As the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford sails toward the Caribbean, the US military continues to attack ships carrying drugs off the Venezuelan coast and the Trump administration. debate what to do About Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, one thing seems certain: Venezuela and the Western Hemisphere would be better off if Maduro packed his bags and spent his remaining years in exile.
This is undoubtedly what Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is working towards. This year's Nobel Prize He has spent much of his time recently in the United States lobbying policymakers to force Maduro from power. At constant risk of being detained in her own country, Machado is grant interviews and convene conferences to advocate for regime change. His talking points are clearly tailored to the Trump administration: Maduro is the head of a drug cartel that is poisoning Americans; his dictatorship rests on weak pillars; and the forces of democracy within Venezuela are fully prepared to take over once Maduro is gone. “We are ready to take over the government,” Machado said Bloomberg News in an October interview.
But as the old saying goes, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. While there is no doubt that Maduro is a despot and an election-stealing fraud, American policymakers cannot simply take what Machado says for granted. Washington learned this the hard way in the run-up to the Iraq war, when an opposition leader named Ahmed Chalabi sold American policymakers a bill of goods on how painless the reconstruction of a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq would be. We all know how the story ended: The United States stumbled into an occupation that sapped its resources, unleashed unforeseen regional consequences, and proved more difficult than its proponents originally claimed.
To be fair, Machado is not a Chalabi. The latter was a swindler; The first is the leader of an opposition movement whose candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, got two-thirds of the votes during the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election (Maduro claimed victory anyway and forced González into exile). But just because their motives are good doesn't mean we shouldn't question their claims.
Would regime change in Caracas produce the Western-style democracy that Machado and his supporters anticipate? None of us can rule it out. But the Trump administration cannot trust that this is the result of a post-Maduro future. Other scenarios are just as likely, if not more so, and some of them could lead to greater violence for Venezuelans and more problems for U.S. policy in Latin America.
The big problem with regime change is that you can never be completely sure what will happen after the incumbent leader is removed. These operations are by their very nature dangerous and destabilizing; Political orders are deliberately broken, the haves become have-nots, and voters accustomed to holding the reins of power suddenly find themselves outsiders. When Hussein was overthrown in Iraq, the military officers, Baath Party loyalists, and regime-linked sycophants who ruled the roost for nearly a quarter-century were forced to come to terms with an entirely new situation. The Sunni-dominated structure was overthrown and the previously oppressed members of the Shia majority now eagerly took their place at the top of the system. This, combined with the United States' decision to ban anyone associated with the old regime from holding state office, fueled the ingredients for a large-scale insurgency that challenged the new government, precipitated a civil war, and killed tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Regime change can also create complete absences of authority, as happened in Libya after the US-NATO intervention in 2011. Like Maduro today, Moammar Gaddafi was a reviled figure whose disappearance was supposed to pave the way for a democratic utopia in North Africa. The reality was quite the opposite. Instead, Gaddafi's ouster sparked conflict between Libya's major tribal alliances, competing governments and the proliferation of terrorist groups in a country just south of the European Union. Fifteen years later, Libya remains a basket case of militias, warlords and weak institutions.
Unlike Iraq and Libya, Venezuela has experience in democratic governance. It has held relatively free and fair elections in the past and does not suffer from the types of sectarian divisions associated with Middle Eastern states.
Still, this is little consolation for those hoping for a democratic transition. Indeed, for such a transition to be successful, the Venezuelan military would have to go along with it, either by standing by as the Maduro regime collapses, actively arresting Maduro and his top associates, or agreeing to shift its support to the new authorities. But once again, this is a tall order, especially for a military whose leadership is a central facet of the Maduro regime's survival, which has grown accustomed to making obscene amounts of money from clandestine illegal activities, and whose members are implicated in human rights abuses. The same elites who benefited handsomely from the old system would have to cooperate with the new. This doesn't seem likely, especially if his share of the pie will shrink by the time Maduro leaves.
Finally, while regime change might seem like a good remedy for Venezuela's problem, it could worsen the difficulties over time. Although the Maduro regime's mandate is already limited, its complete dissolution could usher in a pitched battle between elements of the previous government, drug trafficking organizations and established armed groups such as the Colombian National Liberation Army, which have long treated Venezuela as a base of operations. Any post-Maduro government would have difficulty managing all of this while trying to restructure the Venezuelan economy and rebuild its institutions. The Trump administration would then face the prospect of Venezuela serving as an even greater source of drugs and migration, the very outcome the White House is trying to avoid.
In the end, María Corina Machado could be right. But she's selling the best-case scenario assumption. The United States should not buy it. Democracy after Maduro is possible, but it is not the only possible outcome, and it is certainly not the most likely.
Daniel R. DePetris is a member of Defense Priorities.
