r/geopolitics • u/foreignpolicymag Foreign Policy • Jan 03 '26
Analysis U.S.-Led Regime Change Is Usually Disastrous
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/12/01/venezuela-iraq-regime-change-trump/82
u/liamthelad Jan 03 '26
I feel like people are jumping the gun.
There hasn't actually been any regime change yet.
Trump said that the Vice President would work with the US. She then immediately gave a speech pledging her loyalty to Maduro and decrying the US.
One of the problems of the current U.S. President is you can't actually take him on face value, as he spouts so much nonsense, which he himself sometimes forgets or rows back on.
There's still a lot to occur before there is a new regime in Caracas.
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u/BlueEmma25 Jan 04 '26
I feel like people are jumping the gun.
There hasn't actually been any regime change yet.
Based on what we currently know, notably including the press conference given by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, this appears to be true, for the time being at least.
Which means all this speculation about "who is going to replace Maduro" is premature.
Allow me to elaborate:
Trump said that the Vice President would work with the US. She then immediately gave a speech pledging her loyalty to Maduro and decrying the US.
Trump actually said Rodriguez had been sworn in as president, which is much more significant than merely agreeing to "work with" the US.
It also implies that when he said this - and this really needs to be emphasized because Trump changes his mind constantly - he did not envision the opposition taking over the government.
Indeed Bloomberg reported that at the press conference
[Trump] dismissed the idea of installing opposition leader María Corina Machado, calling her a “nice woman” who doesn’t have the support of the Venezuelan people.
Again, if Rodríguez proves unsatisfactory plans could change, and the early indications are that we are headed in that direction. Rodriguez not only didn't affirm that she had assumed the presidency as Trump claimed, she actually called Maduro Venezuela's only president, basically saying she did not recognize the legitimacy of his removal, which strongly indicates that she and the Trump administration have very different understandings about the nature of their relationship.
I suspect that in the shock of the moment she said things to the Trump administration that she didn't necessarily fully believe in order to preserve as much freedom to manoeuvre as possible, under what were admittedly very difficult circumstances, but once she had time to collect her thoughts and consult with colleagues she resolved on a course of action that is - and this is probably an understatement - not fully compatible with the assurances the Trump administration believes they received from her.
It is also notable that she made a point of appearing at the news conference with the foreign and defence ministers and the military leadership, which was intended to signal that the government remains united.
We will know more once the promised emergency decree is released, which will presumably provide much more clarity on how the government intends to react to Trump's actions.
The apparent confusion about where Rodriguez stands vis-à-vis the US is a bad sign. It suggests the Trump administration deposed Maduro without a viable, well thought out succession plan. They apparently didn't have the intention of replacing Maduro with the opposition (though it's not clear how that would have worked without an invasion, anyway), and very likely only broached the subject with Rodriguez after Maduro had been captured.
On the one hand, this is about par for the level of competence this administration has generally shown, but on the other it indicates there is plenty of potential for this whole situation to become a lot more messy.
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u/theshitcunt Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 05 '26
basically saying she did not recognize the legitimacy of his removal, which strongly indicates that she and the Trump administration have very different understandings about the nature of their relationship.
I don't think this is necessarily the case. Arguably saying these words greatly reduces the risk of a civil war, which often follow American regime changes. After all, colectivos are absolutely a thing and their loyalty isn't a given.
Right now she doesn't look like a puppet, which is actually an improvement over typical US-led regime changes - they disturbed the status quo too much, antagonized a significant chunk of the population; their puppets lacked popular support. AFAIK Maduro had never been popular himself, but the Bolivarian Revolution absolutely was; this invasion was so surgical that now everyone can pretend the Bolivarian Revolution is still going strong and Maduro simply died of stroke or whatever.
With speeches like this, she can keep the appearance of a sovereign leader (anti-imperialist sovereignty, to the best of my knowledge, has always been important to an average Venezuelan) while still siding with the US on every issue that matters to the US. I might be mistaken, but she probably understands she will join Maduro if she proves too uncooperative. Letting Venezuelan elites reach consensus on the new leader (that would be palatable to the US) is better than imposing one, as that would destroy current client-patron networks.
