The US Commits to Venezuela’s Transition. Can it Succeed?

5 Jan 2026 01:33 PM

Capturing Nicolás Maduro is not a shortcut to rebuilding a broken country. Washington must now prevent a lengthy interregnum by Maduristas.

The decision by the US President Donald Trump to carry out military strikes inside Venezuela and extract President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores marks a pivotal moment in Washington’s posture toward Latin America, one that abandons longstanding restraint in favour of a more overt and assertive projection of power on behalf of American national security. The execution of precision hits on at least five military bases signals that the administration is no longer treating the region as a peripheral security concern, but as a theatre of direct confrontation. Yet running the country’s transition is a job that very few will want, as many questions remain unresolved.

First, does the US bombing and extraction operation risk triggering unintended escalation? The remaining government in Caracas is unlikely to acquiesce quietly. It is still very early days, too early to decipher what President Trump meant while saying that the US will run Venezuela until a new government is installed. ‘We are going to run the country, until we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,’ Trump argued from a news conference in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Yet, the local armed forces, paramilitary actors and criminal networks could intensify defensive operations and build up resistance hotspots, particularly along border zones with neighbouring Colombia, Guyana and Brazil, transforming the Caribbean and Amazonian frontiers into contested spaces to any outside actor, including the US.

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