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The writer is a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and a professor at the University of Denver
Over the past four months, US President Donald Trump has ordered the largest deployment of US naval and air power in the Caribbean in decades. He has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of fuelling the international drug trade and emptying the country’s prisons to send violent criminals to the US. He has ordered deadly strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats, warning that land operations could come next. He reportedly issued Maduro with an ultimatum demanding that he leave the country by last Friday.
And yet Maduro remains in Caracas. Chavismo — the movement founded by his mentor, Hugo Chávez — has a long history of resisting US attempts to drive it from power. Back in 2019, the first Trump administration imposed crippling oil sanctions, recognised an opposition leader as Venezuela’s rightful president, blocked billions of dollars in assets, and in 2020 moved warships near the country’s coast. Rather than weaken Maduro, this maximum-pressure approach allowed him to further consolidate power and repress dissent.
For years, US foreign-policy hawks have argued that putting more pressure on Caracas — through economic sanctions or the threat of force — would lead the military’s support for the regime to collapse. That strategy has failed once again, leaving its proponents calling for further escalation. This risks embroiling the US in a protracted military conflict with potentially huge human costs.
The rest of the world has a stake in preventing the US from launching a war in Latin America. It is time for key stakeholders, including European and regional governments, to help broker an agreement that avoids a descent into a full-scale conflict. This must address the two concerns that Washington claims prompted this escalation: Venezuela’s participation in the drug trade and its high levels of irregular migration.
Whatever one thinks about Trump’s strategy for fighting drugs, the growth of criminal networks engaged in the transnational drug trade is a global problem that is directly linked to addiction, death and violence across the western hemisphere. Trying to tackle this by focusing on a single country misses the flexibility of these networks. Latin America needs a regional strategy for confronting the drug trade — and Venezuela should be a key participant.
More than two decades ago, Chávez thumbed his nose at the US by suspending co-operation with the Drug Enforcement Agency and fostering an alliance with Colombian guerrillas. Venezuela should now agree to resume anti-narcotics collaboration with the US as part of a regional strategy. Maduro should also renounce any links with irregular armed groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN), and collaborate with other regional governments to dismantle criminal networks, promote demobilisation and tackle the root causes of armed insurgencies.
Any agreement must also address irregular migration. Venezuela’s economic collapse between 2012 and 2020 drove a massive exodus. This has become a regional problem: Colombia is home to nearly 3mn Venezuelans who left home over the past decade.
In order to stem this, Venezuela’s economy must be allowed to recover. This will require ending the sanctions that impede selling oil, its main export, in global markets and helped drive the largest documented peacetime economic collapse in world history. It also means allowing Venezuela’s government to regain access to multilateral funding and technical assistance from the IMF, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.
In return, Maduro should commit to immediate political and economic reforms. First, he should release all political prisoners and create an independent human-rights monitoring authority with international assistance. He should also appoint credible non-partisan boards to manage the central bank and oil industry.
As a Venezuelan who has spent years studying how Chávez and Maduro squandered the largest oil boom in the nation’s history, obliterated democratic institutions and viciously persecuted the opposition, I would like to see Maduro pack up and go. But I know that external attempts to dislodge him have ended up hurting Venezuelans more than the regime. It is time for a more realistic approach. Rather than continue to demand that he leave now, the US and its allies should push for genuine democratic reforms that allow Venezuela’s opposition to participate meaningfully in the political system.
Yes, Maduro lost, and then brazenly stole, the 2024 presidential election. In any democratic country, he would have had to give up power. But Venezuela is not a democracy, and a basic precondition for a peaceful democratic transition is the building of institutions capable of guaranteeing pluralism, basic rights and coexistence. This will require new impartial electoral authorities, international monitors for upcoming local and regional elections and credible guarantees for freedom of expression and political association. Such gradual moves are more likely to open a feasible route for democratisation than the insistence on immediate regime change.
Much thought has been put, unsuccessfully, into trying to build an off-ramp for Maduro to leave power. But the reality is that the one who needs an off-ramp now is Trump. Foreign-policy hawks are trying to corner him into a conflict with no plausible endgame. But there is another route: a deal that addresses the US’s key demands, hastens democratic reforms, and helps both nations walk away from a potentially devastating war.