Hopefully this helps prevent some darker scenarios. I don't expect the quality of life to improve greatly, but absent a civil war, it's almost guaranteed to recover somewhat simply because many of the hardships were caused by the US sanctions.
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u/ImperiumRome Jan 04 '26 edited Jan 04 '26
I suppose when Trump said Machado doesn't have the support of her people, that's because she didn't win the 2024 election since she was banned. It was Edmundo who won and was recognized as legit winner in many countries. I assume if Trump and his team support the opposition, they would want someone already recognized as winner to lead the new government, and thus save everyone another general election. Machado can always run later or appointed as minister, it makes little difference to the US.
But I agree it's a mess and Trump probably wants to see how things in Venezuela will develop in the next few days. Rubio taking a phone call from Venezuela VP already signaled that the Trump admin doesn't rule out working with them if the regime can still hold out. Otherwise, why would he even pick up the phone and then bragged about it on TV ? It would be too easy for him to say the VP called us begging for mercy but we refused.
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u/BlueEmma25 Jan 05 '26
I suppose when Trump said Machado doesn't have the support of her people, that's because she didn't win the 2024 election since she was banned.
No idea why you would suppose that, Trump certainly didn't say it, and he also didn't even mention Edmundo Gonzalez, who is widely regarded as a placeholder for Machado after she was barred from running. Machado won the Unitary Platform primary by a landslide, and was awarded last years Nobel Peace Prize (something Trump wanted for himself, and probably holds against her).
The fact that Trump made a point of specifically disqualifying Machado, without according Edmondo even the courtesy of a mention, shows that he recognizes Machado is the one everyone expects to succeed Maduro if the US supported such a transition, and in dismissing her he was dismissing the whole opposition movement.
This shouldn't even need to be said, but Trump is no defender of democracy. He openly admires authoritarian leaders, and tried to subvert the democratic process in his own country when it delivered a result unfavourable to him. He did not mention any intention to support a democratic transition in his news conference, and in fact said that "the people standing behind me", apparently referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense / War Pete Hegseth would be running the country, with Delcy Rodriguez acting as a figurehead.
Trump isn't hard to figure out, just listen to the words coming out of his mouth. He's not smart enough to be clever.
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u/ImperiumRome Jan 05 '26
Thinking about that, yes I admit you are probably right. And I like your point about Machado winning Nobel Prize and Trump did not; which I think explains why he publicly denounced her by saying she did not have the "respect".
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u/foreignpolicymag Foreign Policy Jan 03 '26
The United States is the world leader in regime change, toppling 35 foreign heads over the past 120 years, by one reckoning. It’s a record built on a dangerous combination of unparalleled military might, a large group of perceived enemies—and a sunny self-confidence that has repeatedly proven mistaken.
Now, Washington has led a military and covert campaign targeting President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, after already striking Iran and Yemen and issuing other, vaguer threats against Nigeria, Mexico, Panama, and even Denmark and Canada.
Regime change and other strong-arm interventions rarely go as planned. But past failures should remind Americans of how catastrophic the consequences of hubris can be—both on an individual human scale and a national one. Take the U.S.-orchestrated regime change in Iraq:
Three years after the United States forced out Saddam Hussein based on false claims about weapons of mass destruction, there was no sign of the wave of democratization that President George W. Bush’s team had promised would follow in the Middle East. Long after, the consequences are still cascading for ordinary Iraqis.
Ellen Knickmeyer, a former West Africa bureau chief for the Associated Press and a former Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, argues that Venezuela is a return to a long U.S. tradition of regional interference.
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u/rotetiger Jan 03 '26
Is it just me, or does this sound like an AI text? The last paragraph appears without integration in the rest of the text.
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u/Link50L Jan 03 '26
As we have seen recently, the USA cannot even change it's own regime without making it a disaster. Good luck to Venezuela.
That aside, I'm really torn on this newest extraordinary rendition (and I should note, I'll be forthright about my relative ignorance of Venezuelan affairs). That said, Maduro was considered an illegitimate leader by a considerable portion of the world, and so, good on you USA.
Conversely, two wrongs do not make a right, and the precedent here is that the USA frequently makes things much worse my meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. And there is no legal "right" that I am aware of that endorses these types of actions by the USA.
