M A Hossain,
There is a familiar American temptation at work in Venezuela today: declare victory, frame it as decisive leadership, and move on. From Washington’s vantage point, the removal of Nicolás Maduro (however it was achieved) looks like a strategic success. The hemisphere’s most disruptive regime has lost its figurehead. Oil, that old geopolitical lodestar, seems once again within reach. Rivals like Russia and China appear, at least momentarily, off balance.
History, unfortunately, has a habit of interrupting such celebrations. For two decades, Venezuela has not merely been a failed state; it has been a regional destabilizer on an industrial scale. Mass migration, criminal networks, energy shocks, and political contagion have radiated outward from Caracas, affecting Colombia, Brazil, the Caribbean, and ultimately the southern border of the United States. From that perspective, Washington’s interest in stabilizing Venezuela is not ideological but preventative. The problem is that prevention, especially after regime disruption, is rarely tidy.
The shadow of the Iraq lesson remains. The toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 was to have ended a chapter. Instead, it opened a book that Americans remain stuck in to this day, one that is full of insurgency, sectarianism, and unintended consequences. Venezuela stands at the turn of another such page. The ousting of Maduro opens the way. However, it does not bring about order.
Power in Caracas has never resided in a single office. It is a coalition system—part patronage network, part security cartel, part ideological residue of Chavismo. Oil revenues grease the machinery. Force keeps it running. With Maduro gone, the system does not vanish; it fragments. That is when states become dangerous.
The decisive variable is the military. Some commanders will seek accommodation with whatever authority emerges, hoping to preserve rank, income, and immunity. Others will stall, betting that uncertainty favors those with guns and time. Civilian power brokers—governors, party operatives, business figures—will hedge in similar fashion. Loyalty, in such moments, becomes provisional.
Washington’s reported preference for Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as an interim leader reflects this logic. She is familiar, transactional, and deeply embedded in the system. She also sits in a political vise. If she complies fully with U.S. demands—opening the oil sector, downgrading ties with Russia and China, expelling armed groups—she risks being labeled a traitor by hardliners who control coercive power. If she resists, she faces American pressure that could be more punishing than what Maduro endured.
The hard truth is that many of Washington’s demands strike at the economic foundations of Venezuela’s armed factions. Long-serving defense minister Vladimir Padrino and interior strongman Diosdado Cabello control the military and the colectivos—paramilitary groups that enforce loyalty and suppress dissent. These are not men inclined to retire quietly. Sanctions have not softened them. Power sustains them.
In such an environment, the most likely near-term outcome is not democratic consolidation but managed continuity: the same system, minus its most visible leader. Authority may be laundered through a civilian caretaker, while illicit networks and coercive institutions remain intact. It is not inspiring. It is plausible.
This is where the oil question becomes central—not as a symbol of abundance, but as a test of realism. Venezuela’s hydrocarbon wealth has long been treated as an inexhaustible inheritance. Official figures cite reserves exceeding 300 billion barrels, the largest in the world. The problem is that these numbers are politically inflated and technically dubious. They were tripled during Hugo Chávez’s tenure without corresponding exploration, largely to boost international leverage.
Even if the upper estimates are accurate, much of Venezuela’s oil is heavy crude—expensive to process, environmentally challenging, and discounted relative to lighter grades. Rebuilding production is not a matter of turning valves. It requires capital, infrastructure, legal stability, and time. Lots of time.
This reality helps explain why President Trump’s call for U.S. oil companies to invest $100 billion in Venezuela landed with a thud. ExxonMobil’s CEO described the country as “uninvestable” under current conditions—a polite corporate way of saying history matters. Assets were nationalized. Contracts were violated. Legal protections evaporated. No amount of presidential enthusiasm erases that memory.
The economics are sobering. Maintaining current output alone could cost over $50 billion in the coming decade. Meaningful expansion could require more than twice that. These are long-term bets in one of the world’s most politically volatile environments. For executives with finite capital and fiduciary duties, Venezuela competes poorly with Guyana, the Permian Basin, offshore Brazil, or LNG projects that offer faster returns and fewer headaches.
Chevron, which never fully left Venezuela, occupies a narrow middle ground. Incremental increases are possible. A wholesale industry return is not. Political pressure cannot substitute for legal certainty. Drilling rigs do not respond to speeches.
This brings us to the deeper risk: sovereignty hollowed out by leverage. If control over oil revenues is frozen, captured, or externally dictated, democratic forms become largely symbolic. Elections without fiscal autonomy produce weak governments, vulnerable to spoilers and populists alike. Venezuela’s future hinges less on who occupies the palace than on who controls the balance sheet.
Three paths now lie ahead. The first is a managed transition: elections, perhaps, or a technocratic council acceptable to the armed forces and parts of the old regime, paired with economic relief and credible guarantees. It is the least dramatic option and the most stabilizing—precisely why it will face resistance from those who thrive on disorder.
The second is continuity without Maduro: cosmetic change atop intact coercive structures. It offers predictability without progress and may satisfy external actors eager to declare success. It will not satisfy Venezuelans.
The third is escalation. Fragmentation turns violent. Armed actors multiply. Criminal networks and militias carve out territory. External powers, having claimed ownership of the intervention, are drawn back in—not by design, but by momentum. What begins as crisis management becomes an open-ended commitment.
Which outcome prevails will depend less on Maduro’s absence than on American judgment afterward. The temptation to declare victory and disengage will be strong. So will the impulse to micromanage outcomes. Both are mistakes.
Venezuela is not a blank slate, nor is it a morality play. It is a cautionary tale about power, resources, and the limits of coercion. Stabilizing it will require patience, restraint, and an unglamorous focus on institutions rather than headlines. The raid may be over. The reckoning is just beginning.
M A Hossain, political and defense analyst based in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: writetomahossain@gmail.com
This article published at :
1. The Nation, Pak : 17 Jan, 26
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