By Monica Duffy Toft
An image circulated over media the weekend of Jan. 3 and 4 was meant to convey dominance: Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, blindfolded and handcuffed aboard a U.S. naval vessel. Shortly after the operation that seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would now “run” Venezuela until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could be arranged.
The Trump administration’s move is not an aberration; it reflects a broader trend in U.S. foreign policy I described here some six years ago as “America the Bully.”
Washington increasingly relies on coercion – military, economic and political – not only to deter adversaries but to compel compliance from weaker nations. This may deliver short-term obedience, but it is counterproductive as a strategy for building durable power, which depends on legitimacy and capacity. When coercion is applied to governance, it can harden resistance, narrow diplomatic options and transform local political failures into contests of national pride.
There is no dispute that Maduro’s dictatorship led to Venezuela’s catastrophic collapse. Under his rule, Venezuela’s economy imploded, democratic institutions were hollowed out, criminal networks fused with the state, and millions fled the country – many for the United States.
But removing a leader – even a brutal and incompetent one – is not the same as advancing a legitimate political order.
White House X.com account
Force doesn’t equal legitimacy
By declaring its intent to govern Venezuela, the United States is creating a governance trap of its own making – one in which external force is mistakenly treated as a substitute for domestic legitimacy.
I write as a scholar of international security, civil wars and U.S. foreign policy, and as author of “Dying by the Sword,” which examines why states repeatedly reach for military solutions, and why such interventions rarely produce durable peace.
The core finding of that research is straightforward: Force can topple rulers, but it cannot generate political authority.
When violence and what I have described elsewhere as “kinetic diplomacy” become a substitute for full spectrum action – which includes diplomacy, economics and what the late political scientist Joseph Nye called “soft power” – it tends to deepen instability rather than resolve it.
More force, less statecraft
The Venezuela episode reflects this broader shift in how the United States uses its power. My co-author Sidita Kushi and I document this by analyzing detailed data from the new Military Intervention Project. We show that since the end of the Cold War, the United States has sharply increased the frequency of military interventions while systematically underinvesting in diplomacy and other tools of statecraft.
One striking feature of the trends we uncover is that if Americans tended to justify excessive military intervention during the Cold War between 1945–1989 due to the perception that the Soviet Union was an existential threat, what we would expect is far fewer military interventions following the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse. That has not happened.
Even more striking, the mission profile has changed. Interventions that once aimed at short-term stabilization now routinely expand into prolonged governance and security management, as they did in both Iraq after 2003 and Afghanistan after 2001.
This pattern is reinforced by institutional imbalance. In 2026, for every single dollar the United States invests in the diplomatic “scalpel” of the State Department to prevent conflict, it allocates US$28 to the military “hammer” of the Department of Defense, effectively ensuring that force becomes a first rather than last resort.
“Kinetic diplomacy” – in the Venezuela case, regime change by force – becomes the default not because it is more effective, but because it is the only tool of statecraft immediately available. On Jan. 4, Trump told the Atlantic magazine that if Delcy Rodríguez, the acting leader of Venezuela, “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
Lessons from Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya
The consequences of this imbalance are visible across the past quarter-century.
In Afghanistan, the U.S.-led attempt to engineer authority built on external force alone proved brittle by its very nature. The U.S. had invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the Taliban regime, deemed responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But the subsequent two decades of foreign-backed state-building collapsed almost instantly once U.S. forces withdrew in 2021. No amount of reconstruction spending could compensate for the absence of a political order rooted in domestic consent.
Following the invasion by the U.S. and surrender of Iraq’s armed forces in 2003, both the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Defense proposed plans for Iraq’s transition to a stable democratic nation. President George W. Bush gave the nod to the Defense Department’s plan.
That plan, unlike the State Department’s, ignored key cultural, social and historical conditions. Instead, it proposed an approach that assumed a credible threat to use coercion, supplemented by private contractors, would prove sufficient to lead to a rapid and effective transition to a democratic Iraq. The United States became responsible not only for security, but also for electricity, water, jobs and political reconciliation – tasks no foreign power can perform without becoming, as the United States did, an object of resistance.
Libya demonstrated a different failure mode. There, intervention by a U.S.-backed NATO force in 2011 and removal of dictator Moammar Gadhafi and his regime were not followed by governance at all. The result was civil war, fragmentation, militia rule and a prolonged struggle over sovereignty and economic development that continues today.
The common thread across all three cases is hubris: the belief that American management – either limited or oppressive – could replace political legitimacy.
Venezuela’s infrastructure is already in ruins. If the United States assumes responsibility for governance, it will be blamed for every blackout, every food shortage and every bureaucratic failure. The liberator will quickly become the occupier.
Karim Sahib, AFP/Getty Images
Costs of ‘running’ a country
Taking on governance in Venezuela would also carry broader strategic costs, even if those costs are not the primary reason the strategy would fail.
A military attack followed by foreign administration is a combination that undermines the principles of sovereignty and nonintervention that underpin the international order the United States claims to support. It complicates alliance diplomacy by forcing partners to reconcile U.S. actions with the very rules they are trying to defend elsewhere.
