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Earlier this week, Nicolás Maduro’s vice president was sworn in as Venezuela’s president in a ceremony attended by the same officials who have led the regime for years. The country’s senior military commanders were present, along with the interior minister who oversees much of the state’s repressive security apparatus. Also on hand to congratulate her were the most powerful ambassadors in Caracas, from Russia to China to Iran.
Despite the successful operation by our military and intelligence community that took Nicolás Maduro into federal custody, control of the Venezuelan state has not meaningfully shifted. The same individuals continue to command the institutions that matter.
That continuity has consequences. The networks tied to drug trafficking and official corruption remain entrenched in the government, as do the conditions that have driven more than seven million people to flee the country, many of them to the United States or to neighboring countries like Colombia and Peru. The American adversaries most invested in preserving this system remain actively engaged.
AFTER MADURO, VENEZUELA POWER VACUUM EXPOSES BRUTAL INSIDERS AND ENFORCERS
Changing that reality is far more complex than the removal of a single leader. It would mean reforming Venezuela’s security forces, dismantling criminal enterprises embedded in the state, stabilizing a collapsed economy and supporting a credible path to democratic elections. Those efforts would require significant American resources and carry real risks, with no guarantee of success.
At this early stage, the United States has committed major military forces and personnel to the region. Roughly fifteen thousand U.S. personnel and about 20% of U.S. Navy assets were positioned in the region during the buildup, supported by air assets. That scale illustrates how quickly a limited operation can become a lasting obligation.
Any expectation that Venezuela could quickly finance its own recovery, or offset the costs of U.S. involvement, is unrealistic. Restoring Venezuela’s oil production is a long-term undertaking. Years of mismanagement have degraded infrastructure and driven out skilled workers. Bringing production back online at scale would require lengthy technical work and substantial private investment, under security and governance conditions that do not currently exist. Further, U.S. refineries already have their hands full — they cannot drop their work to refine domestic crude oil to prioritize Venezuela’s oil. That’s why President Trump even recently acknowledged that U.S. taxpayers may be called upon to reimburse oil companies who want to set up shop in Venezuela.
Meanwhile, the administration has dismantled U.S. economic and democracy assistance, including cost-effective and targeted tools that would be essential to stabilizing Venezuela and supporting a transition away from corruption and criminal control.
China, by contrast, has consistently used infrastructure, financing, and humanitarian support to expand its influence in Venezuela and across the region. Undermining U.S. economic engagement while signaling interest in extracting resources risks strengthening Beijing’s position, not weakening it — and this would be a message sent around the entire world: the U.S. takes while China invests.
Taken together, tackling these challenges would amount to a multi-year commitment of resources, attention, and political capital, with uncertain outcomes and competing demands elsewhere. That commitment could grow, with the President indicating interest in ever-expanding interventions in the hemisphere.
These tradeoffs are not abstract. Long-term involvement abroad competes with pressing domestic priorities, including lowering household costs, protecting access to health care, and maintaining investments at home in affordability and economic growth.
More than anything, I hear from my constituents in New Hampshire that they want their elected leaders to focus on their pocketbook economic concerns, on making their lives more affordable and lowering the cost of key expenses like housing, health care, energy as well as everyday essentials. They recognize the importance of America playing a constructive and muscular role in the world, but don’t want their elected leaders to ignore their very real economic priorities.
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President Trump acknowledged those concerns when he campaigned for office, but his agenda since — from blanket tariffs to health care cuts — have had the opposite effect. Americans increasingly feel squeezed by the high cost of living. The president also campaigned on a restrained foreign policy that avoided the sort of open-ended nation-building commitments we’ve seen in the past, but when it comes to Venezuela and the Western Hemisphere, we see him pursuing a very different approach. Threats and actions to seize or run sovereign territory are not only unpopular among the American people; they are among the costliest and strain partnerships and alliances, creating even more space for U.S. adversaries like Russia and China to take advantage.
Americans know that our country — and the world — is stronger, safer and more prosperous when we are engaged in and shape what happens beyond our border. But they’re deeply mindful of the real trade-offs that exist when our leaders draw us into costly commitments overseas without a clear end-game or strategy.
Right now, the president has drawn the United States into a potentially protracted involvement in Venezuela and beyond. Thus far, we have not heard a consistent rationale for our involvement, much less a plausible long-term strategy for how we stabilize and transition Venezuela to a thriving democracy — long the shared objective of Republicans and Democrats. It is critical that the administration is transparent with the American people and Congress about the costs that involvement will incur and the real tradeoffs it entails. And in the process, it is vital that the administration not preserve the very autocratic systems and institutions they once saw as a U.S. national security threat.
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