The stunningly successful U.S. action to capture indicted drug trafficker Nicolas Maduro in the early hours of Jan. 3 was not just the start of a new year. It was also the opening act of the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy, a framework for advancing the “Americas First” Trump doctrine. But beyond the raid itself, ultimate policy success in Venezuela and across the region requires meaningful steps toward democratic restoration.
As Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate on Jan. 28, the administration wants to see “legitimate democratic elections” but that “a transition from autocracy to democracy [is] not linear.” He is right: Continued progress toward transition is the key, as is keeping the Venezuelan people engaged in the battle for democracy after 27 grinding years of chavismo.
There is a path forward. In consultation with the United States, and with sensitivity to the security and logistics conditions on the ground, establishing an electoral timeline would compel observers to acknowledge that current arrangements are temporary and transactional.
As Venezuela’s president-elect, based on the results of elections in 2024 that Maduro baldly stole, Edmundo Gonzalez has the legitimacy and the authority to establish and helm a new council of opposition leaders and others with a mandate to decide the time frame, mechanics, and conditions under which new elections can be held, consistent with Venezuela’s own constitution. Only those who forswear their own candidacies for office and who have not been credibly accused of corruption or abuses should be considered for this critical but transitory role.
Elections have played an outsize role in Venezuela’s recent history, both for good and ill. After failing to seize power by force, Hugo Chavez’s election in 1998 ushered in the authoritarian populist model. He then repeatedly called votes to institutionalize chavismo, co-opting or destroying democratic institutions to eliminate checks and balances and perpetuate his position.
Upon his death in 2013, Chavez’s successor, Maduro, “won” elections with serious irregularities. The democratic opposition next boycotted elections in 2018 when it became clear that participation would merely rubber-stamp Maduro’s legitimacy. Only opportunists and accommodationists ran against Maduro, whose subsequent new mandate then-Sen. Rubio declared “illegitimate.”
Maduro held the most recent elections in July 2024 to maintain the illusion of legitimate governance. He took numerous steps to ensure his own victory, arbitrarily disqualifying his most consequential rival, Maria Corina Machado, who remained untainted by corruption or accommodation. Despite the formidable obstacles to a free and fair election arrayed against them, the opposition ran Gonzalez as a substitute candidate, who prevailed overwhelmingly — as the opposition convincingly demonstrated by posting nationwide electoral tally sheets online. Backfooted, the regime could only respond with deepening repression for 17 months until Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured in January.
Maduro’s departure has now elevated his appointed vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, who, along with her brother Jorge and security chiefs Diosdado Cabello and Vladimir Padrino Lopez, long functioned with Maduro as a ruling junta. Her continuation in power is unpopular with the Venezuelan people, but because the security forces remain under the control of Maduro regime elements, many recognize the impracticality of inaugurating Gonzalez without improved security for him and Machado.
Meanwhile, Rodriguez is working with Washington during the transition, with a priority on revitalizing the energy sector by raising oil and gas production significantly. But that will take time. The longer Rodriguez remains at the helm of what remains an unpopular and repressive regime, the more likely the Venezuelan people will become disillusioned, reducing the public support that, until now, the U.S. has enjoyed by removing Maduro.
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Announcing elections is one thing. Conducting them successfully is another. Institutions including electoral authorities must be reformed, voter lists reviewed, procedures updated. Credible observers will need to be deployed, en masse, throughout Venezuela’s sprawling territory. And a meaningful electoral process will require enabling Venezuela’s diaspora to exercise their right to vote. This cannot happen overnight, nor on the cheap. The process would need to begin well in advance of Election Day.
One of the most important contributions of the National Security Strategy’s focus on the Americas is its call to resource U.S. policy effectively and appropriately. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we are not at the end in Venezuela, nor even at the beginning of the end. But we are, perhaps, at the end of the beginning. The U.S. has won the fight against Maduro. It will take equal purpose and resolve to secure a future of freedom for the Venezuelan people that upholds American interests in a free and prosperous hemisphere.
Eric Farnsworth is a senior associate with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Daniel Twining is the president of the International Republican Institute.