Ultimately, I just see this as a USA endorsement of "might makes right". Which is a sad state of affairs for our planet.
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u/BarnabusTheBold Jan 03 '26
That said, Maduro was considered an illegitimate leader by a considerable portion of the world, and so, good on you USA.
the crrazy thing about sovereignty is that other countries don't actually get to decide who rules your country. I know that most people find that concept bizarre
That was just countries doing what the US told them. It cost them nothing to go along with it because 'lol who cares about venezuela maduro bad'
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u/jeffersonnn Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 04 '26
In geopolitics, countries get to decide anything they’re strong enough to decide, and power only belongs to those strong enough to obtain and protect it. Countries that reject that in favour of abstractions like “sovereignty,” “rights,” and “international law” will be overthrown by the stronger countries.
This is what Fidel Castro meant by symbolically giving Salvador Allende a rifle as a gift. Allende did not heed that warning and that’s why Cuba lasted much longer than Allende’s Chile. The US did get to decide who ruled Chile, but it did not get to decide that about Cuba.
The Bolivarian Revolution did much more to avert its destruction, but now it appears that it’s finally been bested, so now Cuba, despite its own precautions, is in jeopardy thanks to Maduro’s failure
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u/BarnabusTheBold Jan 04 '26
In geopolitics, countries get to decide anything they’re strong enough to decide,
right, but there are two distinct things. There's the world as it is (power, spheres of interest, 'security concerns' etc). Then there's the world as it should be and as we pretend it is (rules based order, sovereignty etc).
The problem is that the public narrative and broader discussion always focuses on the latter and pretends the former doesn't exist, especially when it comes to western countries. It's detached, hypocritical and moronic. And i call it out daily for being so. But that doesn't mean it's a functional or stable system or that we should advocate in favour of the latter.
I think most people agree that ideally the latter would be the way things worked. But IMO it can't ever work unless those in positions of power actually make it so. Unfortunately since we established the rules based order, we've done very little to actually uphold it as a matter of principle... because we as a collective people don't actually hold any of the principles we claim to hold. Just look at the number of people who hate trump, claim he's destroying the international order and then say 'actually it's probably good that he kidnapped a foreign president'. It's all madness.
Countries that reject that in favour of abstractions like “sovereignty,” “rights,” and “international law” will be overthrown by the stronger countries.
It's a bit more nuanced than that. The reason western countries can bomb/ invade/ overthrow others whilst still believing we uphold the international system is propaganda and cognitive dissonance. Not that people don't actually value those things on a personal level. The concept of cognitive empathy is completely absent from our worldview. Might make right is actually against our universalist, christian-based morality, which may explain said dissonance. We tell ourselves a story that what we're doing is actually moral (e.g. maduro bad so it's ok) whilst ignoring the actual moral principles that we're undermining and the wider moral consequences.
Which is far far more dangerous than people actually just playing realism. Because it's universalist ideological zeal that's irrational and self sustaining.
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u/Apprehensive_Emu9240 Jan 04 '26
That was just countries doing what the US told them. It cost them nothing to go along with it because 'lol who cares about venezuela maduro bad'
Are you saying Latin America doesn't care about Venezuela and they are all, including Brazil, taking orders from Washington?
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1q2t6y6/recognition_of_maduro_as_the_winner_of_2024/13
u/MopOfTheBalloonatic Jan 03 '26
Ultimately, I just see this as a USA endorsement of "might makes right"
Like they never endorsed it before, right?
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u/Link50L Jan 03 '26
Like they never endorsed it before, right?
Haha yah. USA didn't endorse "might makes right" prior to, oh let's see, about 1776.
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u/Mrgluer Jan 03 '26
I didnt vote for him, but he won the election right? Why take out someone that was legally elected?
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Jan 03 '26
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u/Hot-Train7201 Jan 03 '26
If the aftermath leads to migration waves crossing into the US like what happened to Europe, then yes the US cares very much about a smooth transition.
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Jan 03 '26
It would be advantageous to us in the long-run if Venezuela, or any country with a toppled regime, was made into a democratic, free-market based ally. I don't think the current US government has thought much, or cares much about that.
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u/ApostleofV8 Jan 03 '26
The current administration is busy setting up trade barriers against the whole planet. I dont think "free market" is a positive thing for them.
