The Case for Ending Maduro’s Rule

Washington has spent over ten years being lectured by the same class of foreign policy caretakers who confuse timidity with wisdom. They warned that pressuring Maduro would spark chaos, that confronting a narcostate would destabilize the region, that any assertive move by the United States would summon ghosts from a century ago. They sold fear as strategy. They were wrong every time. And the loudest of them, Juan González, was a political adviser elevated into a national security role he was never qualified to hold. He built a career insisting that the United States must tiptoe around a regime that murders its people and shelters America’s adversaries. The region paid the price for his education.

Maduro’s Venezuela is not a stubborn dictatorship waiting for the right incentive package. It is a criminal hub run by a man who treats state power as a franchise leased to foreign intelligence services and armed groups. Russian technicians advise the security services. Iranian operatives use Venezuelan territory as a platform. Hezbollah’s financiers move money through the state like it is a private bank. Cocaine corridors run through military protection. Gold is extracted by armed factions tied to the regime. This is not a sovereign nation in crisis. It is a hostile enterprise with a flag.

Every argument against confronting Maduro depends on pretending this reality does not exist. The critics warn that removing him would unleash violence, that there is no plan for what comes after, that the cure is worse than the disease. They say this with straight faces while Venezuela collapses in front of them. Eight million people fled. Entire border regions fell to criminal control. The humanitarian disaster reached American cities. Foreign adversaries entrenched themselves where the United States once held influence. If this is stability, then words have lost all meaning.

The question of what happens after Maduro is not the intellectual puzzle they pretend it is. Venezuela does not require American troops or a decade of occupation. It requires the one ingredient Maduro has denied for years. Breathing room. The regime survives because Cuban intelligence smothers any internal fracture before it can form. Remove that shield and factions inside the Venezuelan military, which have always been more divided than outsiders admit, will finally be able to calculate their interests without foreign handlers standing over their shoulder. The country has democratic muscle memory. It has opposition leaders, judges and technocrats who have not disappeared, only been forced underground. The vacuum argument is a scare tactic used by people who do not want to admit the failure of their own approach.

The real vacuum is the one created by a decade of American hesitation. It allowed Russia, Iran and criminal organizations to fill the space where U.S. influence once sat. That did not happen because Washington was too aggressive. It happened because Washington was too afraid to be clear. The critics kept repeating that pressure would backfire. Meanwhile Maduro consolidated power, expanded criminal partnerships and became the most insulated dictator in the hemisphere. They mistook their own fear for geopolitical insight.

The United States has a strategic interest in ensuring that a criminal regime aligned with hostile powers does not harden into a permanent fixture in the Caribbean Basin. Ending Maduro’s rule is not adventurism. It is the logical correction to a decade of drift. It requires leverage, coordination with regional partners and a credible American posture that signals the era of free passes is over. It requires understanding that deterrence only works when the other side believes you have a spine.

Maduro has never respected dialogue. He respects force that does not blink. The only reason he has survived this long is because too many in Washington tried to manage him like an angry mayor instead of a dictator with foreign intelligence services on speed dial. Juan González and the cohort who thought a friendly approach would soften a cartel state were not practicing diplomacy. They were practicing avoidance. The results speak for themselves.

Maduro’s removal is not a reckless gamble. It is the first step toward restoring stability in a region already destabilized by his criminal rule. American security depends on it. Regional order depends on it. The only people still insisting otherwise are the same ones who helped create this mess by confusing academic theory with strategy. Their caution delivered failure. Strength is the only path that has not yet been tried. #Venezuela #Maduro #NationalSecurity #HemisphereSecurity #USPolicy #AmericanLeadership #StrategicClarity #ForeignPolicy #LatinAmerica #Geopolitics #Intelligence #CriminalStates #Narcostate #Deterrence #CrisisResponse #SecurityThreats #RestoringOrder #DemocracyDefense #FailedDoctrine #EnoughIsEnough #StrengthMatters #EndTheRegime