Venezuela is once again on the brink of a historic turning point. After years of economic ruin, institutional collapse, and political polarization, the regime of Nicolas Maduro appears to be facing external pressure the likes of which the country has not seen in decades. The United States is ramping up its military and intelligence operations in the region, the opposition is radicalizing, and much of the population is desperate for a way out of the crisis.
But behind the growing expectations of a sudden change of power lies a complex and dangerous reality. Venezuela is a country where armed groups, a divided opposition, and a military loyal to the regime can turn any change into uncontrollable chaos. And the assumption that Maduro’s fall will automatically pave the way for democracy is far from guaranteed.
This article by Phil Gunson, senior Andean analyst at the International Crisis Group, examines not only external pressures and internal dynamics, but also the most dangerous question of all: What really comes after Maduro—and is the world ready for it?
Tensions over Venezuela are rising again after the United States increased its military presence in the southern Caribbean and signaled its readiness to exert direct pressure on the regime of Nicolas Maduro. Convinced that the Venezuelan president is in a political and institutional crisis, American and opposition officials are openly talking about an imminent change of power. But as expectations grow, a number of experts warn that a sudden collapse of the regime could lead to chaos and violence.
According to many officials in Washington, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is in a critical situation. The US has built its largest naval presence in the southern Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s, is destroying boats it says are carrying drugs, and has sent the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford to the region. In October, President Donald Trump even authorized the CIA to launch covert operations in Venezuela.
Senior members of Trump’s team insist that Maduro is losing support and will soon either resign or be overthrown by his own military. Former US ambassador to Venezuela James Story summed up the administration’s view in Politico: “Expel him, extradite him, or send him to meet his Maker.”
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October, is no less confident that the regime’s end is near. "With or without negotiations, Maduro is leaving," she said after receiving the award. Machado has openly supported U.S. military pressure on the regime, though she is convinced that a full-scale invasion would not be necessary.
"Maduro started this war, and Trump is finishing it," she said earlier this month. Senior figures in the Venezuelan government are closely monitoring the situation as the possibility of targeted strikes by drones, missiles or other U.S. assets grows. While Trump has long championed a more restrained foreign policy, the US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in June showed that the administration is prepared to act beyond its borders when it deems necessary.
Why a violent ouster could lead to chaos
While a clear majority of Venezuelans want Maduro removed, the assumption that a violent ouster would lead to a swift and smooth transition to democracy is naive and dangerous. The country is full of armed groups that would oppose the regime’s collapse and undermine any attempt to restore the rule of law.
There is also a risk that Maduro’s loyalist generals could install an even more repressive figure in power. Without a clear and viable post-regime strategy, a violent transition could lead to even deeper repression, violence, and suffering for Venezuelan citizens.
Instead of trying to force Maduro to surrender at gunpoint, Americans and the opposition should focus on the only strategy likely to lead to a sustainable, peaceful transition: comprehensive, internationally-backed negotiations. Such talks would be challenging and would take time. With a $50 million bounty on his head, a pending U.S. grand jury indictment for drug trafficking, and an ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court for possible crimes against humanity, the Venezuelan president knows he is safe to stay where he is. In other words, the conditions for diplomacy are not yet in place. But violent shortcuts are likely to only make matters worse.
The Rise of the Hardline Opposition
The mainstream Venezuelan opposition has not always been dominated by hawks. Over the past two decades, influence has oscillated between moderate and hardline factions. But in 2014, when María Corina Machado was still a relatively peripheral figure, she and two other leading opposition politicians broke with the moderate leadership and began pushing for a strategy they called la salida—"the exit." This led to months of mass protests aimed at forcing Nicolás Maduro to resign immediately.
The regime responded with extreme brutality, killing 43 people. Similar large-scale demonstrations in 2017 and 2019 ended in the same way: with repression and no real change. Machado thus concluded that Maduro's overthrow could not be achieved through internal pressure and that external military intervention was necessary.
Divisions in the opposition and the debate over foreign intervention
Many other influential opponents of Maduro categorically disagreed with this view. The US-backed parallel opposition government, which claimed to be the legitimate leadership of Venezuela between 2019 and 2023, combined moderates and hardliners, although with limited influence.
Machado, who remained outside this structure, sharply criticized the interim government for its refusal to call for regional military intervention with a mandate under the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance - better known as the Rio Treaty. This is a collective security pact in the Western Hemisphere that Venezuela signed in 1947, although Maduro later publicly repudiated it.
