Maduro is gone. Now what?

Maduro’s removal proved something Washington has spent years pretending not to know. A criminal regime does not require a Normandy landing to break. It requires clarity about what it is, the will to treat it that way, and an operation designed to end, not to sprawl.

For years, the professional doubters sold the same story. If you move against Maduro, it will be another Vietnam. If you touch Caracas, the region will explode. If you act decisively, you will own the country forever. Those people were not cautious, they were invested in paralysis. Now that the regime’s center has been cut out without a massive U.S. invasion, they have switched costumes and are chanting “illegal” and “Venezuela at risk,” as if Venezuela has not been at risk for a decade under a narco-state that hollowed out institutions, exported refugees, and turned sovereignty into a shield for crime.

This is not about personality. It is about state capture. The central fact, the one every serious person has tiptoed around for too long, is that Maduro’s Venezuela did not behave like a normal government that sometimes breaks the rules. It behaved like an organized criminal enterprise that occasionally held press conferences. When that is the operating model, the normal diplomatic toolkit becomes a form of protection for the predators. Sanctions become a nuisance. Negotiations become a pressure-release valve. “International community” statements become background noise. Meanwhile the regime keeps collecting rent from trafficking, sanctions evasion, and foreign patrons who like having a beachhead in the hemisphere.

So yes, Venezuela is at risk now, because regime change is inherently volatile. But Venezuela was already at risk. The argument that you must preserve a criminal regime to avoid the instability caused by removing it is not realism. It is surrender. It is the moral inversion modern foreign policy elites have perfected: protect the coercive machine because dismantling it might cause disruption, then call yourself principled for defending “rules.”

If you want to argue law, argue law. But do not pretend the only two options were to leave Maduro in place forever or to invade with a hundred thousand troops. Today discredited that binary. The question now is whether the United States will manage the aftermath with discipline, or whether it will do what Washington so often does, win the opening move and then drift into improvisation, optics, and bureaucracy.

Here is what should happen next, not in theory, in a sequence that matches how power actually works.

In the next 72 hours, the administration needs to establish a single, unified U.S. interagency command for Venezuela stabilization, not a committee, not a press shop, an accountable lead with authorities and a real chain of command. State handles diplomacy, Treasury handles sanctions and assets, DOJ handles prosecutions, DHS handles migration and screening, DoD and SOUTHCOM handle contingency support, DEA and IC elements handle counternarcotics and regime remnants. The point is integration. The number one threat in the immediate period is not some grand Russian response, it is bureaucratic fragmentation that creates seams for bad actors to exploit.

At the same time, the United States should communicate a clear posture to Venezuelan security forces: stand down, protect infrastructure, maintain order, and you will have a path forward if you were not complicit in major crimes. Resist, loot, or attack civilians and you will be treated like the regime you served. That message must be backed by immediate targeting of financial networks and travel, not speeches. Officers behave based on incentives and fear. Give them both, calibrated.

Within the first two weeks, you need a Venezuelan-led interim governing framework that is credible enough to keep people in the streets from turning into factions, and specific enough to stop opportunists from claiming authority by force. Do not romanticize the opposition, politics is messy everywhere, but you can set minimum bars: public commitments to a transitional timeline, transparent management of state revenue, independent election preparation, and a request for international monitoring that is not a permission slip for foreign vetoes. The goal is legitimacy through competence, not legitimacy through slogans.

Also within those two weeks, lock down the money. The fastest way to lose the moral high ground is to let the narrative become “they did this for oil.” That means creating a temporary, auditable mechanism for handling Venezuela’s oil revenue and sovereign assets, with clear rules that prevent looting by remnants and prevent capture by new elites. Oil revenue should be used for stabilization, humanitarian relief, and rebuilding, not as a prize for whoever can seize a ministry. If you want Venezuelans to believe this was for them, act like adults with their national balance sheet.

Then comes the hard part, the part where fantasies die. Security.

In the first month, the interim government will need a plan to keep armed groups, regime loyalists, and criminal networks from filling the vacuum. That starts with a vetted internal security architecture and a targeted demobilization approach. Blanket purges produce insurgencies. Blanket amnesties produce impunity and revenge cycles. The answer is triage: identify the small set of operators who must be removed from the system permanently, build a process for lower-level reintegration, and focus security resources on critical infrastructure, ports, oil facilities, border crossings, and major urban corridors.

The United States should support this without putting American troops on street corners. Intelligence sharing, logistics, planning support, limited advisory presence, and regional coordination are the right tools. Work with capable neighbors who have direct exposure to spillover, and structure the support so it cannot be framed as a U.S. occupation. Assistance should be conditional and measurable. If local forces cannot protect civilians and infrastructure, nothing else will matter.

Economic stabilization should run on a separate track from politics. Venezuela will need immediate measures to restore basic services, stabilize currency conditions, and get energy infrastructure functioning. The private sector will return only if property rights are credible, contracts are enforceable, and corruption is punished, not normalized. Reconstruction money must come with anti-corruption controls that are practical, not performative. Transparent procurement, third-party audits, and enforcement that actually bites are more important than any grand “anti-corruption commission” press release.

Migration will surge before it improves. Plan for it. Coordinate with regional partners and U.S. domestic agencies now, not after images hit television. Set up screening, humanitarian corridors, and temporary protections where appropriate, paired with serious enforcement against trafficking networks that prey on migrants. A transition that collapses into chaos at the borders will lose regional support quickly, and losing regional support is how adversaries re-enter the story.

Finally, do not let the narrative be stolen. The United States should say plainly what it did and why it did it, and then stop talking. The message is simple: a criminal regime that harmed its own people and exported crime is no longer protected by diplomatic theater. Venezuela belongs to Venezuelans, and the goal is a stable transition, elections, and reconstruction. Then the administration should let Venezuelans take the microphone.

One sentence for the people still clinging to the old script.

They promised Vietnam because they could not imagine American competence.

Now they promise illegality and chaos because they cannot admit the old regime was the chaos.

The operation mattered. The aftermath will decide whether it was a turning point or just a headline. The minimum bar for seriousness is discipline: secure the country, lock down the money, build a transitional authority, and set a real path to elections and reconstruction. Anything less, and the vacuum will do what vacuums always do.

It will fill with criminals.