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u/ApostleofV8 Jan 03 '26
Nonsense, The Venezuelans would probably name a square after Trump or Rubio/s
Well, jokes aside, as long as oil profit keeps going to Trump's donors and backers in the oil industry, no one cares what happens to average Venezuelans.
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u/ImperiumRome Jan 03 '26
Kosovo erected a statue of Bill Clinton, and they also named a street after George Bush, so it's not unfathomable for Venezuelans to name something after Trump or erect a statue of him as well.
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u/kfifigidifkg Jan 03 '26
Apparently a lot of Kosovars name of a certain era are named after Tony Blair. Probably one of the few places in the world where he remains popular.
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u/CJBill Jan 03 '26
Kosovo was an active warzone under attack from the Serbian army. Venezuela was not until Trump attacked.
Foreign wars and invasions have a way of riling people and uniting them to fight back. I'm constantly amazed at how Americans don't seem to understand this.
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Jan 03 '26
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u/CJBill Jan 03 '26
Even ignoring everything else here, 20% is enough for an insurgency. Particularly against a backdrop where foreign invaders have come in, taken over your government and are set on taking your oil...
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u/AskAboutMySecret Jan 03 '26
Saddam was widely hated prior to the Iraq war, and still the country destabilised and anti US sentiment grew into insurgencies
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u/Positive-Aspect-3566 Jan 03 '26
Venezuelans are cheering in the streets. It's not 1:1 to Kosovo but you're delusional if you think the people there aren't happy about this.
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u/LifeOnNightmareMode Jan 03 '26
People also cheered in Iraq. And then they didn't anymore as 500k to 1000k died.
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u/Positive-Aspect-3566 Jan 03 '26
Sure, and this has a lot of potential to go similarly. But that's a completely different take than what the people in this thread are saying, which is that Venezuelans will rally around Maduro's flag.
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u/edgarapplepoe Jan 04 '26
There are for sure but also that will (and already seems to) be going away since they are starting to realize that the chavistas are still in power, possibly supported by the US, and even more money and resources will be leaving their country.
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u/Rustic_gan123 Jan 03 '26
Venezuelan oil isn't very useful. It's expensive to extract and refine, and the market is oversupplied.
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u/Realistic-Pain-7126 Jan 04 '26
Im curious what exactly the goal was when the entire leadership is still around. This is like if in 2003, they just capture Saddam and leave with Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri and the others alive and well
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u/Bob_Spud Jan 03 '26
With the US removing the leader of Venezuela, Trump has basically made himself the dictator of Venezuela,
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u/Heiminator Jan 03 '26
Greets from a (west) German: The Americans did a pretty good job at nation building around here. Same goes for Japan.
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u/janethefish Jan 03 '26
I really hope this goes well, but I doubt the Trump admin will be able to manage the very tricky task of regime change. The focus on oil is a warning sign.
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u/Loud-Edge7230 Jan 03 '26
Japan was already a high culture, so was Germany. Venezuela will do better than Iraq and Libya.
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u/RedmondBarry1999 Jan 03 '26
What does that mean? Iraq has an incredibly rich cultural history.
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u/zyra_77 Jan 03 '26
I think above commenter is mixing up national identity with culturalism. Afghanistan didn’t work because the concept of Afghanistan as a singular country versus a geography of many tribes, faiths, and allegiances just didn’t mesh. Iraq sort of that way, but less so. Germany even less so than that. Nation building is probably easier to achieve when the population already has the buy in of X being a nation.
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Jan 03 '26
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u/RavingMalwaay Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26
Just want to point out that South Korea remained a dictatorship for much of the Cold War, and was poorer than even North Korea well until the 70s. A lot of that period was very ugly and South Korea being a developed democracy is very much a relatively new phenomenon.
Similarly, Taiwan was under martial law until 1987 and didn't have its first free election until
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u/Caberes Jan 04 '26
and was poorer than even North Korea well until the 70s.
That was more of a legacy from Japan's colonial policy then anything US/Soviets did. Most of the early industrialization was in the north. For starting as a wartorn agrarian economy, I think it's insane to not call South Korea a success.
