Nicolas Maduro is gone. Much of the political machinery that kept him in power is not.

Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, comes from the same governing system Washington is now trying to transform. Her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, leads the government delegation in the U.S.-backed talks. Delcy Rodriguez, meanwhile, has replaced senior military officials and consolidated her position inside a state where the courts, electoral institutions, and security services were used for years to suppress political competition.

A government seeking to preserve those levers has an obvious incentive to negotiate with the opposition faction it can manage rather than the one it cannot.

That should shape how Washington measures the apparent progress coming out of Caracas.

The talks are producing results. Political prisoners have been released, judicial reform is underway, and another round is expected in September. The first cycle also produced an agreement to pursue Venezuelan reserve assets held at the Bank of England for reconstruction under auditing mechanisms.

Those developments are welcome. They are also relatively inexpensive concessions for a government whose central instruments of political power remain intact. Authoritarian governments have long understood the value of concessions that relieve international pressure without immediately surrendering control.

The harder test is whether the Rodriguez government will dismantle the machinery that made those concessions necessary.

The composition of the opposition delegation is the clearest measure of that question.

Figuera has a legitimate institutional claim. She leads the 2015 National Assembly, the last Venezuelan legislature that Washington regarded as freely elected. But Machado possesses something different: a demonstrated popular constituency that directly challenges the political order built under Hugo Chavez and Maduro.

Machado later received the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize and has demanded the release of political prisoners, restoration of political rights, an independent electoral authority, and a credible timetable for elections. She is now operating from Washington rather than sitting at the negotiating table.

Her exclusion creates a basic democratic-legitimacy problem. A transition negotiated between the existing governing apparatus and a more convenient opposition delegation may produce agreements. But if the political movement with the strongest demonstrated anti-Chavista constituency remains outside the process, Venezuela risks an elite bargain that manages the transition without fundamentally changing who controls it.

The first negotiating cycle illustrates the distinction. The sides established working groups addressing reconstruction and political institutions and agreed to begin reforming the Supreme Tribunal of Justice. That could be consequential because Venezuela’s judiciary became one of the principal instruments for restricting political competition.

But agreeing to reform a court is not the same thing as creating an independent judiciary.

The prisoner issue presents the same problem. The government announced alternative measures for 131 prisoners, and detainees began leaving prison. Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the releases as an important step toward reconciliation.

The numbers remain contested. Rodriguez and Rubio have said 1,046 detainees have returned home since January, while independent organizations report hundreds of political prisoners remaining behind bars. When the latest 131 releases were announced, Foro Penal had independently confirmed 29 and counted 391 political prisoners.

Every genuine release matters. But freeing people who should never have been political prisoners cannot by itself demonstrate democratic transformation. It can also provide international breathing room while leaving the institutions that imprisoned them intact.

Washington has seen versions of this problem before.

The 2020 Doha Agreement achieved something American negotiators badly wanted: a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. But Washington negotiated directly with the Taliban while marginalizing the elected Afghan government, leaving the stronger political-military actor positioned to consolidate power once American forces departed.

The 1973 Paris Peace Accords accomplished another immediate American objective. U.S. troops came home while South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu accepted a settlement negotiated substantially over his objections. North Vietnamese forces remained positioned to continue the struggle, and South Vietnam collapsed two years later.

Venezuela is neither Afghanistan nor South Vietnam. The strategic lesson is narrower. A negotiated settlement can accomplish Washington’s immediate objective while leaving the side best positioned to control the political system stronger than the agreement itself.

That possibility deserves particular attention as Rodriguez consolidates power.

The Financial Times reported that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were not even raised during the recent negotiating sessions. Public displays demanding Maduro’s return have largely disappeared, while Rodriguez has reshuffled senior military leadership and strengthened her position. She has also met U.S. officials to discuss economic, energy, and financial cooperation.

Maduro’s fading political relevance may be welcome. But removing Maduro was never the same thing as dismantling the system.

That distinction should be central to American policy.

Washington’s tactical logic is understandable. Rodriguez controls the government and can deliver concessions. Her brother can negotiate for it, while Figuera provides an opposition counterpart with institutional credentials.

Machado makes the equation harder because her demands lead directly to the question a transitional government has every incentive to postpone: Who ultimately gets to govern?

That is precisely why her absence matters.

The next negotiating round should provide a better measure of whether this is a democratic transition or a managed accommodation. Figuera has said the September agenda will include judicial reform, restoration of political parties, political disqualifications, and restructuring the National Electoral Council. Those issues reach much closer to the machinery of political control.

Washington should judge the process by those results, not by the volume of agreements coming out of Caracas. Are political parties restored? Are opposition candidates allowed to run? Can exiles return safely? Do the judiciary and electoral authority become genuinely independent?

Above all, is there a binding path to a competitive presidential election?

These are not procedural details. They determine whether Venezuelans choose their next government or political elites negotiate the boundaries of that choice beforehand.

The Caracas talks may succeed. In one sense, they already are. Rodriguez and the opposition delegation have demonstrated that they can negotiate, exchange concessions, and produce agreements.

The harder question is what those agreements are changing.

A failed negotiation would be easy to recognize. More dangerous for American interests would be a successful negotiation that normalizes a Rodriguez-led government and lowers international pressure while leaving the economic and institutional levers of the Chavez-Maduro system largely intact.

THE MECCA DEFENSE PACT IS THE ANTI-ABRAHAM ACCORDS

Washington should set a harder standard. The measure of success is whether the talks dismantle the tools of political control and give Venezuelans a free choice about who governs them.

Anything short of a binding path to free elections leaves the central problem unresolved.