Niall Ferguson

So it's an alteration.

Obviously, it's meet the new boss, more or less the same as the old boss, because it's in effect Maduro's deputy.

But the alteration is she doesn't report to Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and the Cubans anymore.

she reports to President Trump and she better report the right things or she too could have a one-way ticket to a New York courthouse.

So I think that's an important change, but it's not to be confused with regime change where the Americans say, and now you're going to hold elections.

And people we really like are going to win them.

And then we have a stock market we'd like to liberalize, etc.

I mean, those days are long gone.

And I think the Trump administration rather prides itself on not having an idealistic vision, but be entirely realistic.

Stephen Miller was boasting about this the other day.

We're the ultimate realists.

And insofar as it takes Venezuela out of the Chinese camp and makes it essentially part of the Western sphere of American influence, that is an important alteration.

What happens next?

Well, I think the issue of the oil is mainly about denying it to China because part of the way that the world has worked lately is that

The sanctions get imposed on bad actors and the Chinese essentially evade the sanctions and then get the oil at a discount.

They're doing this with the Russians.

They've done it with the Iranians for years.

And I think part of the game here is to end that.

So it's not a meaningless change that's happened.

It's disappointing if like my friend Ricardo Hausmann, like all my Venezuelan friends, pretty much, you really wanted to see the Chavistas gone and the opposition, the democratic opposition in power.