NEW ORLEANS — Two weeks ago, at the invitation of Senator Bob Corker, I testified before the Committee on Foreign Relations at a hearing on Venezuela’s current crisis of governance. It was a remarkable meeting at a remarkable time in Washington.

Although the hearing started with senators expressing their willingness to add to the list of sanctioned Venezuelan officials, by the end of the session all discussion was about the need for vigorous multilateral diplomacy. Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican like Mr. Corker and one of the authors of existing sanctions legislation, suggested that the Trump administration should support the invocation by the Organization of American States’ secretary general, Luis Almagro, of the O.A.S.’s Inter-American Democratic Charter, which lays out standards for democratic rule in the hemisphere.

This is a constructive development. There is a world of difference between the unilateral imposition of sanctions by the United States and the invocation of the O.A.S. democratic charter. The charter has legitimacy of origin — it was written and signed by members, including Venezuela. It also has legitimacy of use, having been invoked in 2002 to help the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and in 2009 in an attempt to stop a coup that forced a president of Honduras, José Manuel Zelaya, into exile. Finally, it has the legitimacy of contemporary consensus. The debate and negotiation required to invoke it necessarily reduce the grievances and chauvinisms inolved in bilateral conflict.

Invoking the charter does not, as is commonly thought, amount simply to a vote to suspend a country from the O.A.S. and, as a result, isolate it. Rather, the charter provides a road map for engaging a country. This engagement can entail fact-finding missions and “good offices” to facilitate dialogue and negotiation, as well as diplomatic initiatives. Only if two-thirds of the organization’s General Assembly finds that the situation is unresolvable would a country be suspended from the O.A.S.