Regime Change in America’s Back Yard
The operation to remove Maduro took place precisely thirty-six years after President George HW Bush sent the US military to invade Panama and depose General Manuel Noriega. A former U.S. proxy, Noriega had begun criticizing the United States in rallies and machete-wielding speeches; he was taken into custody and, like Maduro, accused of drug trafficking. When I met Noriega in prison in 2015, two years before his death, he largely insisted on his innocence but expressed regret for attacking Americans. If he had the chance to do things over again, he said, he wouldn’t make the same mistake.
Trump insisted at Saturday’s news conference that by removing Maduro, he had eliminated the “kingpin of a vast criminal network” that trafficked huge quantities of cocaine into the United States. Ironically, just weeks before, he had granted a full pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who in 2024 was convicted of cocaine trafficking in the Southern District of New York and sentenced to forty-five years in prison. Trump’s reasoning was that, like him, Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” by his political opponents.
When I met Maduro in 2017, he spoke stunningly about the limits of efforts to remove him. “They want me out, but if I leave this chair, who will we put in it? he said. “Who can be president? » Many Venezuelans support Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, the apparent winners of Maduro’s stolen presidential election in 2024. González was the presidential candidate, but the real power is Machado, a conservative Catholic from a wealthy family who has built a reputation as an ardent critic of the Maduro regime. Both are in hiding, although Machado appeared in Oslo last month to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She skillfully dedicated the award “to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump.”
At the press conference, Trump called Machado “a very nice woman” but said she did not have the “respect within the country” to lead. Instead, he said, the United States would “run” Venezuela for the immediate future, as part of a “group” that apparently would also include American oil companies. They will have to deal with Maduro’s top officials, who essentially remain in place. They include radical military leader General Vladimir Padrino López; Diosdado Cabello, the equally intransigent Minister of the Interior; and Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, a tenacious operator. Everyone denounced the kidnapping of Maduro. Padrino, in his own press conference, condemned “the most criminal military aggression” and declared the activation of a national defense plan, including widespread mobilization of Venezuelan forces on land, sea and in the air. In response, Trump reportedly said the United States was prepared to mount a second military intervention. However, many questions remain unanswered. Why eliminate Maduro and leave his supporters in place? Can its loyalists still advance the old Bolivarian revolution? Will Trump offer Maduro sanctuary in another country – perhaps Turkey – in exchange for asking his comrades in Caracas to stand down? Or will the remaining officials find a way to retain power? (At the press conference, Trump praised Delcy Rodríguez, saying she had been exceptionally cooperative.)
It remains to be seen how Venezuelans, both in government and on the streets, will react to the increased presence of American power in their country. Twenty-four years ago, I spoke with Hugo Chávez at Fuerte Tiuna, a military headquarters in Caracas that was bombed in last night’s raid. He told me he would never let the Americans take him alive, to display him as a trophy. Chávez, who died of cancer in 2013, avoided such humiliation. Maduro did not have the insight, nor the instinct, to forge a different destiny. ♦
