Trump’s Venezuela regime change: the Iraq debacle all over again

Here we go again. The United States has deployed military forces to Venezuela with the stated objective of removing President Nicolás Maduro from power. The familiar rhetoric has returned: restoring democracy, liberating an oppressed people, eliminating a dictator who threatens regional stability. We’ve heard this song before – in Iraq, in Libya, and in countless other interventions that promised quick victories and democratic transitions but delivered chaos, prolonged occupation, and strategic disaster.

The Venezuela operation represents everything wrong with America’s post-Cold War foreign policy establishment. It reflects the dangerous persistence of neoconservative ideology that refuses to learn from two decades of catastrophic failures. Despite the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Blob – that bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington – remains addicted to military intervention as the solution to complex political problems.

The illusion of the easy war

Proponents of this intervention have sold it using the same playbook deployed before the Iraq War. Maduro is a brutal dictator – true enough. His regime has presided over economic collapse, humanitarian crisis and the exodus of millions of Venezuelans – also true. The Venezuelan people, we’re told, will welcome American forces as liberators. The operation will be swift and surgical. A new democratic government will quickly take hold.

This is fantasy dressed up as strategy. Venezuela is not some small Caribbean island where a few hundred Marines can secure the capital in an afternoon. It’s a country of nearly 30 million people with rugged terrain, a history of military involvement in politics and deeply entrenched patronage networks built over decades of chavismo. The notion that Maduro’s removal automatically triggers a democratic transition ignores everything we know about post-conflict state-building.

Who exactly is supposed to govern Venezuela after Maduro? The opposition is fragmented, has limited institutional capacity, and lacks control over much of the country’s territory. Various factions have competing visions and leadership claims. Meanwhile, millions of Venezuelans – particularly among the poorer classes who benefited from Chávez-era social programs – retain some loyalty to the Bolivarian project, even if they’re disillusioned with Maduro personally. This isn’t a country unified in anticipation of American liberation.

The regional backlash

From a realist perspective, this intervention represents a monumental strategic blunder that will undermine American interests throughout Latin America. The United States has just validated every anti-imperialist narrative that has animated Latin American politics for over a century. Washington has handed a propaganda victory to every leftist movement in the hemisphere.

Consider the regional response. The governments of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia – whatever their private reservations about Maduro – will face enormous domestic pressure to condemn American military action. The images of US troops in Caracas will be plastered across media throughout the region, accompanied by reminders of past American interventions from Guatemala to Chile to Panama. The notion that Latin American governments will provide meaningful support for this operation is wishful thinking.

Cuba, Nicaragua and whatever remains of the Maduro regime’s support network will use this intervention to justify their own authoritarian measures and resistance to American influence. This operation breathes new life into anti-American coalitions that had been weakening as Venezuela’s socialist experiment collapsed under its own weight. We’ve taken a regime that was failing organically and turned it into a martyr for the cause of anti-imperialism.

The China and Russia factor

The intervention also plays directly into the hands of America’s great power competitors. Both China and Russia have invested heavily in Venezuela – financially, politically, and strategically. Beijing holds billions in Venezuelan debt and has energy interests in the country. Moscow has used Venezuela as a foothold for challenging American dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

Rather than allowing Venezuela’s economic implosion to demonstrate the bankruptcy of their client state model, we’ve now provided Beijing and Moscow with a justification to deepen their involvement. They can frame this as American aggression requiring a response. Expect increased material support for whatever resistance emerges, turning Venezuela into a proxy battleground. We’ve potentially created our own version of the Soviet quagmire in Afghanistan – except this time we’re the Soviets, and it’s happening in our own hemisphere.

The cost no one wants to discuss

Let’s talk about what this intervention will actually cost. The initial military operation might succeed relatively quickly – Maduro’s conventional forces are no match for American military power. But then what?

Occupying Venezuela, securing its infrastructure, preventing the country from descending into militia warfare, rebuilding institutions and fostering anything resembling democratic governance will require years of commitment and hundreds of billions of dollars. American troops will need to patrol Venezuelan cities, secure oil facilities, protect supply lines and deal with insurgent attacks.

The American people, already exhausted from two decades of Middle East wars, have no appetite for another open-ended military commitment. Congress will balk at the costs. And when public support inevitably wanes and Washington looks for an exit, we’ll leave behind a destabilized country, strengthened anti-American movements throughout the region, and another stain on American credibility.

What should have been done

There was an alternative path – strategic patience combined with multilateral pressure. Maduro’s regime was already crumbling under the weight of its own corruption and economic mismanagement. Millions had fled. The military’s loyalty was increasingly transactional rather than ideological. International isolation was taking its toll.

Rather than military intervention, the United States should have worked through regional organizations, maintained targeted sanctions on regime figures while allowing humanitarian assistance, supported the Venezuelan diaspora and let the internal dynamics play out. This requires patience – a virtue Washington seems to have lost – but it avoids the pitfalls of military occupation.

The tragedy is that this intervention will likely achieve the opposite of its stated objectives. Instead of a democratic Venezuela, we’re likely to see prolonged instability, regional backlash against American influence and a costly military commitment that drains resources while achieving little.

We’ve seen this movie before. The ending never changes, but Washington keeps buying tickets. The Venezuela operation is another chapter in America’s post-Cold War addiction to military solutions for political problems – an addiction that serves the interests of the defense establishment and the foreign policy elite while consistently failing to serve the American national interest. The question is whether we’ll finally learn the lesson, or whether we’re doomed to repeat these failures indefinitely. Based on the current trajectory, the answer appears tragically clear.

This article was originally published on Leon Hadar’s Global Zeitgeist and is republished with kind permission. Become a subscriber here.