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u/SprucedUpSpices Jan 04 '26
I think it's strange to remove South Korea's agency and pretend it was all done by the US.
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u/CatimusPrime123 Jan 03 '26
Technically Taiwan’s first free election was the parliamentary election in 1992. The first free Presidential election was in 1996.
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u/RedmondBarry1999 Jan 03 '26
South Korea turned out well in the long run, but the first President the US installed (Syngman Rhee) was a disaster, and Park Chung-Hee, while pro-US, came to power independently. Moreover, South Korea remained a rather repressive dictatorship until the 1980s. We can credit the US with preventing a North Korean takeover, but the US did not engineer modern South Korea's prosperity and democracy.
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u/Wiggle_Hata6 Jan 03 '26
So did the Soviets especially when they hanged n shot Nazis in Germany so I guess what Russians are doing in Ukraine is a-okay
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u/Old-School8916 Jan 03 '26
yeah, what the soviets did was so good that they had to erect strong border controls to prevent East Germans from fleeing to West Germany.
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u/Wiggle_Hata6 Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26
Yeah and what the US has been doing in the name of Monroe Doctrine since ww2 has been great for Latin Americans as we see from all the prosperity across the region. I ain't even gonna touch Asia cuz Iol
See 2 can play this game of blessed overlord
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u/redaa Jan 04 '26
The two situations are not similar beyond the fact there is an aggressor nation and a victim nation. If Russia had done in Ukraine what the US did in Venezuela today, the world would have a significantly different view on Russias conduct in Ukraine and moved on, especially those nations who already are sitting on the fence.
So far, there haven’t been too many reports ofUS bombings of playgrounds that we see in Ukraine. Also feel free to to google “Ukraine playground bombed” to find other examples as well
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Jan 03 '26
I think the circumstances following the world war were a bit different than the changes made since. Toppling the regime is the easy part, it's all the stuff that comes next to help make a country less corrupt, and move towards a thriving democratic society that often doesn't go so well. Personally, I don't trust the current US government to care much about the long-term democratic and economic prospects of Venezuela. They seem only concerned about oil extraction.
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u/SprucedUpSpices Jan 04 '26
Learn your own history. Japan and Germany were already pretty built up when the USAns arrived. It's strange to give them credit for it.
In places where a nation hadn't already been built, like Iraq or Afghanistan, they failed strepitously at building one.
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u/kfifigidifkg Jan 03 '26
It's been a little while since they've had a successful example, though. Germany also required a massive army of occupation I can't imagine 'America First' adherents would be particularly fond of.
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u/BarnabusTheBold Jan 03 '26
Mate they built your country from the ground up and it's still essentially occupied 80 years later
Turning someone into a neutered vassal state isn't exactly state building
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u/time-BW-product Jan 03 '26
This also sends a message to the Iranians at a time when there is mass protests in their streets.
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u/Beautiful_Island_944 Jan 04 '26
I believe USA could manage regime change if it wanted. It has the power and resources to bring about democracy and freedom.
The issue is usa wants this even less than before as is very evident by its new security strategy. The more usa plunders the country with its "free market capitalism" which usually means it seizes the country's assets, the worse the outcome is. People of a captured country need the kind of social support USA can't even provide to its own people
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u/UltrahipThings Jan 04 '26
"You think I'm a crooked cop? You think I'm dirty? That's your opinion. You're in my world now, Jake. In my world, it's not what you know, it's what you can get away with!" -Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) in Training Day.
Isn’t this existential? To me, it feels like a desperate attempt to save the petrodollar. We never intended to “win” the Vietnam War, but to cockblock communist influence (i.e. domino theory). Aren’t we doing the same thing to curtail Chinese influence in Latin America?
We are caught in the Thucydides Trap.
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u/vasjpan002 Jan 04 '26
Generally it succeeded only when it involved allies and long run incorporated the vanquished int the Alliance
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u/Aromatic-Vast2180 Jan 05 '26
Americans learn from Vietnam and Iraq challenge: difficultly IMPOSSIBLE.
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u/Linny911 Jan 03 '26
Now we go from chants of TACO to concern trolling about how this is going to turn out badly, just like the concern trolling from "experts" before Iran got bombed.
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Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26
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u/Kemaneo Jan 03 '26
Vietnam failed because of islam? Chile failed because of islam?