The collapse of the parallel government and the rise of Machado
The collapse of the interim structure in late 2022 and the subsequent exile of its leader, Juan Guaidó, discredited most of the figures associated with it. Machado, however, remained unaffected - thanks to her distancing herself from Guaidó's government and her reputation as a politician who does not compromise with Maduro.
Despite her long-standing tendency to take direct action in the face of electoral competition, she recognized the moment and decided to lead the opposition through the democratic process. In October 2023, Machado won the presidential primary by a landslide and became the candidate of the main opposition coalition, the Democratic Bloc, for the July 2024 presidential election.
Machado was immediately disqualified from running by Maduro's government. She eventually agreed to support another candidate, retired diplomat Edmundo González, and campaigned with him despite the many obstacles the government placed in her way. González won more than twice as many votes as Maduro, according to the opposition's strictly verified official figures. However, the government refused to recognize the result, and Maduro was sworn in for another term.
After the authorities declared him the winner, thousands of angry voters took to the streets in protest. But Machado and her team failed to seize the moment. A senior Machado adviser, Carlos Blanco, admitted in a recent interview that the team had thought the outcome of the July 2024 election would force Maduro to negotiate his departure. Instead, government forces killed more than 20 protesters and jailed more than 2,000 others in the days after the vote. Dissidents have learned their lesson. Fear of reprisals has, for now at least, crippled the opposition’s ability to mobilize the masses.
Machado’s failure to unseat Maduro has led to a decline in her approval ratings among voters. But she remains popular and exudes optimism. As a leading pollster in Caracas explained to me, while Venezuelans are skeptical that Machado can deliver on her promises—trust in her has fallen by half since before the 2024 election—“her image remains strong. She can recover if things change.” In other words, if the United States successfully enforces regime change and the opposition manages to seize power, Machado is in a position to be the main beneficiary.
Venezuelans Struggle for Survival
Amidst threats of U.S. intervention, fears of intensified repression, and a lack of confidence in the opposition’s next moves, Venezuelans find themselves facing another destabilizing crisis: massive economic hardship. Venezuela’s economy, which has been growing in the past few years after collapsing between 2013 and 2021 to about a quarter of its previous size due to economic mismanagement, falling oil prices, and U.S. sanctions, is once again showing signs of serious strain.
According to the International Monetary Fund, annual inflation, which was in double digits last year alone, is expected to rise to nearly 700 percent in 2026. The gap between the government’s official exchange rate and the parallel rate, the market rate used for unofficial transactions, has widened rapidly, suggesting that the national currency is highly overvalued. In January 2025, the two rates were almost identical; today, the official rate of 226 bolivars to the dollar is far below the parallel rate of more than 300 to 1.
The minimum wage of 130 bolivars per month, now worth less than a U.S. dollar, is too low to allow workers to survive. Even with large bonuses, many public sector employees rarely earn more than the equivalent of $100 per month. It now costs about five times as much to feed a family in Venezuela.
The government in Caracas denies that the economy is in dire straits. Indeed, in October, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez boasted that the country had experienced 18 consecutive quarters of GDP growth and projected growth of 8.5% this year—a wildly optimistic statistic based largely on increased oil production. But 80% of Venezuelans live in poverty, and the middle class is disappearing. An estimated eight million Venezuelans have fled the country in recent years, mostly because they can no longer afford to live there.
Given the scale of the hardship, many Venezuelans are ready to support a violent end to Maduro’s rule, as long as it is swift. That has emboldened many opposition supporters to support any approach that could hasten regime change, regardless of the risks. Machado’s allies dismiss talk of potential instability after a government collapse as scaremongering and accuse critics of U.S. military intervention of being Maduro sympathizers. But such an attitude is dangerous.
What could come after Maduro
No matter how bad the Maduro regime is, some of Venezuela’s possible future developments could be worse. If a powerful military faction were to determine that Maduro is passive and move to replace him, there is no reason to believe that its first choice would be to empower hardline opposition leaders like Machado. One possible outcome is the installation of an equally repressive—and perhaps even less competent—regime.
