The case for overthrowing Maduro

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela at a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela, Sept. 15, 2025. President Donald Trump has yet to make a decision, but his advisers are pressing a range of objectives — from attacking drug cartels to seizing oil fields — to try to justify ousting Maduro. (Adriana Loureiro Fernández/The New York Times)

By BRET STEPHENS

Donald Trump said Friday that he had “sort of” made up his mind about his plan for Venezuela, but he “can’t tell you what it would be.” With an aircraft carrier strike group and some 15,000 service personnel deployed to the region, it’s sort of hard to imagine that the president’s decision will be to stand down and go home.

I’ve been outspoken in calling on the administration to act against Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship in Caracas — a column I wrote in January ran under the headline “Depose Maduro.” With war looming, possibly within days, it’s worth making the case again — and thinking through the ways it could go wrong.

Let’s take it point by point.

Is there a vital American interest at stake? There is, and it’s not just the one the administration keeps talking about: drugs.

Not that there’s much doubt that the regime is deeply implicated in the drug trade, even if there are questions about whether Maduro runs an actual cartel. The most careful analysis I know of, a 2022 report by the InSight Crime think tank, notes that the “principal role” of the president and his henchmen is “to ensure the drug trafficking system functions to the benefit of the regime by placing corrupt and loyal personnel in strategic political and military positions.”

But the larger challenge posed by Maduro’s regime is that it is both an importer and exporter of instability. An importer, because the regime’s close economic and strategic ties to China, Russia and Iran give America’s enemies a significant foothold in the Americas — one that Tehran reportedly could use for the production of kamikaze drones. An exporter, because the regime’s catastrophic misgovernance has generated a mass exodus of refugees and migrants — nearly 8 million so far — with ruinous results throughout the hemisphere. Both trends will continue for as long as the regime remains in power.

Are there viable alternatives to conflict? Economic sanctions against the regime in Trump’s first term have worked about as well as economic sanctions usually do — immiserating ordinary people while allowing the regime to entrench itself through its control of ever-scarcer goods. The Biden administration sought detente with the regime by easing some of those sanctions, only to reinstate them after concluding that Maduro had reneged on promises of democratic reforms. Last year’s elections, which the opposition won in a rout, were stolen. The opposition leader María Corina Machado, winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, lives in hiding.

That leaves two plausible alternatives. The first, suggested by Maduro, is to give the United States a stake in Venezuela’s vast mineral wealth, effectively in exchange for allowing him to stay in power. To my surprise, Trump rejected that quasi-colonialist bargain. The second is to use a show of force to persuade Maduro and his senior officials to flee the country, much as Syria’s Bashar Assad and his cronies did. To my surprise, too, that hasn’t happened, either. At least not yet. On Sunday, Trump said he was mulling talks with Maduro, perhaps to make that latter option more attractive.

Is there a moral case for regime change? Outside of North Korea, few governments have produced more misery for more of their own people than Venezuela’s. Starvation, political brutality, corruption, social collapse, endemic violence, collapse of the medical system, environmental catastrophes — the only thing more shocking than the self-destruction of this once-rich country is the relative indifference to the catastrophe, at least among the usual do-gooders who otherwise like to anguish over the plight of others. Why hasn’t Greta Thunberg set sail to Caracas with symbolic deliveries of food?

Any morally serious person should want this to end. The serious question is whether American intervention would make things even worse.

Could this turn into another fiasco? Intervention means war, and war means death: Even the swift and effective overthrow of Panama’s Manuel Noriega in 1989 led to the loss of 26 Americans and several hundred Panamanians. Maduro’s better-armed forces might put up a serious fight. Or they could retreat to the hinterland and start an insurgency, perhaps by joining up with the narco-insurgents across the border in Colombia.

The law of unintended consequences is unrepealable. But there are also important differences between Venezuela and Iraq or Libya. These include a democratically elected leader, Edmundo González, who could govern with immediate legitimacy and broad public support. They include Trump’s clear reluctance to put U.S. boots on the ground for any extended period. And they include the fact that we can learn from our past mistakes, not least by promising immediate amnesty and jobs for soldiers, police officers and civil servants in the current regime who aren’t implicated in its crimes.

What is the balance of risk? Unintended consequences must be weighed against the predictable risks of inaction. If Trump stands down or conducts limited strikes against sites connected to the drug trade while allowing Maduro to survive, the Venezuelan dictator will see it, rightly, as a resounding victory and vindication. The U.S. will have succeeded only in strengthening his determination to hold on to power rather than relinquish it. And Trump’s hesitation will be read, especially in Moscow and Beijing, as a telling signal of weakness that can only embolden them, just as President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan did.

What is to be done? Maduro should be given a final chance to board a flight with whomever and whatever he can take with him and leave unharmed and unpursued — whether to Havana or Moscow or another friendly capital. Barring that, he deserves the Noriega treatment: capture and transfer to the U.S. to face charges, accompanied by the destruction of Venezuela’s air defenses and command-and-control capabilities, the seizure of its major military bases and arrest warrants for all senior officers — with promises of leniency for those who turn themselves in.

“If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna,” Napoleon is said to have told one of his generals. Same for Caracas, Mr. President.