This is CBS I on the world with John Bachelor.

Here's John Bachelor.

I welcome John Bolton, former Ambassador to the United Nations, former National Security

Advisor writing most recently in the Telegraph in London, about a dispute between the giant Venezuela and the Petit Guiana, once British Guyana, involving 11 billion barrels of oil plus, sweet crude discovered by ExxonMobil these last years

but the dictator of Caracas Mr Maduro looks to grab it for himself and what is to be done.

John, a very good evening to you.

You've laid out the terms immediately.

Venezuela has ambitions.

The reason ambitions are important here is because the Biden administration has involved

itself these last months in making the world better for Caracas's oil? Is that how to put it? The Biden

administration has somehow tied itself into Madura's sense of himself and

empowered sense of himself.

How did they do that, John?

Well, despite all of the evidence to the contrary,

the Biden White House negotiated with Maduro

that he committed to hold free and fair elections in Venezuela for president, which of course he has no intention of doing.

And in exchange, the United States would lift the sanctions that we imposed on them back in 2018 and 2019 for the last time

Maduro stole an election. So promptly the sanctions are lifted.

Maduro begins arresting members of the opposition and trying to fix next year's

election.

But I think this signal of American weakness revived in his mind the old territorial claim that Venezuela had made for about three quarters of

Guyana when it was still a British colony and the even more imperative need to do something

...