<\/p>\n
In the days after U.S. troops<\/span> hustled Nicol\u00e1s Maduro onto an aircraft in the dead of night, President Trump\u2019s critics were aghast. Not only had the president bypassed Congress in launching an audacious operation to oust a foreign leader, but he was potentially thrusting the United States into a foreign quagmire akin to the counterinsurgent wars he\u2019d once promised to end\u2014ones that had resulted in mass migration, violent chaos, and civil conflict. Venezuela, Democrats and geopolitical analysts warned, could be Iraq 2.0.<\/p>\n Three months later, life in Venezuela has returned to normal, whatever normal is in a nation that has been gripped by turmoil and economic calamity for years. Caraque\u00f1os, as the capital\u2019s residents are known, told me that the streets are quiet. The state has backed off its practice of making widespread arbitrary arrests. Government services and the bleak economic conditions that Venezuelans have been living under haven\u2019t improved much, but there is a sense of optimism that Maduro\u2019s departure brings the possibility of better days. Oil revenue is increasing. And Washington\u2019s handpicked interim authorities, led by Maduro\u2019s vice president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, have rolled out a succession of investor-friendly measures devised by their new North American patrons.<\/p>\n By the metrics the president cares about most\u2014accessing oil and avoiding a protracted, politically damaging conflagration\u2014Trump\u2019s Venezuelan adventure is working. Three months isn\u2019t much time to draw firm conclusions, and much could still go wrong for the United States, the regime, and the Venezuelan people. But for now, the aftermath of the January 3 operation, according to the Trumpian blueprint, is running close to clockwork.<\/p>\n A recent poll<\/a> appears to bear this out. The survey, from AtlasIntel and Bloomberg, shows that nearly 80 percent of Venezuelans think their country is the same or better off now than under Maduro; 54 percent said that greater U.S. influence is positive; 52 percent say that the country\u2019s civil liberties have increased. Trump could only wish for such favorable numbers at home.<\/p>\n With the relative success in Venezuela has come confidence\u2014perhaps too much. Trump\u2019s gambit in Latin America has emboldened the president to trust his instincts on other global targets. Less than two months after the raid on Caracas, he launched a massive military operation against Iran, which has gone anything but smoothly. (In his prime-time address last Wednesday, Trump praised the congenial local \u201cjoint-venture partners\u201d helping him achieve his desired outcome in Venezuela and suggested that that was his model for Tehran.) Within weeks of the start of the Iran war, Trump was publicly ruminating that he wants to see Havana capitulate as Caracas did.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of our worst concerns didn\u2019t come true, but it\u2019s only successful on Trump\u2019s terms, and getting away with it doesn\u2019t make it right,\u201d Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a Democrat and a Marine veteran who\u2019d fought in Iraq, told me about Venezuela. \u201cIt makes it the new normal, and that should terrify every American, because it will encourage the president to try to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n Read: Trump\u2019s eye is already on Cuba <\/a><\/p>\n The conspicuous caveat in Venezuela, of course, is the lack of democratic rights for millions of Venezuelans. For years, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other proponents of replacing Latin America\u2019s leftist strongmen made representative government a central goal. Today, Venezuela remains ruled by unelected leaders\u2014different ones, proceeding cautiously for now, but cut from the same authoritarian cloth. Trump-administration officials told me that they are steering Venezuela toward elections by late 2027 and slowly introducing potentially combustible factors, such as the return of the opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado. Whether their bet that a more gradual transition can deliver democracy and avoid the pitfalls that wholesale political change brought in Iraq, Libya, and Egypt remains to be seen.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look back at all the foreign-policy disasters in U.S. history, this definitely ranks as a success, for now at least,\u201d Phil Gunson, an International Crisis Group analyst who has lived in Caracas for more than 25 years, told me. But Gunson compares post-Maduro Venezuela to an unexploded bomb. \u201cThe chaos which the Trump administration neatly dodged on January 3 is still there,\u201d he added, referring to the possibility for upheaval and armed conflict. \u201cIt could still happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Democratic outrage was not just<\/span> over Maduro\u2019s ouster, which Trump justified as a simple law-enforcement operation to execute a U.S. warrant on drug-trafficking charges. It was also because of how the administration had treated lawmakers in briefings beforehand, denying plans to use the military to seize Maduro and rejecting the suggestion that air strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats<\/a> were a prelude to acting against the Venezuelan leader. (Those strikes were probably illegal, many experts in military and national-security law told me.)<\/p>\n Some of the most pointed critiques came from Democratic lawmakers who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflicts that many veterans now view as a waste of lives and resources. Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, writing on social media on January 3, said that he had seen his fellow Marines die and civilians killed in what he called the \u201cunjustified war\u201d in Iraq and that he faulted Trump for starting another potential misadventure.<\/p>\n I understood those concerns. As a correspondent in Baghdad, I\u2019d watched Iraq struggle to emerge from the devastating insurgency unleashed by the 2003 invasion. In its rush to rid Iraq of threats from Saddam Hussein\u2019s Baath Party, the George W. Bush administration crippled the country\u2019s institutions and paved the way for two decades of civil bloodletting. In Libya, during the 2011 revolution, I\u2019d witnessed how the Obama administration\u2019s failure to appreciate Libyans\u2019 pent-up grievances and the country\u2019s lack of cohesion helped create a failed state that persists today. No two countries are the same, and Latin America is not the Middle East. But regime change as a formula has a bad recent history.