This week, the Trump administration authorized covert operations by the CIA in Venezuela after reportedly ruling out continued diplomacy with President Nicolás Maduro. The move follows a series of strikes in Venezuelan waters targeting alleged drug traffickers amid a military buildup in the Caribbean. Many now assume that Washington’s true aim is regime change in Caracas. As of this writing, the US military has stationed three guided missile destroyers, one guided missile cruiser, a nuclear attack submarine, the amphibious 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, and 10 F-35 fighter jets in or near Venezuelan waters, bringing the number of active troops in the area to 10,000. Collective bounties on Maduro and his cronies were also raised to a whopping $2 billion in September.
The last time the United States amassed this level of military might in the hemisphere was during the 1989 invasion of Panama, which ousted strongman Manuel Noriega. And while the assembled forces are inadequate for a full-scale invasion, decapitation strikes on government officials and state assets similar to NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya seem likely.
“The toppling of Muammar Gaddafi is not an encouraging precedent.”
The toppling of Muammar Gaddafi is not an encouraging precedent, given the ongoing catastrophic fallout for Libya and the surrounding region. Hence, advocates of regime change prefer pointing to Noriega’s ouster to make their case. But for every Panama and Grenada, there are many more US-led regime change debacles: not just Libya and Iraq, but Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Haiti.
Why is Trump moving against Venezuela? Many in MAGA world have long clamored for military strikes and even boots on the ground against Latin American cartels, especially in Mexico. Having repeatedly explored the possibility of strikes on cartels south of the border, the administration is reportedly split, with some supporting kinetic action and others—including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s close advisor Stephen Miller—fearing that strikes in Mexico would endanger trade, migration, and security cooperation with Mexico and lead to a torrent of actual refugees fleeing American bombs.
Rubio has managed to steer MAGA’s desire for war on the cartels away from Mexico to Venezuela. But production of lethal drugs in the South American nation is virtually nonexistent. It acts largely as a transit country for 13 percent of Colombian cocaine at most. Trump has claimed that each of the boats bombed in the Caribbean is responsible for the deaths of 25,000 Americans. But virtually all overdoses in the United States are from fentanyl, which neither Venezuela nor Colombia produce. Even if they did, so long as many Americans remain addicted to an inelastic product like lethal drugs, no military actions will make a meaningful difference in reducing the number of overdoses.
The supposed threat posed by Venezuela is a fantasy, but if deployed to the country, the US military would confront an array of dangers not unlike what they faced in Afghanistan and Iraq. When US forces invaded Panama, Noriega’s government exerted an effective monopoly of force over the national territory. The same isn’t true of Venezuela which boasts a kaleidoscope of sophisticated armed actors.
The total manpower of the Colombian-Venezuelan National Liberation Army (ELN) and FARC is estimated to be in the thousands across both countries, particularly throughout their shared border. Both groups have pledged to defend the “Bolivarian Revolution” of Chávez and Maduro in the event of a foreign intervention, and have decades of experience combatting security forces. Transnational gangs—such as Tren de Aragua, which Trump has designated a terrorist group—and paramilitary so-called Colectivos are also awash in weapons and new recruits.
Venezuela’s armed forces act as a kind of first-among-equals with regard to other armed actors. The irony, as Trump himself is fond of noting, is that the notoriously violent Venezuela has in fact succeeded in drastically reducing lethal crime in recent years. The country’s homicide rate fell from 90 per 100,000 in 2016 to 26 per 100,000 in 2024. This success is due to security forces’ draconian policy of extrajudicial killings in poor neighborhoods and to the regime-sponsored consolidation of criminal economies by armed groups. In the event of a foreign intervention, it’s not unlikely that a contingent of post-military warlords and their criminal competitors would aim to carve out fiefdoms from the ensuing chaos.
The notion that a post-Maduro government can promptly “fix” Venezuela is disturbingly reminiscent of Washington’s fantasies about a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Unlike Noriega, who governed for six years between 1983 and 1989, Chavismo has ruled Venezuela for almost 27 years and has effectively destroyed the country’s institutions. On the increasingly rare occasions when opposition candidates are allowed to prevail in elections, the winners are subsequently stripped of their constitutional powers by the government-aligned judiciary. In 2024, to ensure Maduro was reelected, the regime perpetrated an electoral fraud so brazen that even some of his closest international allies, such as Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner, called the results into question. Even in an ideal negotiated transition, it would likely take decades for Venezuela to restore a semblance of the rule of law.
An opposition government installed by Washington would face a violent insurgency. Understandably, this hypothetically “free” Venezuela would beg for US assistance, and many within the administration would feel compelled to oblige, increasing the likelihood of an Iraq-esque quagmire. Instability would add to the roughly eight million migrants who have fled Venezuela to neighboring countries and the United States, something that MAGA ostensibly seeks to avoid.
There is an alternative. Washington should agree to lift sanctions in exchange for the regime releasing precinct-level tallies from last year’s fraudulent election and agree to a power-sharing agreement with the opposition. Previous successful transitions from military rule on the continent have proceeded in this manner. Such an approach would also have the support of vital partners in the region, such as neighboring Colombia and Brazil. And unlike the Biden administration’s out-to-lunch Barbados Agreement, a Trump White House would be better positioned to use its considerable leverage over the regime in order to guarantee the terms of such a deal.
Another option is for Washington to abandon the regime change fantasy altogether and engage Maduro on roughly the same terms as other murderous oil-rich autocracies, such as Saudi Arabia. This sort of brutal pragmatism usually seems congenial to Trump, and earlier this year this sort of approach allowed Chevron to operate more or less freely in Venezuela in exchange for Caracas accepting deportation flights. Maduro seems open to more deals; indeed, the regime reportedly went as far as to offer Washington to slash contracts with Chinese, Iranian, and Russian firms and even reverse the flow of oil exports from China to the United States. At present, just 10 percent of Venezuela’s oil exports are sold to the United States through Chevron, with the rest going to Beijing.
Unfortunately, the administration seems unlikely to pursue either of these avenues. The truth is that the only upside of a catastrophic war on Venezuela might be to deter or at least delay the even more disastrous plan, dear to some in MAGA, of bombing Mexico.