In the wake of the narco-regime’s takedown, five lessons emerge — for the region, for the U.S., and for the world.
Venezuela’s corrupt leaders got away with it for too long. They sent forth millions of their own citizenry to be trafficked, and they got away with it. They trafficked the drugs that killed and addicted millions of our neighbors and family, and they got away with it. They formed alliances with cartels dealing in goods and people, and they got away with it. They entered into the business of narco-terrorism, and they got away with it. They invited the worst enemies of the United States into the Americas — the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians — and they got away with it. They did all this for years, and they got away with it.
They got away with it until the dark hours of January 3, 2026.
Almost exactly 36 years since the last time the United States of America took down an illegitimate narco-regime in Latin America, after a generation of quiescence, American hard power is back as the arbiting force of the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine is back, the Roosevelt Corollary is back, and the newly proclaimed Trump Corollary is in full effect. The governing document is not the Rio Pact, but the Melian Dialogue. In other words, diplomacy and the conventions of international relations remain, but they are undergirded — and superseded as required — by the venerable logic of interest and hard power.
Ask Nicolás Maduro — that is, if you can get to him in the prison in New York City. Ask Venezuela’s acting leader, Delcy Rodriguez, if she’s willing to speak freely in Caracas, where she knows the Americans can come and go at will.
Speculation on what comes next will be overtaken by events, even if we are grasping toward some clarity in these early days. However, we can make some observations now, by mere virtue of the fact that this American raid upon Venezuela was tried — and won.
Five lessons from Venezuela, therefore, present themselves.
First, we must understand that the United States has set itself against not just a particular regime in Venezuela, but against a particular class of regime that has taken root across the hemisphere in this century. This is the estado de narco, the state-cartel alliance, in which a (nearly always leftist) regime forms a synthesis with cartels for the benefit of both. It characterizes Venezuela’s regime, and it characterizes the regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mexico as well. The Mexican state has done its best to escape Venezuela’s fate by delivering cartel leadership to the Americans while protecting its complicit politicians, but the sight of U.S. Army aviation over Caracas ought to lead them to wonder if it’s enough. It shouldn’t be. So too ought the regimes in Havana and Managua consider whether they are next. By their nature, these regimes are intolerable to the United States and to the hemisphere at large. That much has long been known. What’s new is that we are doing something about it.
Second, we should know that the United States has learned the lessons of what gets called “regime change,” which has gotten a bad name in the past generation. That bad name is mostly deserved, although occasionally overstated: The overall American record of installing and/or nurturing new regimes abroad in the past century is on the net-positive side. What changed in the past quarter-century was our post-Cold War arrogance, in which statecraft was cast aside in favor of maximal utopianism: There is a long way from Douglas MacArthur retaining Emperor Hirohito in 1945 to Donald Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissing a Taliban peace offer in 2001. Another change was one of venue, in venturing forth into Islamic societies with sufficient cohesion and confidence to be impervious to our appeals and examples alike. The decision to work with and through the odious Delcy Rodriguez, until lately Maduro’s own deputy, reflects this. The democratic alternative in the movement of the indisputably brave and virtuous María Corina Machado could pass every test in the eyes of American policymakers except that of prudence. In a Venezuela run by warlords, the possessor of the mechanisms of force takes precedence over the possessor of popular legitimacy.
Third, we should understand that for all the legitimate concerns over an eclipsing of the American armed forces by the Chinese rival, the United States still possesses the world’s best military. This is not a mere patriotic affirmation, but a demonstrable truth. The People’s Liberation Army simply could not mount an operation like this, by reason of the absence of an experiential basis: There is no institutional learning present to inform, for example, objective planning and feedback, to say nothing of special operations. The Russians, for their part, would likely have suffered the same fate they did at Hostomel in 2022. America’s military challenges are real, and operational excellence is only one element of national power, but Americans can rest assured that its brilliance in this area is unparalleled.
Fourth, we must grasp that the enemy in Venezuela and in the other narco states of Latin America is not just the local regimes and local cartels. It is also their sponsors, partners, supporters, and counselors from other nations. Some are in our hemisphere: for example, Mexico’s material support, sending oil and refined products, to the dictatorship in Communist Cuba; or Mexico’s diplomatic support for dictatorship, condemning the United States for bringing the Venezuelan dictator to justice; or Cuba’s “advisors” and “doctors” throughout both Mexico and Venezuela. Others are from outside the hemisphere: Russian arms or personnel in Mexico, Venezuela, and beyond; Chinese facilities or personnel in Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela; and Iranian-affiliated networks in Venezuela and beyond. The layered air-defense network over Caracas which the United States defeated on January 3 was Russian in origin, not Venezuelan. These are the antagonists for which the Monroe Doctrine was formulated.
Fifth and finally, this is not the end, although in the Churchillian phrase it may be the end of the beginning. For Venezuela, the Delcy Rodriguez era will be fraught even in the best case and will require the closest possible attention from U.S. policymakers. For the Western Hemisphere, there are other estados de narco which must be dealt with, and other extrahemispheric powers which must be expelled. For America, there is a realization that the military presence in the Caribbean Basin must be made permanent, preferably through congressional mandate. Never again can we afford to repeat the mistake of the past generation, in which we surrendered to complacency and the illusion of history’s end. To these ends, there are more missions to come. Chinooks over Caracas is not a moment, but a harbinger.
They got away with it for too long. But their day is over. America, in the Americas, is back.
