Six months after United States forces ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, the balance of power in Latin America and the Caribbean has shifted in Washington’s favour. In Maduro’s place stands Delcy Rodriguez, his former vice president, now acting president and a far more manageable partner for Washington. Her rise has given the administration of US President Donald Trump a de facto ally in its effort to revive US dominance over the Western Hemisphere under what has become known as the “Donroe Doctrine”.Rodriguez’s challenge is to satisfy Washington without losing control at home. To do so, her advisers are recasting a movement once rooted in the socialist politics of the Hugo Chavez-Nicolas Maduro era as something more pragmatic, transactional and suited to the new hemispheric order. The former “comrades” are now moving closer than ever to open alignment with Trumpism in Latin America.Nowhere is the scale of Rodriguez’s shift clearer than in her approach to Israel. Under her government, Caracas has begun moving towards a state long treated as an enemy by the “21st-century socialists” who have ruled Venezuela for the past 27 years.From hostility to rapprochementThroughout the Chavez-Maduro era, successive Venezuelan governments considered Isra …
