Maduro wanted to be the next Hugo Chávez. Instead, he has become the next El Chapo. It is important to have realistic career goals.
After months of buildup around Venezuela, it happened. Maduro was snatched in the middle of the night, and he will be facing charges related to narco-trafficking in the U.S.
This is a remarkable turn of events.
However, as these cables have previously analyzed, it was not at all unforeseen that a regime change of this nature was going to occur.
By November, the United States already had the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier and a significant amount of firepower coalesced in the Caribbean and in Puerto Rico.
Crucially, the number of troops involved was under 20,000, meaning it was sufficient to conduct pinpoint precision strikes and clandestine operations, but not enough to invade a country the size of Venezuela.
This reality left only two viable options: complete submission to U.S. demands and/or a regime change via coercion or use of (limited precision) force.
As discussed previously, both options were on the table, and it is now clear that both were pursued.
Obviously, coercion (forcing Maduro to resign and peacefully leave the presidency) was the most ideal and minimally risky scenario.
In fact, this approach was pursued for many weeks, with multiple phone calls and discussions taking place between Trump and Maduro.
But sooner or later, Plan B had to come into effect.
Amassing such firepower and exerting such pressure on Venezuela without escalating or achieving a tangible outcome would have undermined President Trump’s credibility.
You simply cannot deploy 20,000 troops, a USS Ford aircraft carrier, multiple naval assets, special forces, and authorize clandestine CIA operations without producing a result.
As it became clear that coercion was not working, Trump decided to pull the trigger and execute a remarkable special operation to capture Maduro.
What is particularly remarkable are the following observations:
1) Not a single U.S. soldier was killed, and not a single U.S. military asset was lost in action. More than 160 aircraft were used, and U.S. Cyber Command provided support.
2) Second, it is evident that the United States achieved air supremacy very quickly. The involvement of U.S. Cyber Command clearly indicates that sophisticated electronic warfare was conducted.
Still, the fact that Apache helicopters were used in a Delta Force operation (low-flying helicopters vulnerable to air defenses and to Stinger missiles, of which Venezuela possessed thousands) reveals something important.
The United States would not have sent dozens of helicopters directly into the capital of a country where Buk M2 systems, S-300s, and thousands of Stingers could have taken them down.
Indeed, the Russians are probably asking what happened to their six billion dollars in military aid.
What happened to the Su-30s that failed to take off?
What happened to the S-300 missile systems, for which helicopters are among the easiest targets?
There was likely extensive cyber interference, electronic warfare, and jamming conducted.
But the fact that U.S. helicopters operated with such freedom points to one of two conclusions.
Either, 1) There was significant betrayal of Maduro by his generals, with CIA clandestine operatives securing their compliance and ensuring they did not open fire on U.S. air or ground assets.
Or 2) The Venezuelan military was in such a state of incompetence that it could not fire a single air-defense missile or shoot down a single helicopter over its own capital city.
Such a level of incompetence is unlikely.
On balance, it is more probable that there was significant compliance and betrayal of Maduro by his inner circle.
CIA operations, (active since August), achieved a remarkable outcome in which the country’s military simply did not defend its alleged president.
Indeed, the third point below, is in fact the strongest indication of cooperation/compliance by the rest of the regime:
3) Trump declared this morning that the United States is going to run Venezuela until a judicious transition of power takes place.
This is highly significant.
It implies that there will be little resistance from Venezuela’s remaining leadership.
The fact that President Trump could say this so quickly and with such confidence indicates that betrayal was already in motion prior to the 2 a.m. raid on Maduro and that this outcome had been planned in advance.
Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, confirmed that he spoke with the newly sworn-in vice president, who confirmed the U.S. plan and expressed willingness to work with Washington.
Again, this underscores the extent of betrayal involved.
Otherwise, Trump could not have declared so swiftly and confidently that the United States would run Venezuela.
4) Trump’s press conference was not good. He should have focused exclusively on the Venezuelan people and on the fact that this leader was not a legitimate president.
He did some of that, of course, and he did outline the national security reasons for U.S. intervention.
After all, this was not simply a case of an internationally illegitimate leader causing immense harm to his own nation (more on that later).
(side note: in part II of this post, we shall address the issues around international law and evaluate the risk of bad precedents created for more nefarious superpowers like Russia and China.)
Maduro was an unelected dictator who worked with the Iranians and received weapons from Russia, including a significant number of anti-ship missiles.
These posed a potential threat to U.S. military assets in the Caribbean, especially if Maduro had decided to deepen his cooperation with the Cuban regime, which sits just 90 miles off the Florida coast.
Overall, it is a very good outcome for U.S. national security that a regime so willing to partner with China and Russia is now gone, or at least that its leader is gone.
