There is a chance that President Donald Trump will order a military strike against the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela in the near future. Both credible reports and President Trump himself have basically said it out loud. For many Americans, this raises immediate fears of another costly foreign entanglement — another doomed “regime change” operation.
Their concerns are legitimate. But take it from someone who grew up in Venezuela and personally saw how the chavista regime took over the country and steadily turned it into a brutal dictatorship at the helm of a massive criminal empire: An attack against Maduro will not really be a years-long war of occupation. It would be a decisive operation against the Maduro-led Cartel de los Soles.
President Trump's Venezuela approach is right. He's right to see Maduro as the head of a cartel. He’s also right to deploy military assets against him and his structure. And, if he decides so, he will be right to order strikes against them.
Nicolás Maduro is an indicted drug lord. He’s leading a criminal organization masquerading as a government that’s providing a safe haven for criminal gangs to send drugs to American shores. More than 100,000 Americans reportedly died from overdoses between January 2023 and January 2024. Allowing a rogue regime to run a country as a base for narcotics trafficking is not an option.
No one is talking about sending hundreds of thousands of American troops to the streets of Caracas. America has a flotilla of around 5 destroyers, a few support ships, 10 F-35, over a hundred tomahawk missiles, and around 5,000-10,000 soldiers deployed in the Caribbean. That’s a mighty force, but not enough for an invasion.
According to Ryan Berg, Director of the Americas program in the Center for Strategic & International Studies, America would need ten times the troops deployed in the region for a full-fledged invasion to be possible.
There’s no indication that type of scale-up will happen soon. American forces in the region do have the capability, however, of targeted attacks against key members or infrastructure of the cartel.
The U.S. military is poised to eliminate the Maduro cartel, not to invade, occupy, and impose a puppet government in Venezuela.
Yes, a strike could severely weaken Maduro’s grip on power. But it will be Venezuelans who will determine his fate. Venezuela isn’t Iraq. It’s not a fragile mosaic of warring sects. For more than a century, it has had a unified national identity and a functioning central government. Until the late 20th century, Venezuela was one of Latin America’s more stable democracies. Unlike post-Saddam Iraq, it has no dormant sectarian fissures primed to explode.
If Maduro's regime collapses, there’s a legitimate and competent political alternative ready to take power.
Last year, a whopping 70% of the Venezuelan electorate voted for the opposition to take power. The leader of the opposition, Maria Corina Machado, the leader of the opposition and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is inside the country and has the popular support to steer the country towards democracy and stability.
In short, if there is a transition, it will be Venezuelan-led, not American-imposed.
An attack is not risk-free. Nothing in global politics is. If the regime falls under the pressure of popular mobilization and the elimination of their drug-trafficking operations, there’s bound to be political instability in Venezuela, but failing to act is also risky.
If Trump does nothing (as the Biden Administration did) Maduro will be emboldened. The flow of drugs towards America will increase, and the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela will keep getting worse. By trying to avoid instability in the short term, America would have years or even decades of more regional tensions.
That’s not a good strategy.
Trump’s strategy towards cartels is refreshing: You don’t talk nice to them, you hit them hard. And he’s right.
Daniel Chang Contreras is a speaker for the Dissident Project. He was born and raised in Venezuela, and fled socialism in 2017. His analysis has appeared in National Review, Real Clear World, France 24, and other outlets.
