Caracas Chronicles

U.S. warships sailing around the Caribbean have sparked hope again for millions of Venezuelans. But the illusion of absolute liberation is a mirage that has burned them before.

As Donald Trump frames Maduro as a narco-terrorist threat—a man who fuses repression, socialism, and narco-trafficking into a toxic brew exported northward—he becomes the chimera of an asymmetrical war: the lion’s head of gangs, the goat’s body of drugs, and the serpent’s tail of criminal migrants wreaking havoc on U.S. cities.

The buildup has so far been a calibrated pressure campaign, but the strikes on narco-speedboats are symbolic. What’s next? A strike on Venezuelan soil against narco-infrastructure, or something more?

This is the vision floated by Latin America scholar R. Evan Ellis, who suggests a “Just Cause-like operation” to seize Maduro and dismantle the Cartel de los Soles. Just Cause in 1989 removed Manuel Noriega with 27,000 troops in a few weeks. With congressional testimony and books to his name, Ellis’s voice carries weight in Washington.

The Wall Street Journal has now all but greenlighted action, arguing the flotilla of U.S. warships “can’t be there merely to shoot at a few motor boats.” It portrays Venezuela as a hub of hemispheric crime, while noting an opposition too battered to succeed on its own.

Without clear U.S. political will and an opposition able to act on its own, they risk becoming another Bay of Pigs or April 2002.

The subtext however, is clear: Washington has the justification and the hardware, and the moment is ripe. In effect, Maduro is being cast as a twenty-first-century Saddam Hussein—more than a local tyrant, he is portrayed as a hemispheric menace whose removal could justify extraordinary measures.

But recent history offers sobering lessons. In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces toppled regimes only to sink into protracted insurgencies. In Ukraine and Gaza, Washington has backed allies confronting existential wars with no quick settlement. Confronting a threat is far easier than containing the chaos that follows. Are we about to add Venezuela to the list of endless crises?

Cautionary tales

The Bay of Pigs in 1961 was the first warning. Cuban exiles trained by the CIA believed the U.S. would back them once they hit the beach. Kennedy’s ambiguity encouraged the gamble. Castro was ready. When air support never came, the invasion collapsed in three days, leaving Castro stronger and U.S. credibility shattered.

Panama in 1989 followed a similar script. Sanctions and denunciations made Panamanian officers assume Washington would back them. Major Moisés Giroldi told plotters, “the gringos are with us.” On October 3 his men captured Noriega, but U.S. Southern Command stood by. Washington hesitated, Giroldi was exposed, and loyalists crushed the coup in what became the Albrook Massacre. Noriega’s grip tightened until the U.S. invaded that December.

Fast forward to Caracas, April 2002. Venezuela’s fractured opposition, encouraged by years of U.S. criticism of Hugo Chávez, believed recognition would follow if they seized power. I was then at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas and witnessed those hours firsthand. What doomed them was not U.S. hesitation but the first example of the opposition’s chronic fissures. Rivalries and mistrust tore apart the fragile coalition. Within 48 hours, Chávez was restored, stronger than ever.

What might look like an easy military victory on paper would feel, on the ground, like the unraveling of society itself.

What unites these episodes is the danger of misreading Washington. In Cuba and Panama, ambiguity created false expectations. In Venezuela, hopes for recognition collapsed under opposition rivalries. Yet the outcome was the same: the opposition decapitated; the dictator more secure.

That is why today’s show of force matters. Trump’s destroyers and F-35s can look like the opening of another “Just Cause.” But without clear U.S. political will and an opposition able to act on its own, they risk becoming another Bay of Pigs or April 2002.

Humanitarian cataclysm

The Wall Street Journal ignores what happens if Maduro falls. No mention of Venezuela’s hollowed-out institutions, the military’s fractured loyalties, or the potential for irregulars to wage insurgency. By sidestepping these realities, the editorial treats regime removal as an end in itself—without grappling with the vacuum that would follow.

Ellis concedes transition would be perilous but underplays the abyss. Today, 70% of Venezuelans live in multidimensional poverty and over 5 million require humanitarian aid. Venezuelans already live collapse daily: dark kitchens where the fridge hasn’t worked in months, water tanks that run dry for weeks, families skipping meals to stretch rations.

A miscalculation could trigger another refugee wave of millions, eclipsing Syria’s crisis and overwhelming Colombia, Brazil and other countries in the region. What might look like an easy military victory on paper would feel, on the ground, like the unraveling of society itself.

The view from Caracas

Inside Venezuela, Maduro tries to engage with Trump while rallying militias against phantom invasions. Yet the more Washington frames his rule as a cartel rather than a government, the narrower its options become.

Cutting off one tentacle doesn’t kill the hydra. A decapitation strike on Maduro would not bring stability but unleash fragmentation—generals, the criminal actors along the Colombia-Venezuela border, armed colectivos, and foreign enablers scrambling for turf in a war of all against all.

Trump and Maduro are finding utility in each other—locked in confrontation, but careful never to tip into a full crisis.

Rumors of swift resolution—whether by invasion or sudden collapse—say less about strategy than about desperation. In reality, the regime is resilient and the risks immense. Maduro’s instinct has always been to buy time, never to resolve. That may be his only true survival strategy. Meanwhile, the opposition waits on the sidelines. They want regime change without risk. They tout “day after” plans as if viable, but their 25-year record of failure undercuts every promise.

The next steps in Washington’s psychological war could be strikes on narco-targets in Venezuelan waters or territory. The opposition might see them as a prelude to Maduro’s fall. But if they mistake symbolism for direct intervention, history suggests they will be crushed—and Venezuelans will pay the price.

Yes, U.S. forces could topple the regime quickly. But they would then own the aftermath. For now, the regime remains what it has long been: a costly headache, corrosive but not catastrophic. Trump and Maduro are finding utility in each other—locked in confrontation, but careful never to tip into a full crisis.

The vision of U.S. liberation is stirring, but stirring is not the same as wise. Washington does have options—sharper sanctions, real tariff enforcement, freezing Chevron’s role, OAS-monitored humanitarian corridors, diaspora-led governance initiatives—but they hinge on patience, and on an opposition willing to share the risk.

For Venezuelans, the tragedy is that intervention tempts outsiders to gamble with their fate. In Panama, the gamble ended with Just Cause and the restoration of democracy—but Venezuela is no Panama. Here, history warns that coups collapse, regimes survive, and ordinary people are left to pick up the wreckage. Hubris doesn’t bring freedom, it breeds reckoning.