<\/p>\n Several Latin America experts, including those who held senior roles in the Biden and Obama administrations, told me that they support the Trump administration\u2019s decision to work with existing Venezuelan authorities and to prioritize the reconstruction of the country\u2019s energy sector. But they questioned the administration\u2019s decision to set aside the results of the 2024 election, which had been won by the democratic opposition, and instead keep the interim authorities in charge until a new vote takes place. And they faulted the Trump administration for its failure to lay out a timeline for political reforms and elections, something they said undermines Venezuelans\u2019 belief that democracy is an integral part of the U.S. agenda.<\/p>\n What many misjudged in January was the pliancy of Maduro\u2019s lieutenants, first among them Rodr\u00edguez, and their readiness to work with the same Yankee government that has been an ever-present boogeyman in their long anti-imperialist struggle.<\/p>\n That acquiescence is most visible in Venezuela\u2019s petroleum sector. Trump referred to oil 19 times during his morning press conference after Maduro\u2019s capture. Venezuela has the world\u2019s largest proven oil reserves. But a mix of sanctions, corruption, and mismanagement has kept its production far below its 1990s peak. Rodr\u00edguez, at Washington\u2019s behest, has overseen rapid steps to loosen nationalist policies imposed under Chavismo, the leftist movement named for Maduro\u2019s predecessor, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez. The National Assembly, controlled by Maduro and Rodriguez\u2019s party, has passed reforms enabling foreign investors to work in Venezuela under more favorable terms. After the U.S. Treasury Department\u2019s approval of measures that allow companies to do business with Venezuela\u2019s state-owned energy company without running afoul of sanctions, Italy\u2019s Eni and Spain\u2019s Repsol announced new deals.<\/p>\n Read: The hostile corporate takeover of an entire country<\/a><\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s management of Venezuela has widened. It started with regular phone calls between Rubio and Rodr\u00edguez. It now includes vetting regime spending requests from oil revenues, which are deposited in a U.S. account. American officials\u2014including Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and General Francis Donovan, the head of U.S. Southern Command\u2014have visited Caracas. Last week, the State Department announced that the U.S. embassy in Caracas, empty since 2019, had officially resumed operations.<\/p>\n For the Trump administration, the arrangement is pretty ideal: pliant local authorities running what resembles a private business with little institutional or democratic resistance in implementing the will of global investors. Burgum, speaking at an oil conference last month, recounted the discussion he and mining executives had had in Caracas with Rodr\u00edguez and her brother, Jorge, about proposed mining legislation. \u201cDelcy said to the U.S. executives, \u2018Well, tell us what you want in the bill. We\u2019re introducing it on Saturday,\u2019\u201d Burgum said. \u201cSo then they take the feedback. It gets introduced. Her brother is the president of the senate. I said to him, \u2018Is the bill going to pass?\u2019 And he had a short answer: \u2018Yes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Energy experts told me that the scale of production and investment in the oil sector will likely fall short of Trump\u2019s $100 billion goal. They expect output to rise, at best, by about 300,000 barrels a day in the next year or two, from roughly 1 million barrels a day now. The Trump administration will also need to find a way to push Russian and Chinese companies, which currently account for 22 percent of Venezuela\u2019s oil production, out of their current contracts, Francisco Monaldi, director of Rice University\u2019s Latin American energy program, told me. But the biggest obstacle may be international executives\u2019 concern about Venezuela\u2019s overall trajectory. After living through the turbulence of Venezuela\u2019s modern history\u2014Exxon had its holdings seized twice\u2014executives want provisions for international arbitration, clearer royalty and tax regimes, and more information about where the country is headed.<\/p>\n One senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share his assessment, told me that the Trump administration had anticipated that economic improvements wouldn\u2019t happen overnight. \u201cThis is not a GLP-1 for the Venezuelan economy,\u201d the official said, referring to Ozempic and its equivalents, which produce rapid weight-loss results. Officials say that they know Venezuela is still a long game.<\/p>\n The fate of Venezuela<\/span> has special importance for Rubio, who has made the restoration of democracy in his family\u2019s native Cuba and other parts of Latin America a central part of his political career. Rubio spoke movingly in 2019, when a popular uprising against Maduro appeared to be on the cusp of success, about the freedoms every Venezuelan deserves. Voters who care about Latin America may credit Rubio for removing Maduro if the secretary of state makes another presidential run, but they will also weigh the longer-term outcome for Venezuelans.<\/p>\n So far, Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s actions suggest an openness to political reform but not a rush to return to democracy. State agents are no longer stopping people on the streets to check their phone for anti-Maduro content, as they were in the initial days after his capture. Surveillance of activists continues, but not arrests at the same scale. The government has overseen the passage of a law providing amnesty to some political prisoners and has established a high-level commission to foster national reconciliation. Rodr\u00edguez has also ordered the release of scores of political prisoners, something the Trump administration has identified as a key metric. But watchdog groups say that the government\u2019s release tallies are inflated, and Foro Penal, a respected human-rights organization, reported last month that roughly 500 political prisoners remain behind bars. Many amnesty petitions have been denied, particularly of people linked to Machado or her party. Pro-democracy activists say more action is needed to ensure meaningful change.<\/p>\n Last month, Rodr\u00edguez ousted one of the most notorious figures of the Maduro era, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino L\u00f3pez. But his replacement has been sanctioned by the United States for human-rights abuses. Rodr\u00edguez has also kept in place a figure central to Maduro\u2019s repression campaign, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. Like Padrino L\u00f3pez, he is under U.S. indictment on drug-trafficking charges. Both men deny the allegations.<\/p>\n