But this was not the only issue at hand.
Trump stated, ill-advisedly, that the United States would bring in its expertise to resume oil production in Venezuela.
He also declared that the U.S. would take some of that oil wealth as compensation or reimbursement for companies and interests it claimed had been wronged in the country.
This is really, really bad messaging.
First of all, it is not true that U.S. companies ever owned land or oil in Venezuela. There were joint ventures and partnerships, but that is all.
Every country has the right not to renew such partnerships.
Second, the messaging is extremely tone-deaf.
This narrative directly feeds into long-standing Global South perceptions of the United States.
For two decades, as domestic U.S. opinion soured on the Iraq War, oil was frequently cited (in retroactive analyses of incentives) as a potential motive for intervention.
The fact that then–Vice President Dick Cheney was previously (1995-2000) the CEO of Halliburton, the oil company that benefited from the 2003 invasion of Iraq, did not help matters.
But no previous U.S. administration ever claimed that it would own the oil of a sovereign nation—and none did.
The same applies to Iraq.
Iraqis then, and Iraqis today, own their own oil.
For the United States now to openly say that it will extract oil and pay itself as reimbursement is not only legally baseless but also politically reckless.
If the goal were to diminish U.S. prestige, leadership, and global reputation (let alone its standing in South America) then announcing that America is there to take the country’s oil, and acting accordingly, would be the single most effective way to do so.
5) With all of that said, the regime change itself is a good outcome for Venezuela and for the Venezuelan people.
The presidency of Nicolás Maduro has presided over one of the most severe economic collapses in modern history for a country not at war.
Since taking office after the death of Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan state has effectively hollowed out.
The contraction is so severe that economists are forced to look for comparisons not in standard recessions, but in the collapse of the Soviet Union or Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation crisis.
We should therefore examine the specific mechanics of this decline.
Here is an outline of the implosion of the Venezuelan state.
1. The scale of the economic collapse is almost impossible to overstate.
The Venezuelan economy has shrunk by roughly 75–80% since 2013.
To put this in perspective, the U.S. economy contracted by about 29% during the Great Depression.
What has happened in Venezuela is nearly three times worse than the worst economic disaster in American history.
(side note: it is worth remembering that this occurred in a country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world. To achieve this level of poverty in a nation so resource-rich requires a truly specific kind of mismanagement.)
In 2013, Venezuela’s GDP was approximately $372 billion.
By the mid-2020s, it had fallen to roughly $60–90 billion.
This was accompanied by one of the longest bouts of hyperinflation in history.
At its peak in 2018, inflation hit nearly 1,700,000%.
The result was that the Bolívar became effectively worthless.
The government was forced to slash zeros off the currency multiple times, but the trust was already gone.
This led to a de facto dollarization, where daily transactions are now often conducted in USD simply to survive.
2. The collapse of the oil industry was a choice, not an accident.
The narrative often pushed by the regime is that U.S. sanctions are solely responsible for the decline.
However, the timeline does not support this.
Sanctions began in earnest in 2017 and 2019.
The rot at PDVSA (the state oil company) began much earlier.
In 2013, production was approximately 2.9 million barrels per day.
By 2024/2025, production hovers around 800,000–900,000 bpd.
This collapse was largely driven by the purging of skilled workers at PDVSA for political reasons, a total lack of maintenance, and corruption on an industrial scale.
Billions of dollars in oil revenue are simply unaccounted for.
3. Poverty has been weaponized as a tool of political control.
The “wealth” of the nation has evaporated, pushing a middle-income country into extreme poverty.
In 2013, roughly 30% of the population lived in poverty.
Today, estimates place that number at over 80%.
More disturbingly, over 50% are in extreme poverty, unable to afford a basic food basket.
This led to the phenomenon known as the “Maduro Diet.”
Between 2015 and 2017 alone, the average Venezuelan lost roughly 24 lbs (11 kg) due to food shortages.
But for the regime, this scarcity had a utility.
State-subsidized food boxes (CLAP) became a mechanism for compliance.
Families were often threatened with losing their food rations if they did not support the regime.
(side note: this is a classic authoritarian tactic. By making the population dependent on the state for their very survival, the cost of dissent becomes immediate starvation.)
Simultaneously, the healthcare system broke down completely.
At the crisis peak, pharmacies lacked 85% of basic drugs, and diseases that had been previously eradicated (like malaria and diphtheria) returned.
4. The resulting migration crisis rivals that of a civil war.
The most visible sign of the collapse is the mass displacement of the population. Approximately 7.7 to 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country.
This represents roughly 25% of the total population.
It is the largest displacement crisis in the Western Hemisphere’s history.
It rivals the Syrian refugee crisis, despite the fact that Venezuela is not technically in a civil war.
