The US and Venezuela Are Both Pursuing a Devil’s Bargain

What has followed the forced extraction of Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela is neither transition nor collapse, but takeover. The dictator is gone; the dictatorship is not. Whatever its strategic objectives, the American intervention did not remake Venezuela’s political order; it replaced its commander.

That distinction matters because much commentary about Venezuela has retreated into a kind of moral bookkeeping: One less autocrat in Latin America is counted as a gain; another American military intervention is logged as a loss. This accounting misses that the outcome and the means do not cancel each other out so neatly — and that their meaning demands greater precision. The intervention removed the figurehead without occupying the country. The outcome was not regime change but regime capture. Two early scenes make the point.