Maduro’s fall could also enable the rise of Venezuela’s diverse non-state armed groups, including Colombian guerrillas and criminal gangs. These powerful organizations fear what might happen after the end of the current regime and are likely to resist any restoration of the rule of law. The National Liberation Army, a Colombian Marxist guerrilla group that took up arms in the 1960s, may have thousands of armed fighters in Venezuela. To the extent that these fighters have been kept under control under Maduro, it is because of the organization’s alliance with the current government. The same is true of other armed groups. So-called collectivos, gangs of armed civilian bandits who serve leading politicians, are entrenched in several major cities. Despite Trump’s claims, Maduro is not the head of the infamous "Tren de Aragua", a powerful criminal network that has spread throughout the Venezuelan diaspora over the past decade and that Trump has officially designated a terrorist group. But government officials have benefited from close ties to the gang. After Maduro became president in 2013, his government began trying to curb the rising number of killings by signing nonaggression pacts with the "Tren de Aragua" and other armed groups, an agreement that ultimately allowed them to become more powerful. Recently, Chilean prosecutors alleged that Caracas hired members of the gang to kill a Venezuelan dissident in exile.
The precarious stability between these groups and the government is likely to unravel with Maduro's departure, especially if the change comes suddenly and questions the control that the president's allies have over the levers of power. As Juan Gonzalez, a former senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden on Latin America, has noted, the conditions in Venezuela are ripe for a prolonged, low-intensity war. This could make Venezuela look more like Colombia or Mexico, filled with targeted killings, bombings, and occasional street fighting, but without the stable elected government that exists in Bogota or Mexico City.
Machado has spoken confidently about an ambitious 100-day plan she has drawn up that includes restoring institutional governance, stabilizing the economy, reforming the armed forces and addressing a humanitarian crisis fueled by poverty. But if the Trump administration refuses to send significant U.S. ground forces to Venezuela, the emerging opposition government will be dependent on the same generals it now accuses of running drug cartels.
Machado and others say many military officers are ready to defect to her side, which would mean that in the event of a coup, Maduro could be handed over to U.S. authorities. But such assumptions have proven unfounded in the past. In 2019, a few months after the interim government was formed, Guaido and other opposition leaders waited in vain outside a military base in Caracas for the coup they were told would follow, but which never happened.
Machado may be right in predicting that some military personnel would support her if she were to win power. But it is unlikely that all of them would. And if the military splits into competing factions, or if a post-Maduro administration disbands the military and dismisses civilian officials, the chances of violent chaos will increase further. A Machado-Gonzalez government without sufficient military support, domestic or foreign, is unlikely to be able to fend off a campaign of violence by armed groups seeking to destabilize it.
Enduring democracy
The greatest successes of the Venezuelan opposition in the 25 years since Hugo Chavez, Maduro's mentor and predecessor, became president in 1999 have been achieved through negotiations and voting, not violence. In a 2007 referendum, citizens successfully rejected Chávez’s attempt to enshrine socialism in the Venezuelan constitution.
The 2015 legislative elections produced a united opposition of more than a dozen parties, with a majority that would have allowed them to change the composition of the country’s Supreme Court and the electoral authority in their favor, had the government not stripped parliament of its power as a way to thwart an opposition takeover. And although Maduro remains president after losing the 2024 election, that election may be the opposition’s biggest political victory yet. By collecting and digitizing more than 80 percent of the vote, Maduro’s opponents presented irrefutable evidence that the president has no legitimate claim to power.
Negotiations led by international mediators have also created an opportunity for the opposition to make gains. It was the so-called Barbados Accords between the government and the opposition Democratic Unitary Platform in October 2023, supported by the Biden administration’s offer to ease sanctions on the country, that paved the way for Machado’s victory in the primary elections this month and Gonzalez’s triumph in the presidential elections in July 2024. Maduro agreed to international election monitoring only because it was part of the terms of those agreements.
Instead of encouraging them to build on their successes, these victories have pushed opposition hardliners to take faster paths to overthrow Maduro. In doing so, they risk repeating the same mistake that Maduro’s opponents made when they formed the interim government in 2019: entrusting a strategy to a foreign power with overlapping but fundamentally different goals. Machado and others are pushing for the rule of law and an end to Chavez’s failed legacy, but the United States is focused on curbing drug trafficking, migration, energy spending, and China’s expansion in the region. That means Washington is unlikely to give the opposition the liberation it seeks, even if U.S. troops invade. Trump has again spoken of resuming talks with Maduro, offering a glimmer of hope for diplomacy. But such a strategy is likely to work only if Washington and Venezuela’s hardline opposition understand that a transition of power is a gradual process, not a one-time event.
In other words, Venezuela cannot quickly become a free country. No matter how unreliable Maduro’s government is at the negotiating table, attempting to force regime change through violence will ultimately undermine the goal of both the opposition and the vast majority of Venezuelans to create a safe, stable, and rule-of-law system to replace Maduro’s rule. Trying to take a shortcut could leave the country even worse off than it is today.