Trump Wants to Dominate Venezuela, Not Liberate It
Maduro destroyed my country. What comes next could be worse.
For Venezuelans, watching the news these days is surreal. Wherever we may be in the world—and about a quarter of us don’t live in Venezuela anymore—the spectacle of the world’s most powerful nation edging to war against your own is terrifying and thrilling at once. Terrifying for all the obvious reasons—war is hell, collateral damage is inevitable, and people we love will be in or near the firing line—and for less obvious reasons as well.
But it’s thrilling, too, because the vast majority of us hate the genuinely evil dictatorship that’s taken over our country, viscerally hate it for its rampant corruption, for its brazenly stolen elections, for its dictatorial repression, its mindless propaganda, for its indifference to its people’s suffering, and for the ghoulish torture chambers that backstop it all. We know for certain this ghastly regime will not leave power without violence, and now the Americans are all but offering to supply it. How could we not feel a little thrill?
Which is why many Venezuelans—including the opposition, led by this year’s Nobel Peace laureate, María Corina Machado—are thankful that the United States appears to be edging towards military action against the regime. In recent weeks, America has launched strikes on boats accused of smuggling drugs, built up its forces in the region, and, two days ago, seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast. When you’ve been this oppressed by a government this awful for this long, you don’t ask too many questions when somebody finally decides to mount a rescue operation. Certainly among Venezuela’s diaspora, among the eight million of us who’ve been forced to leave, support for American military action is extremely strong. How Venezuelans still in Venezuela feel about it we don’t know, because it’s been a long time since it’s been safe for them to express themselves freely.
And yet. And yet and yet. The fact remains that the America now edging towards war with this gruesome regime is not a normal America. It’s an increasingly lawless America, under a leadership contemptuous of democratic norms, of checks and balances, of constitutional government as such. It’s a polarized America, under a leadership that demonizes half of its own population. It’s an America run by an over-the-top narcissist, addicted to lying, who day by day tramples new norms and sheds new inhibitions, like the old one that kept American presidents from attacking other countries without at least some semblance of congressional authorization.
It is, in other words, an America that looks more and more like Venezuela looked 20 or 25 years ago, when we were just beginning our new misadventure with 21st century authoritarianism.
True enough, America’s own autocracy comes shrouded in rightwing phraseology nothing like the leftist framing we saw. But if there’s one thing Venezuelans ought to have learned, it’s that it doesn’t matter what bla bla bla autocrats clothe their power grabs in. Because autocrats aren’t interested in words, or principles, or ideas. They’re interested in power and money only, and treat language wholly instrumentally: just a means to an end.
The notion that this American administration would fight to bring democracy to Venezuela is preposterous on its face. It’s a small mercy that Donald Trump has not even pretended that’s what this confrontation is about. He claims it’s about drugs and migrants—neither of which makes much sense. The drug he’s most worried about, fentanyl, comes from China through Mexico, not Venezuela. The migrants who’ve reached the United States from Venezuela were forced out, in good part, by his policies—the whole point of Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions regime during his first term was to make living conditions in Venezuela intolerable.
President Nicolás Maduro, for his part, says this is really just another gringo grab for Venezuela’s oil. That makes a little more sense: Venezuela really does have an awful lot of oil, and it’s easy to imagine Trump administration insiders salivating at the prospect of getting carte blanche to go pump it out. But 2025 is not 1973. America is not exactly short of oil these days, and launching a war for a resource you’re a net exporter of is just not the normal way empires behave.
The reality, I suspect, is that the Trump administration’s fixation with Venezuela is about something much simpler and much stupider: dominance. Simple dominance. Trump really is acting, with regard to Maduro, the way Latin American leftists spent the last 80 years accusing American Imperialism of always acting: out of the sheer imperial imperative to be kowtowed to.
Insofar as any broader principle is involved at all—and that’s not very far—it’s simply that Trump really does believe in spheres of influence, and Venezuela happens to be geographically situated in his. In bullying Maduro, Trump aspires to nothing loftier than the principle that, within any given sphere of influence, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Venezuelans ought to be scared of this… but not nearly as scared as Ukrainians and Taiwanese who, by this understanding, fall under Russia and China’s spheres, respectively.
Having gone through the horrors we have gone through, I don’t begrudge Venezuelans their revenge fantasies against Maduro’s genuinely evil regime. Smart, sane Venezuelans I know will read this column, agree with every word in it, and still want Trump to start dropping bombs on Maduro and his cronies. At this point, the hatreds in Venezuela are tribal—once you’ve seen a government destroy not just your life but the life of everyone you care about, you will side with its enemies, whoever they may be.
But we should at least have the presence of mind to grasp what we’re supporting. After a third of a century of autocracy, most Venezuelans alive today have no memory of democracy. The vast bulk of the educated people who might be able to rebuild one have left, and most just aren’t coming back. The Venezuelan state is now profoundly militarized, shot through with corruption and cronyism, brain-rotted by 25 years of strident, non-stop propaganda, and also bankrupt. Trump may be able to bomb the government out of power, but building a minimally decent state out of the rubble is an entirely different story. Ask your friendly neighborhood Libyan or Iraqi if you don’t believe me.
Best case scenario, Venezuela will end up in the hands of a right-wing dictator, probably a young army officer who pushes out Maduro and his clique, inherits the chavista state, and changes only the slogans. He’ll kowtow to Washington instead of Moscow and he’ll do deals with ExxonMobil instead of Rosneft, but his cronies will stay atop the economy and the state just as surely as Maduro’s did. With sanctions relief and American investment, the economy may do a little better, and some migrants may be able to return. Democracy sure won’t.
Equally likely, though, is that the transition will be bungled, the state apparatus will creak and crumble, and the country will just collapse into 19th century-style anarchy. Different caudillos will arise in different regions, some more powerful, some less. The presidency in Caracas will keep changing hands, but who holds it will matter less and less. Venezuelans will tell grim jokes about how the Maduro regime was the good old days.
It brings me no joy to say this, because Venezuelans have already suffered too damn much. I hate Maduro’s regime as much as anyone. But the kind of transition this U.S. administration can offer us ain’t worth having.
Quico Toro is a contributing editor at Persuasion, the founder of Caracas Chronicles, Director of Climate Repair at the Anthropocene Institute, and writes the Substack One Percent Brighter.
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There is no way that what comes next will be worse. And Trump's motives are beside the point. No one pretends that he is a saint or more than occasionally law-abiding. The rule of "when" must prevail: "When a bad person does a good thing, it's a good thing." Ridding Venezuela would be a good thing.
Great article putting into perspective what has happened in Venezuela. Thank you. I worked for the State Department in Colombia in the late 80’s and came to understand who exactly was running things. I loved every minute of being there until it became apparent that I was in danger as an American. The rich histories and beauty of both Colombia and Venezuela have been lost in all of the tragic politics, drug wars, human trafficking, the seizure of control over oil reserves (and gold) and power moves by lawless individuals of all kinds. I don’t support the indiscriminate bombings of civilians. I do support helping the citizens of Venezuela regain control of their own future and lost freedoms. Venezuela deserves a democratic government. I agree with your premise that an invasion/war by this Administration wouldn’t allow for that. I think Venezuela needs the international community to step up - the Nobel Prize being given to Maria Corina Machado is a good first step, but not enough. 🇻🇪🙏