The Caracas Conundrum

The Caracas Conundrum 

By Lawrence W. Reed 

For a few hours yesterday morning (Saturday, January 3, 2026), I was as thrilled as any freedom-loving Venezuelan to know that Nicolas Maduro was out of power in Caracas and on his way to a courtroom in New York.

The extraction procedure was performed to near-flawless perfection by American forces. I applaud their courage, professionalism, and precision. If it emboldens the brave people of Iran to overthrow the mullahs, which some observers argue it just might, that would be a nice bonus.

Then I watched President Trump’s news conference at 11:00 am. A surgical strike suddenly morphed into what sounded like the “nation-building” nonsense that neo-cons dragged us into before and that Trump campaigned against.

The U.S. would “run” Venezuela for—well, we don’t know for how long. Days, weeks, months, years? Trump didn’t say, but clearly the Venezuela operation is not going to be like last June’s strikes on Iran. Those were quick. In and out. Mission accomplished in minutes. No boots on the ground. No “running” anything. No forever war. Given the threat, an eminently defensible undertaking.

The President didn’t tell us much more about what “running” Venezuela looks like, but he plainly expects Caracas to do what Washington demands. And for the moment at least, he’s willing to trust Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, to carry out those orders through the existing apparatus of the corrupt Venezuelan thugocracy. He seems to like her more than Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel laureate who courageously resisted the regime for years but, says Trump, is not “respected” in her homeland. This is absurd.

What about Edmundo González, who won Venezuela’s presidential election decisively in July 2024 but was defrauded of victory by Maduro? He wasn’t even mentioned at the Trump news conference.

At the same time that he said he’s not afraid to put “boots on the ground,” Trump declared that “We’re going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.” Exactly how one foreign power does that to another without boots on the ground is more than a little unclear. Trump is right to note that the nationalizations by Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez “stole” properties owned by American companies but that’s a risk those companies took. U.S. taxpayers did not.

“It won’t cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial. We’re going to get reimbursed for everything that we spend,” the President assured us. I don’t know about you, but as a U.S. taxpayer, I never signed up for spending anything to fix Venezuelan oil infrastructure, whether my tax dollars are ever reimbursed or not.

All the bellicose talk at the news conference of Venezuelans doing what we tell them, threats to strike more targets and take their oil, etc., just gave millions of opponents of American gunboat diplomacy all the ammunition they ever hoped for. It runs a huge risk of turning a great moment for freedom into an indefensible quagmire.

It left me scratching my head, asking myself “Why not ask regional friendly powers to do the job on the ground to help Venezuela transition peacefully?” I could imagine a coalition from Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador, for example, getting involved. They’re run by anti-socialist leaders, they speak the same language, and it’s their backyard. Maybe for any number of reasons that scenario would be unrealistic or unworkable, but surely, it’s not as fanciful as the U.S. “running” the country.

Perhaps the Trump administration has thought this through more thoroughly than the news conference suggested. Maybe with a little further thought, Trump will back off and dig himself out of this potential hole. Cooler heads may yet forestall an expensive American “occupation” of Venezuela. But quagmires always begin with grandiose rhetoric and assurances that take forever to materialize, if at all.

I will always celebrate the end of the Maduro regime because I know that millions of freedom-loving Venezuelans are doing the same. I hope and pray for the best, but I don’t know where things are going from here. The President’s news conference didn’t help.

(See How Venezuelans Can Recover from the Sickness of Socialism.)

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(Lawrence W. Reed is President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty at the Foundation for Economic Education in Atlanta, Georgia. He blogs at www.lawrencewreed.com.)