The implications for the future are grim.
The country has suffered a massive brain drain.
A generation of professionals (doctors, engineers, teachers, and oil experts) have emigrated.
This makes future reconstruction incredibly difficult, regardless of who is in power.
5. The regime has survived through the institutionalization of repression.
Beyond the economy, the fabric of society has been damaged by the methods used to retain power.
For years, Caracas was ranked the most violent capital city in the world. While homicide rates have technically dropped recently, analysts attribute this partly to the mass migration of young men (both perpetrators and victims) and organized crime syndicates moving their operations abroad.
To maintain control, the government utilized the Special Action Forces (FAES).
Accused by the UN of carrying out thousands of extrajudicial killings in poor neighborhoods, their purpose was to instill fear.
As of late 2024, nearly 2,000 political prisoners were detained, including minors arrested during protests.
The state has not just failed; it has turned against its own population to ensure its survival.
In addition to all of this analysis, we need to distinguish between the manner of Maduro’s removal and the fact of his removal.
Who is going to argue that Maduro remaining in power was good for U.S. interests, U.S. national security, the global liberal international order, or the interests of the Venezuelan people?
Those who claim that this was a U.S. superpower–led regime change must ask themselves a different question: would it have been better if Maduro had been removed internally, if someone from his closest circle had deposed him?
Would that have been preferable, provided he was then replaced by someone semi-decent? Who would object to that outcome?
If the answer to that hypothetical question is yes, then the objection is not to the fact that Maduro was removed, but to the manner of his removal—a point we will examine below.
But the fact that he was removed, in itself, is a good outcome.
There are also those who argue that there may be second- and third-order unforeseen consequences of his removal.
That is true; there might be.
But we must remember two things.
First, there were also consequences to him remaining in power, and the trajectory was not improving.
At this rate, Venezuela was at real risk of descending into a failed-state scenario comparable to Haiti.
Would that have been a better outcome? We cannot know for certain that this would happen in Venezuela, but it was a realistic risk given the existing trends.
Second, unlike in many other cases, Venezuela has a credible opposition leader: a Nobel Peace Prize–winning politician Maria Machado, whose movement secured a majority of votes in the July 2024 election (with opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez recognized by the U.S. as President-elect).
There is a strong leader aligned with the United States, committed to democratic principles, widely loved by the Venezuelan people, and endowed with international legitimacy through her Nobel Peace Prize.
This is not a situation in which there is no viable alternative ready to take over and move the country in the right direction.
(side note: This is also why Trump’s initial press conference should have been clear that there’s going to be a transition to a legitimate political opposition or that there would be a transitional period with free & fair elections that could allow such opposition to come to power.)
Finally, the very fact that Trump demonstrated a willingness to escalate militarily in Venezuela and remove Maduro sends a powerful signal that Machado’s path to the presidency (and her ability to remain there) will be stronger.
Who, now, would dare to launch a counter-coup?
Which Maduro loyalist would risk deposing her, knowing what they now know about U.S. willingness to use force in Venezuela?
(p.s. in part II of this post, we shall address the issues around international law and evaluate the risk of bad precedents created for more nefarious superpowers like Russia and China.)
Well I appreciate your commentary and have many rambling thoughts running through my mind. Yes a deal with Russia to lay off this situation is possible....not good news for Ukraine........ Yes esthetically and in reality, Venezuela is well rid of Maduro. I wonder why his VP accepted the US deal and was sworn in................Rubio hopes this will hurt Cuba, which is His main goal.......... My gut reaction is that this makes us look like pirates and bandits and kidnappers (Eichmann excluded), following in the footsteps of Bibi, Putin, and MBS. All those men on all those boats murdered......To be that is disgusting....I doubt they were a great threat............And what has Trump or any president done about Fentanyl here......A blockade would have been better, earlier........This is immoral bullying..."we will run Venezuela" seriously? are we colonizers now? like the Philippines..................Cannot help but wonder about the planned Oil bonanza, in which undoubtedly he personally hope to profit...............To do this, you should need support in Congress, and some approval and cooperation by the UN, the OAS, or some other nations.....why did the OAS never meet on this issue..............they should move their HQ out of Washington.....Our nationals were not in danger..... Will Maduro get real evidentiary justice in a US court? Why pardon Hernandez and then do this?? Will there be a truly free and fair election now in VZ? will there be a rivalry between Gonzalez and Machado? Is this yet another distraction from Epstein...................There will be no Nobel Prize forthcoming............ Yes it was bad messaging. making this look like it was all for our benefit, nevermind the Venezuelan people. I hope this is what most of them want...........if not exactly in this manner.............Is this a prelude to Greenland, Panama, Canada...........