After Maduro: The Real Test Begins

Can Trump make Venezuela great again?

It's a provocative question, but not an unreasonable one now that Nicolás Maduro is out of power, in U.S. custody, and the United States has announced it will oversee the country's transition. The moment demands honesty: even when the U.S. intervenes with the best of intentions, the outcomes in these other nations haven't always been improvements. That's not an indictment of America or its motives—it's simply an acknowledgement of history.

I say this as someone who generally supports efforts to remove destructive leaders. When bad actors hold power, ordinary people pay the price. And if there's one thing I've learned from talking to people across the world online, it's that most of us—regardless of culture, religion, or geography—want the same basic things. We want stability. We want opportunity. We want a future for our children and our grandchildren greater than our own.

And we want to live in general safety and comfort.

The tragedy is that those universal desires often get twisted by those who rule. Power thrives on division. Leaders manufacture enemies, crises, and threats because fear is a reliable tool for control. It keeps people distracted, divided and dependent.

Now that Maduro is gone, I want us to get this one right. I'd prefer we got all of them right, but this is the moment in front of us. And the stakes aren't about America's reputation or some future trophy on a shelf. They're about the people of Venezuela—people who have endured decades of hardship, corruption, and collapse.

This was once one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America. Today, many Venezuelans live with shortages of basic goods, a shattered economy, and a daily grind that's a constant struggle for mere survival. They deserve more than that. They deserve a chance to rebuild, to breathe, and to hope again.

Frankly, all people deserve that.

With Maduro removed, that chance exists—but it's fragile. How the U.S. chooses to intervene will ultimately now shape whether Venezuela rises or sinks further. Our actions can accelerate recovery or derail it. It depends on the strategy, the execution, and—most importantly—how the Venezuelan people themselves perceive and participate in the process.

As for the reasons behind the U.S. action, opinions will vary widely. But across political lines, there's broad agreement on at least one point—or perhaps there should be. Maduro's leadership has not served the Venezuelan people well, nor has it contributed positively to regional stability. His documented involvement in narcoterrorism has had devastating consequences far beyond Venezuela's borders.

What the U.S. will need to confront first is the machinery of the drug cartels. That won't be a simple task. It's similar to when we try to extinguish power in other countries from well-funded and well-organized terror groups or tribes—take the Taliban in Afghanistan for example, or what we've dealt with in the past with deep factions of ISIS or Al-Qaeda.

These networks aren't just criminal enterprises—they're woven into the fabric of daily life. For all its oil wealth, Venezuela's functional economy for ordinary people has long been the drug trade. The profits from oil have propped up those operations, not the Venezuelan people. And when the only reliable path to survival is joining a gang or entering a criminal pipeline, the cycle becomes self-perpetuating.

Will dismantling these networks end the drug war? Of course not. Cartels are adaptable. They'll shift operations to places where U.S. influence is weaker, and they have the money, infrastructure, and ruthlessness to do it. That's the reality.

But there's a deeper question we rarely grapple with: what replaces that economy? How do you build a system where people don't have to rely on crime to feed their families? Too often, that's where our interventions fall short. We focus on removing the bad actors but not on creating sustainable alternatives that change where the money flows and who benefits from it.

Think of it the way we would if a major industry in the United States suddenly disappeared. Something has to take its place. And when that industry collapses, the people who depended on it are forced to adapt. They have to find a new path, learn new skills, and adjust to an entirely different economic reality.

If Venezuela is going to rebuild, it needs more than security operations. It needs an economic foundation that gives people a reason to choose something other than the lifeline provided by the cartels—a future where legitimate work and legitimate opportunity is not only possible but preferable.  That's the part we have to get right, or everything else collapses back into the same old patterns.

If real opportunity is returned to the people of Venezuela—opportunity they can see, touch, and trust—then the cartels and other factions lose their grip. They can no longer offer what legitimate society fails to provide. When people have a future they can build, the power of those who prey on desperation begins to fade.

Fail to do this, and all we've done is to push the problem a little further down the road.

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© 2026 Jim Bauer