Will history vindicate or condemn the capture of Maduro?

Whether history vindicates or condemns Nicolás Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces in Caracas will ultimately depend on the midrange outcome, and certainly not on the result of his trial in New York. If the entire operation only leads to replacing one thug with his previous and equally brutal and corrupt associates, to indefinitely postponing the return of democratic rule in Venezuela, to violence and chaos in the streets, and to plundering the country’s resources for the benefit of American corporations, then the initial reaction everywhere, probably including Venezuela, will harden and last: It was an illegal kidnapping with no benefit for the peoples of Venezuela, the United States or Latin America. Conversely, if political prisoners are freed promptly, if elections are held soon — not later than six months from now — if an acceptable deal is reached regarding who receives the fruits of increased oil production — with most of the cash flow going to a democratic Venezuelan government — and if some form of transitional justice is achieved with regard to the Chavista regime, then most countries and historians will set aside initial reservations about the lawfulness and motivation for the strike, and recall the ultimate benefits. Right now, I would bet on the first outcome, not on the second. But I do not discard the latter.

Jorge Castañeda is a former secretary of foreign affairs of Mexico.

History won’t be kind to Donald Trump.

Imagine Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping watching CNN earlier this week to try and understand what Donald Trump was up to in Venezuela. On comes Stephen Miller, the homeland security adviser, to speak about the decision to capture Nicolás Maduro. And Miller tells the anchor, Jake Tapper: “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Putin and Xi beam. “Yes,” they tell themselves. “We live in this real world.” Putin calls Trump and tells him he can have Venezuela, even its oil. “But stop asking me to give up Ukraine,” he adds. Trump agrees. Xi doesn’t even bother calling Trump. The way to blockading Taiwan and taking control of the South China Sea is now wide open. And if Trump objects? Xi will simply say: “We live in a world, in the real world, Donald, that is governed by strength, by force and by power.” China has the power here, Xi goes on: “Because you squandered your legitimacy and antagonized your allies. And in Asia, China calls the shots.”

Ivo Daalder is a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center.

President Trump’s operation to forcibly remove Nicolás Maduro and blackmail the Venezuelan government into an oil deal was a violation of international law and a brutal use of economic and physical force to impose a vision of U.S. dominance over the Americas that we have not seen since the time of Theodore Roosevelt.

Yet when all is said and done, what is probably most relevant about this intervention is that the United States is lifting sanctions on Venezuelan oil without Chavismo leaving power.

If we look past President Trump’s rhetoric, what seems to be emerging is a preferential trade deal between Venezuela and the United States that effectively reverses the decision taken by the Trump administration in 2019 to bar U.S. purchases of Venezuelan oil.

Surely, this arrangement is unlikely to be as favorable to Venezuela as a full, unconditional lifting of sanctions would have been. But neither the prior Trump administration nor the Biden administration allowed Venezuela to sell oil to the rest of the world on its own terms. Bringing large levels of investment into the Venezuelan oil industry in order to ramp up production will generate significant additional oil revenues, which, if used to fund imports, will lead to an economic recovery.

While much remains to be seen — and the devil is always in the details — it appears increasingly likely that Venezuela will grow strongly in the coming years as a result of this plan. Whether this growth can be combined with a transition to democracy, or whether we will instead end up with an authoritarian U.S. ally in the region, remains an open question.

Francisco Rodríguez is a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of “The Collapse of Venezuela: Scorched Earth Politics and Economic Decline, 2012-2020.”

History will reflect fondly on the end of Maduro’s tyranny over Venezuela, but poorly on the way it transpired — with military force, under questionable legal authority, driven by a craving for oil, and without a plan for what comes next. Some Venezuelans are understandably daring to hope for the first time in decades, but achieving long-shot odds of success requires policy smarts and a good deal of luck — and Trump’s approach is already creating headwinds.

First, the administration’s reprisal of the Monroe Doctrine — an 1800s policy with a dark legacy of attempted U.S. dominance by force over Latin America — is breeding distrust and resentment and undercutting U.S. influence in the region.

Trump, meanwhile, is fixated on Venezuela’s once-prosperous oil sector. But oil executives are — with good reason — hesitant to invest, concerned about legal guarantees and physical security. Risks of corruption and backroom dealing are high.

Rule of law is foundational for economic prosperity. But democratically elected Edmundo González and opposition leader María Corina Machado have been cut out, calling into question our commitment to democracy and whether Maduro’s ouster will indeed lead to a future where the Venezuelan people have a say and where their rights are respected.

Emily Mendrala is a senior adviser to Dinámica Americas. She was a deputy assistant to the president, senior adviser on migration, and coordinator for the Southwest border at the White House from 2023 to 2024.

If Venezuela is liberated from repression and develops a thriving institutionalized and legitimate government, the Trump administration could be lauded for developing a cost-effective strategy for reshaping the international order that the American public would support and unshackling American power from the barnacling of accrued international constraint. More likely, though, actions like the capture of Maduro will eventually be seen as an unfortunate historical inflection point: the end of the American order. Collapsing the norms of U.S. behavior — which prevented hedging against American power and encouraged historically unprecedented voluntary cooperation that made the U.S. safe and prosperous — could well leave the U.S. distrusted, isolated and unassisted by others.

Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

History will condemn Maduro’s capture, but not for the reasons one might think. Maduro was a dictator who ruled with an iron fist. Venezuela and its people are certainly better off without him. And following his ouster, the country could conceivably find its way to a promising, even prosperous future where families are reunited, the economy recovers, poverty disappears and democracy returns. It’s an improbable outcome, taking the history of such U.S.-led interventions in Latin America and elsewhere into account. Yet it’s not impossible. That would suggest vindication through the lens of history.

But as history and a vast literature on transitions from authoritarian rule show, the means of a transition powerfully determine its end. And a unilateral, armed, foreign-led intervention bodes poorly not only for Venezuela, but for the world at large. Especially considering what the Trump administration plans for a post-Maduro Venezuela: a vassal state induced to do its bidding literally at gunpoint. That opens the door to a pure power competition where diplomacy is dead and only the rule of the strongest applies. Even if the future somehow proves to be bright for Venezuela, the consequences for basic principles of law, order and sovereignty are too severe to view as anything but ominous.

Alejandro Velasco is associate dean of faculty and an associate professor at New York University and the author of “Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela.”

If Nicolás Maduro’s capture leads to durable stabilization in Venezuela, historians might eventually judge it as a bold break with a brutal past. In that scenario, removing a corrupt and repressive regime could crack open a closed political system, creating space for institutional renewal, economic recovery and a credible transition. A post-Maduro Venezuela that reintegrated into democratic norms, rebuilt state capacity and responsibly tapped its energy resources could reshape the strategic landscape in the Western Hemisphere and validate a more assertive U.S. role.

But that optimistic outcome is far from assured. The power structures that sustained the regime for over two decades remain intact, and the early days after the operation have seen rising violence and intensified repression rather than liberalization. The interim leadership under Delcy Rodríguez faces deep internal fractures and an absence of legitimacy. The Trump administration’s pledge to “run” Venezuela — especially its oil industry — implies a degree of oversight and engagement that the United States has historically struggled to sustain without a presence on the ground. With a midterm election year ahead, deploying and maintaining troops or security forces at scale is politically and practically unlikely. Without such presence, managing Venezuela’s security and reconstruction will be profoundly difficult. If these conditions persist, history is more likely to condemn the capture as an overreach that substituted coercion for sustainable order.

Juan Gonzalez is a resident fellow at the Georgetown Americas Institute. He previously served as National Security Council senior director for the Western Hemisphere in the Biden administration.