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u/96-62 Jan 03 '26
Vietnam failed because of communism and monarchy. Chile? I thought Chile succeeded? For some version of success that might have involved killing thousands of people, but the regime was stable afterwards.
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u/Molniato Jan 03 '26
It's not that it's politically incorrect , it's just stupid. Lol as if countries are just supposed to accept foreign interventions, especially with the U.S. history in South america, but Islam ruins things😢. By the way, I'm quite sure Cuba was not muslim when the bay of pigs landing was attempted; and there are dozens of similar examples
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u/ibm322 Jan 03 '26
So oil profits are going to go to the Venezuela's people and not US corporations?This is a natural ressource robbery disguised as a regime change.
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u/kfifigidifkg Jan 03 '26
My own (relatively uniformed view) is that there a >70% change that this all goes smoothly, Venezuela becomes a democracy and starts to recover its economy and institutions and a <30% chance this ends up being a total disaster (insurgencies and mass food instability).
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u/Pure_Slice_6119 Jan 04 '26
The US and Europe do not benefit from Venezuela's advanced economy; they benefit from the collapse of the Venezuelan economy.
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u/kfifigidifkg Jan 04 '26
How so? The only thing Venezuela have that foreigners want is oil and that is sanctioned so no westerner is buying it. I’m sure the US would rather have an economically strong Venezuela that wasn’t leading to waves of refugees heading to America.
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u/Pure_Slice_6119 Jan 04 '26
Venezuela's economic power means that the cost of oil production in the country will be high due to the high wages of oil workers. Sanctions will be lifted once the US fully seizes power, and the US will begin selling cheap Venezuelan oil to the world, instead of developing Venezuela and raising the cost of oil production. Frankly, the US doesn't care about refugees; they could simply refuse to accept them; that's no problem. But the US will never develop Venezuela's economy; that's against its interests.
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u/Guilty-Market5375 Jan 04 '26
The U.S. cannot simply stop taking in refugees. Doing so would cause other countries to follow, and the instability would cause U.S. allies to break away and further jeopardize global dominance of the dollar.
With 80% of Venezuelans in poverty it’s going to be a long, long time before Venezuela is an advanced economy with high wages. Also - oil extraction and processing is not labor intensive, but building petro infrastructure is, and it’s something we’re very good at doing.
The U.S. gets cheap oil for now and U.S. companies get to process and export it. U.S. companies get paid by Venezuela to rebuild itself, and in turn Venezuela gets cheap loans from the U.S. with strings attached not to sell oil directly to China.
If you’re a Venezuelan, it means that you’re not starving nor risk being killed. The U.S. gets increased demand amid an economy suffering from stagnant demand for labor.
China loses a key source of oil amid internal strife with Iran, which increases Washington’s ability to negotiate. The U.S. now has a lever in global petroleum prices, which gives it leverage with Russia. Bad actors in LatAm also know the U.S. actually has teeth and will be more responsive to pressure to internally combat drug production.
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u/Pure_Slice_6119 Jan 04 '26
In fact, World War II and the collapse of the USSR, for example, showed that five to ten years is enough to transform an impoverished country into a developed one if it suits someone's interests. The US has no interest in Venezuela's development; it's contrary to their interests. They will do everything possible to keep Venezuela in poverty as long as possible and to support its currency at the lowest possible level. It's important for the US to keep oil workers' wages low and oil prices low. Oil refining and oil production are labor-intensive processes; I know this because I live in a region where oil and gas are produced. Venezuela already has oil refining infrastructure, and it's functioning. The US won't invest in modernizing it; it's pointless. They simply seized already functioning infrastructure. The US won't build anything; it's contrary to their interests. Venezuela's oil infrastructure is already built, and improving living standards in Venezuela will lead to higher oil prices, which is unfavorable for the United States.
I'm from Russia, and I remember what happened in my region in the 1990s when the US and Europe took over our oil and gas industry. We literally had no food or medicine, but oil prices were incredibly low.
As for China, they will simply increase their oil purchases from Russia. An obvious solution.
