The Venezuelan narco-state poses a clear threat to America’s security and prosperity. Two decades of socialism have destroyed this once wealthy country, spreading instability and transnational crime across the Western Hemisphere. After four years of appeasement under President Joe Biden, we cannot afford to ignore the problem any longer.
President Donald Trump is sending a clear and necessary message to the Maduro regime that its days of destabilizing the Western Hemisphere with impunity are over. Trump is putting drug traffickers around the world on notice. Let’s be clear: Venezuelan narco-terrorists and their drug shipments represent a threat to the American people. Trump has both the right and the responsibility to use military force to stop them.
In many ways, Trump’s approach is a continuation of the tough policies we pursued during my tenure as secretary of state under the first Trump administration. We recognized the dangers that this narco-trafficking dictatorship, aligned with American enemies like Iran, Cuba, China, and Russia, posed to our interests, and we were determined to do the necessary to protect the American people.
That’s why we initiated a pressure campaign to isolate the regime and raise the costs for Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro by crippling the country’s ability to export its biggest sources of revenue – cutting oil exports by 70% in just a few years. The Trump Justice Department indicted Maduro and his cronies on charges of narco-terrorism and drug trafficking, and the administration expanded its counter-narcotics operations targeting drug routes from Venezuela.
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We also put our support firmly behind the Venezuelan democratic opposition: When Maduro stole the 2019 presidential election from pro-democracy opposition candidate Juan Guaidó, we took the bold step of recognizing Guaidó as the rightful president of Venezuela and led diplomatic efforts to galvanize other countries to follow suit.
Unfortunately, those policies were abandoned by the Biden administration, and American deterrence promptly collapsed. Sanctions were removed or eased, throwing the regime a lifeline and emboldening Maduro to steal yet another election in 2024. Alex Saab – the alleged bagman for Maduro and Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, reportedly responsible for moving billions in money, gold and weapons between Venezuela and Iran – was released by the Biden administration as part of a prisoner swap in an act of rank appeasement that handed a major victory to the Maduro regime.
Meanwhile, the continued disintegration of the Venezuelan economy, combined with Biden’s de facto open border policy, brought hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants to the United States, including notorious gangs like Tren de Aragua. Maduro even leveraged the migrant flow to extract concessions from the U.S. and secure his hold on power.
Thankfully, Trump is starting to get things back on track. In addition to the targeted strikes on drug traffickers and the military buildup in the Caribbean, the new administration has canceled the oil concessions granted under Biden, imposed secondary tariffs on countries that purchase oil from Venezuela, doubled the reward for Maduro’s arrest as leader of the Cartel de los Soles, and gone after the Tren de Aragua. As his Venezuela strategy continues to coalesce around a more confrontational approach, a few key principles should guide us.
The United States should be clear that Maduro is illegitimate and throw our support behind the democratic opposition movement led by Maria Corina Machado. Maduro has remained in power by stealing not one, but two elections, and has no popular legitimacy whatsoever. Genuine democratic reform, while by no means easy to achieve, is the only way that Venezuela will set itself up for success in the future and become a source of prosperity and partnership rather than violence and instability.
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What’s more, we must understand that there can be no accommodation with Maduro’s regime, which threatens core American interests by destabilizing the entire region and exporting transnational crime to our shores. Accordingly, our strategy should use every available pressure point – including sanctions and kinetic actions where appropriate – to constrain the Venezuelan government’s ability to conduct business as usual.
Finally, we must remember that America’s adversaries want nothing more than for the U.S. to disengage in Latin America and elsewhere. While Venezuela’s collapse is causing even dedicated allies like China and Russia to take a step back, any situation in which the Maduro regime is able to stabilize will invite reengagement from the world’s worst actors and create an unacceptable threat extremely close to our borders.
As President Trump’s new National Security Strategy argues, it’s well past time we reasserted and enforced the Monroe Doctrine to protect American interests in the Western Hemisphere and prevent our adversaries from gaining the ability to project power in the Americas.
Venezuela’s collapse is yet another example of the inevitable endpoint of socialism: autocracy, economic disaster and spiraling instability. The longer the Maduro regime remains in place, the worse the situation will become for Venezuelans, neighboring countries in Latin America and for the entire Western Hemisphere. Our strategy must reflect that understanding and empower the administration to deploy every tool available to protect and advance American interests.
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