metrics would mean tangible economic benefits in exchange for geopolitical realignment. Of course, there are other tools of leverage the United States can bring to bear as well, such as a reduction in asset freezes, access to reserves at multilateral financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (which remain tied up due to questions of diplomatic recognition), and perhaps the biggest prize of all-some kind of recognition of Caracas' interim authorities (though likely short of full diplomatic recognition).

Outlining What Success Looks Like

For the United States, the main challenge is that Venezuela is not a clean institutional slate. As it was under Maduro, the Venezuelan regime is coercive, deeply criminal, and suffers the very real risk of elite fragmentation. Success will require the Trump administration to articulate an endgame (or endgames) that it would like the Venezuelan regime to reach, then develop the appropriate tools and coercive measures to cajole it there.

This toolkit is likely to involve familiar economic incentives-sanctions relief and investment-to make realignment palatable and to balance new sources of income with lost sources of income from long-standing partnerships. Latin America's regional assistance and diplomatic support for this realignment would further reinforce Venezuela's moves away from these problematic relationships. As more right-leaning governments come to power in the region, there is a higher probability that the Trump administration will find an appetite for such assistance. The United States should continue to provide the Venezuelan regime with incentives to prioritize economic recovery and an eventual move to normalize relations with the United States, minimizing openings for U.S. adversaries to impose countermeasures or counterincentives of their own. U.S. pressure can also provide the Venezuelan regime with top-level cover for shifting away from historic alliances, while material benefits in the form of sanctions relief and investment can serve to reinforce a perception of good policy and domestic support for these shifts. Without such domestic support, the regime might be tempted to hedge or reverse course on its moves.

Second, the United States should take a diversified approach. China and Cuba are not Russia and Iran. The embeddedness of the former two countries may require slow and steady plodding, while the United States will likely meet greater success pushing for a more rapid end to Russia-Venezuela and Iran-Venezuela ties. In other words, the more symbolic departure of military advisers, diplomats, and contractors may be sufficient to set Venezuela down a path to sundering the latter ties.

A differentiated approach to varying aspects of Venezuela's relationships with CRINK is also warranted. Areas that can be measured easily-the footprint of a foreign intelligence apparatus, foreign advisers, and contracts for shared facilities-can be wound down quickly and decisively. But in the case of China and Cuba, especially, ties run much deeper. China's embeddedness in Venezuela's economic landscape and Cuba's embeddedness in Venezuela's bureaucratic and intelligence apparatus will require long-term management to disentangle.

Separately, the United States needs to firm up its approach to China's and Russia's role in Venezuela's oil industry. China, in particular, holds claims to more than four billion barrels of Venezuela's oil through its state-owned enterprises, which dwarfs Chevron's claims, the largest U.S. company producing in the country today. While the Trump administration has said China can continue to buy Venezuelan oil-though not at the cut-rate discounts it previously enjoyed-it has yet to take a position on China's presence in Venezuela's oil industry as a major partner to state company PDVSA. Additionally, there is the question of whether Venezuela will be able to continue repaying its vast debts owed to Beijing, which by some estimates could be as high as $20 billion outstanding-China's largest single-country loans backed by commodities. Venezuela was the largest single recipient of Chinese loans in Latin America. Some of the oil blocks owned or operated by China touch those of U.S. producers, while others were taken from U.S. producers by Caracas during earlier periods of nationalization. If the United States sought to have Venezuela stiff China by blocking debt repayments-as some reports indicate-it could trigger a debt restructuring showdown. Another option would be to force a revision in oil-backed repayment agreements to China. After all, U.S. control of the Qatar-based bank accounts in which Venezuelan oil proceeds are deposited confers on the United States immense leverage over the oil-for-debt-relief arrangement.

As with everything related to Venezuela's regime, success would be best achieved by measurable and structural changes to Venezuela's relationships with CRINK, not by the declarations and performative actions at which the regime excels. This will require careful management and observation of foreign policy, security cooperation, and economic partnerships. In the end, and especially in the case of China and Cuba, Venezuela may be managed into a phased but decisive realignment, consonant with the strategy of denial of the Western Hemisphere to U.S. adversaries contained in the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

Ryan C. Berg is director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, explore CSIS's Executive Education course Flashpoints in Focus: Venezuela After Maduro.

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