President Donald Trump is working through acting President Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela rather than immediately installing the opposition. This has generated some criticism that Trump will preserve the Chavista regime.
Recent developments suggest otherwise.
Addressing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that “This is not a frozen dinner. You don’t put it in a microwave, and two and a half minutes later it’s ready.” Rubio admitted the current Venezuelan leadership includes figures who fall outside U.S. democratic standards. But he argued that Washington is engaging those who control key state institutions as part of what he described as a transition toward political stabilization.
Washington’s approach reflects hard lessons. The 2003 invasion of Iraq dissolved state institutions and purged government structures, fueling sectarian violence. The rapid overthrow of the Taliban did not prevent 20 years of grinding war in Afghanistan, nor the organization’s eventual return. The 2011 intervention in Libya led to a civil war that continues today.
In Venezuela, with no U.S. troops in the country and no plan for long-term occupation, the Trump administration fears a sudden power vacuum that could push rival factions into open conflict. In Venezuela, the military penetrates every layer of society, from state institutions to the economy. The opposition may have prepared to govern and even mapped out a transition, but power rested with those who control the guns.
Venezuela had almost two centuries of military dominance and repeated coups. In 1998, Hugo Chavez, a former army officer who led a failed 1992 coup, won the presidency, promoting loyalists and inserting the military into the state’s economic structure. Chavez served as the unifying force managing competing elite factions until he died in 2013, after which his successor, Nicolas Maduro, acted more as a referee among power centers. Senior military figures consolidated around Diosdado Cabello, a former soldier and longtime Chavez ally, and Vladimir Padrino Lopez, who has commanded the armed forces as defense minister since 2014.
In this system, trust is a scarce commodity. Rodriguez stands between a rock and a hard place as she attempts to consolidate power in Caracas. Her authority hinges on both satisfying Washington’s demands and managing a security apparatus that previously answered to Maduro. She has begun appointing loyalists to key government positions, but whether she can succeed in taking control is an open question. With Maduro now detained in New York, military commanders and regime officials are recalculating their allegiances.
For the time being, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has adjusted to this new reality. She appears to have reached a pragmatic understanding that Washington’s approach serves her ultimate objectives even if it denies the opposition immediate power. Machado has acted accordingly, courting the administration, carefully avoiding public confrontation and hoping that Trump’s pressure on Rodriguez will deliver dividends toward eventual democracy.
Ultimately, her calculation relies on the rationale that Maduro’s capture exposed a weakness from which Chavismo cannot endure. She will hope that subsequent American demands to open the political system and liberalize the economy will shake up the Chavez center’s power structure. Chavismo built its legitimacy on anti-American resistance, using confrontation with Washington to justify economic failures at home, mobilize supporters, and find allies such as Russia, China, and Iran abroad. This ideological foundation cannot coexist with cooperation on American terms. Each concession Rodriguez makes erodes the narrative that sustained the regime through economic and social collapse.
TRUMP OFFICIALS WORK TO EASE TENSIONS IN MINNEAPOLIS AS SECRETIVE NEGOTIATIONS PROGRESS
Signs are already appearing of this shift. Rodriguez has opened oil fields to foreign investment, secured the unfreezing of sanctioned funds, strengthened legal protections for foreign business ownership, released approximately 250 political prisoners, and overseen the departure of Cuban security and intelligence personnel.
Washington and the opposition are betting that Chavismo’s survival tactics will turn into an act of political suicide. Gradually, Rodriguez will have to open the system to opposition activity, further liberalize the economy, and allow foreign investors. The regime will then lose control, and the transition will follow.