Two things can be true at the same time.
It can be good that Maduro is gone.
And it can still be wrong for the U.S. to decide it was our right to remove him.
What if China had swooped into Caracas and dragged Maduro to Beijing after meeting him just hours earlier? Russia?
Regime change isn’t noble just because you agree with the result. If the roles were reversed - if Russia or China had done this - Americans wouldn’t be debating nuance — we’d be calling it blatant aggression. History shows the powerful rarely stop at “removing a bad guy” once they’ve crossed the line into military intervention.
Sovereignty matters - not just who wins.
What’s happening in Venezuela fits a pattern that’s been repeated for decades – crisis isn’t an accident, it’s leverage.
The U.S. has a long history of intervening when governments challenge its strategic or economic interests. Sometimes that meant coups. Sometimes assassinations. Sometimes invasions.
Usually a combined effort between the CIA to destabilize, the World Bank and IMF to give a predatory loan to the new government and then US corporations entering the country.
Full control.
In the modern era, it often means sanctions, financial isolation, diplomatic delegitimization, and support for alternative power structures.
The method evolves. The objective doesn’t.
Venezuela didn’t collapse in a vacuum. Years of corruption and mismanagement weakened the state – then external pressure finished the job. Sanctions choked oil revenue, restricted access to global finance, and accelerated economic breakdown. Once institutions fail and people are desperate, political outcomes become easier to shape.
This isn’t unique.
Chile didn’t “choose” Pinochet – the U.S. actively destabilized Allende before backing a coup. Iran didn’t lose Mossadegh organically – he was removed after nationalizing oil. Guatemala, Brazil, Iraq – different countries, same logic. Crisis creates openings. Openings get exploited.
Regime change doesn’t usually announce itself. It arrives disguised as concern – for democracy, for stability, for human rights – after pressure has already hollowed out the state.
By the time the outcome arrives, it’s framed as inevitable.
Venezuela today isn’t about Maduro.
It’s certainly not about helping the Venezuelan people (although that may be a positive side effect).
It’s about a system that repeatedly uses economic pain and political chaos as tools to assume control.
Shock doesn’t just break societies – it makes them malleable.
And history shows that once a playbook works, powerful actors don’t abandon it.
They perfect it.
Welcome to the USA.