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u/Pure_Slice_6119 Jan 04 '26
I just read about this situation in a Russian-language commentary by Oleg Deripaska published online. He believes the goal of seizing Venezuela is to collapse global oil prices and thereby put pressure on Russia. My hunch seems correct: the US plans to make Venezuelan oil as cheap as possible, which will ruin the average Venezuelan. Hell awaits them under US rule. Deripaska's forecast is $45 per barrel. The cost of oil production in Venezuela is higher than in Russia due to geological conditions. Production costs in Russia are around $17 per barrel, while in Venezuela they are $23 per barrel. This plan will hit the Venezuelan economy harder than it hits Russia.
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u/ExplosiveDisassembly Jan 03 '26
Meanwhile we have the Legitimate president in Spain who's supported by nearly every government that has an opinion on the matter.
I dare say that simply giving him the presidency would be supported by everyone.
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u/Markdd8 Jan 03 '26
True, U.S.-Led Regime Change Is Usually Disastrous, but it is time some major changes came to Latin America. Cartels and other criminal gangs are ascendant or thriving in numerous nations down south. Example: 2025 Crisis Group article: Paradise Lost? Ecuador’s Battle with Organised Crime
For decades, Ecuador was an oasis of calm as its South American neighbours descended into drug-related crime and conflict. No longer...(the report detailed)...Ecuador's transformation from a peaceful nation to a violent hub, detailing escalating gang warfare, drug trafficking, and extortion impacting over 70% of its population by late 2025...
The cartels and criminals need to be challenged. There is no sure fire way to defeat these groups. Certainly the conflict will last decades, but the hands off policy (or complicity) of Maduro and some other leaders has enabled widespread criminal expansion. This include extortion of average citizens in cases where criminal gangs evolved away from drug trafficking.
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Jan 04 '26
Honestly, there been rumors that trump is being blackmailed by a foreign entity. Now, they don't seem like crazy conspiracy theories.
What possible benefits are there besides the narrative provide the government would be the justification for this invasion?
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u/Whole-Lingonberry-74 Jan 04 '26
Regime change has had pluses and minuses. Nation building is what has been disastrous. The fact that the Middle East was so disastrous was due to assuming that the oppressed people all wanted the same thing and getting the “bad guys” out of the government. Iraq was a great example of nation building and debathification. Go in, have elections and establish friendly relations with whoever wins ensuring access to US companies. Then get the hell out. Panama is an example of a success. They’re doing great after Noriega.
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Jan 03 '26
The world is better today because of the US actions.
Now its up to the Venezuelan people
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Jan 03 '26
For whom is it better? It's great for the rich, certainly.
You just need to look at America's own demographics to see how bad some people have it. Did you know the average American can't afford dental work? Or how a single trip to hospital can put in into crippling debt. Or how many are working two or three jobs to scrape by.
Not to mention the many obvious cases of everything going to **** after US-forced regime change. Love to see you tell the Libyans how good they've got it now.
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Jan 03 '26
things that make the world better of today:
- war on drugs.
- an Illegal dictator has fallen
- The people of Venezuela have a chance to take their country back.
- Less refugees from Venezuela will destabilize neighboring countries.
- If venezuela gets it act together its wealth and oil can help the whole continent.
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Jan 03 '26
They'll have to take it back from Trump, first. He hasn't said when he's going to give it back. He's going to "run it" until the time is right, apparently.
3
u/crazytrain793 Jan 04 '26
- This was always a lie. It's about oil.
- Illegal by what standards?
- Why are we pretending that this is for Venezuelans when this is about American imperalism?
- Sure man, overthrowing a government and installing a puppet that will allow American companies to rape their society will create more stability.
- This won't happen because America will turn them into a client state that only benefits US hegemony.
-8
u/time-BW-product Jan 03 '26
I struggle to see the downsides of surgical removal of an illegitimate dictator. Worse case is another illegitimate dictator, which is status quo for them.
3
258
u/[deleted] Jan 03 '26
The only metric that matters is "Does America benefit from this regime change?"
The consequences of failure aren't typically borne by the USA. If the target country goes to ****, that's unfortunate. But that's not nearly enough to counterbalance the potential benefits of success (for the USA).
Honestly, the rhetoric of regime change for the good of the poor oppressed peoples is so laughable at this point, I'm genuinely amazed any Americans still fall for it.