How do you do regime change without changing the regime?

That is the conundrum facing President Trump following his announcement that the United States would run the government of Venezuela “until such time as a proper transition can take place” — date to be determined.

Coming from a president who has mocked American military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump’s declaration was almost as surprising as the lightening-strike operation itself, which led to the arrest of Venezuela’s autocratic president, Nicholas Maduro, on drug trafficking charges.

Set aside for a moment very legitimate questions about whether the invasion violated international law. Or whether it was ill advised for the administration to conduct a high-risk raid without first notifying the congressional leaders who ultimately must support funding an occupation. (Trump insists they could not be trusted to keep mum.)

What seems most perplexing about the Trump administration’s still vague strategy is that it apparently doesn’t include what might have been its strongest selling point: installing the widely supported Venezuelan opposition to govern Venezuela post-Maduro.

That opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, the 2025 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, overwhelmingly won national elections in 2024 even after Maduro’s government barred Machado from running. When her replacement on the ballot, Edmundo González, handily won the presidency, Maduro, without evidence, declared the results invalid.

Yet for reasons that remain unexplained, Trump declared on Saturday that Machado “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” That means his occupation strategy rests on the cooperation of the rump Maduro regime led by Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, who has called Maduro’s arrest “illegal” and “shameful.”

“If there is something the Venezuelan people will never be again, it is slaves or the colony of an empire,” Rodriguez said on Saturday while flanked by other Maduro cronies who have carried out the regime’s oppressive policies, including the defense minister and head of the national police.

How then does Trump expect to bend an entire country’s government to his will without placing a significant number of U.S. troops and civilian officials in harm’s way, a la Iraq 2003? Does he really believe that the U.S. oil industry can undertake the long, complicated and very expensive process of rebuilding Venezuela’s petroleum infrastructure without the support of a stable government in Caracas? Or that Maduro loyalists won’t work tirelessly to sabotage American plans?

Indeed, does he even have an actual strategy for a post-Maduro Venezuela? Or were his remarks on Saturday another case of the president free-associating in public? Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to backtrack on Sunday, saying the U.S. would not in fact run Venezuela but would use an oil quarantine to pressure the country’s government.

What is perhaps most infuriating about the Trump administration’s heedlessness is that plenty of people around the world are glad to see Maduro gone, including many of the Venezuelans he has driven into exile. Since Maduro assumed power with the death of his patron, Hugo Chavez, in 2013, his authoritarian and inept government has oppressed and impoverished the country, leaving a once prosperous oil industry in shambles and driving nearly 8 million people to flee.

Leave it to Trump, then, to step on his own applause lines by denigrating Machado and making the entire operation sound like a favor to American petroleum companies. “Our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world,” Trump said on Saturday, will “spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure and start making money for the country.” Did he mean Venezuela, the United States or both? Hard to tell.

Some Trump critics speculate that the president has refused to endorse Machado because he resents her winning the Nobel Peace Prize instead of him. Maybe. But he might also recognize that an actually democratic government would be harder to control than an autocratic one that is motivated first and foremost by fear of being killed by the U.S. military.

Trump himself on Saturday noted that there would be a “second wave” of military action if the U.S. runs into resistance.

As military operations go, Saturday’s takedown was spectacular. In just a matter of hours, American commandos backed by scores of aircraft swooped into a heavily fortified Venezuelan military base and extracted Maduro and his wife without a single American death.

But if we have learned anything from Trump 2.0, it is that this president too often turns first to the military to accomplish his goals, domestic or international. Yet even seasoned military officers will tell you that the military should be just one tool — think hammer — for accomplishing a government’s aims. Competent diplomats, bureaucrats, subject-matter experts and NGOs are essential, too.

It is not impossible that the administration will correct its course and make the Venezuelan opposition a centerpiece of a post-Maduro government. Until then, the world is stuck with the consequences of a regime that has lost its leader but lives stubbornly on.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/01/04/opinion/venezuela-trump-regime-change/

— The Boston Globe