The United States has historically been strongest when it anchored an open sphere built on collaboration with allies, shared rules and voluntary alignment. Launching a military operation and then assuming responsibility for governance shifts Washington toward a closed, coercive model of power – one that relies on force to establish authority and is prohibitively costly to sustain over time.
These signals are read not only in Berlin, London and Paris. They are watched closely in Taipei, Tokyo and Seoul — and just as carefully in Beijing and Moscow.
When the United States attacks a sovereign state and then claims the right to administer it, it weakens its ability to contest rival arguments that force alone, rather than legitimacy, determines political authority.
Beijing needs only to point to U.S. behavior to argue that great powers rule as they please where they can – an argument that can justify the takeover of Taiwan. Moscow, likewise, can cite such precedent to justify the use of force in its near abroad and not just in Ukraine.
This matters in practice, not theory. The more the United States normalizes unilateral governance, the easier it becomes for rivals to dismiss American appeals to sovereignty as selective and self-serving, and the more difficult it becomes for allies to justify their ties to the U.S.
That erosion of credibility does not produce dramatic rupture, but it steadily narrows the space for cooperation over time and the advancement of U.S. interests and capabilities.
Force is fast. Legitimacy is slow. But legitimacy is the only currency that buys durable peace and stability – both of which remain enduring U.S. interests.
If Washington governs by force in Venezuela, it will repeat the failures of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya: Power can topple regimes, but it cannot create political authority. Outside rule invites resistance, not stability.
Monica Duffy Toft is Professor of International Politics and Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.
Pogo says
@Penetrating insights into the entire history of raising children.
SMH
JimboXYZ says
“There is no dispute that Maduro’s dictatorship led to Venezuela’s catastrophic collapse. Under his rule, Venezuela’s economy imploded, democratic institutions were hollowed out, criminal networks fused with the state, and millions fled the country – many for the United States.”
“But removing a leader – even a brutal and incompetent one – is not the same as advancing a legitimate political order.”
By the author’s own admission, Venezuela is a drug state government. We’re kinda tired of it ending up on our side of the border ? Leaving Maduro in place is the Biden-Harris way of handling it. And it ended up becoming Venezuelan’s in the USA, how much of that was illegal immigration ? Things weren’t changing there, ever going to change. May still not change. One thing is for certain Maduro won’t be the one doing it any more. The drugs, the exodus to the USA ? The author came up with the conclusion for the last line quoted from the article. I don’t know how anyone comes to that after the staggering level of corruption each article that was linked there. Even in failure, the USA can’t be the blame shift as the perceived oppressor for a nation that had failed & fallen to the level Venezuela has since Obama-Biden. Anything that does have even the most remote for a relative perception of any success is better than what it was ever going to be under Maduro ? It’s not so much Venezuela, it’s more about what problems manifested in the USA from all that devastation. USA still paying for Biden-Harris, 1 year into Trump-Vance.
And the reads online is it’s the Venezuelan oil that the USA is after. Yet somehow the oil market isn’t going spastic, remains stable ? Maybe it is about the oil ? California is losing it’s Revenue base across the board for industrial, because of Gavin Newsom. That clown won’t be POTUS, ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5FWrk3BcKE
Atwp says
You need help.
PaulT says
Perhaps the solution is for King Donald to move to Venezuela and personally ‘manage’ things there. It should only take him a few years to sort the place out and I’ve heard there are some delightful ex-Maduro palaces available, with big ballrooms, just waiting for a lick of gold to smarten them up.
He might need an interpreter to deal with the language bearrier, but no one is better qualified than his man Marco who can take care of things and continue the tradition of Cuban help in Venezuela’s palaces.
And le’ts be honest, we really wouldn’t miss either of them would we.
Skibum says
I wish the despicable, orange-faced convicted felon pedophile protecting sexual abuser in the WH would actually go to Caracas and “run Venezuela” himself, never to return to the country where he despises and failed in his plot to prevent the peaceful transfer of power between an outgoing and incoming president.
Sherry says
Recent polling analysis says most Americans polled do NOT approve of trump taking over Venezuela, and about 90% believe that trump should NOT be choosing that country’s leaders! This from the AP:
Nearly half of Americans, 45%, were opposed to the U.S. taking control of Venezuela and choosing a new government for the country. About 9 in 10 Americans said that the Venezuelan people should be the ones to decide the future leadership of their country.
In December, a Quinnipiac poll found that about 6 in 10 registered voters opposed U.S. military action in Venezuela. Republicans were more divided: About half were in support, while about one-third were opposed and 15% didn’t have an opinion.
Few Republicans wanted the US more involved in the world’s problems
Only about 1 in 10 Republicans wanted the U.S. to take a “more active role” role in solving the world’s problems, according to an AP-NORC poll from September. They were much less likely than Americans overall, or Democrats and independents, to say the U.S. should become more involved. Most Republicans, 55%, said the current U.S. role in global issues was “about right.”
It could be a tricky position for a president who ran on a promise of putting “America first” and ending the country’s involvement in “forever wars.” About 7 in 10 voters who backed Trump in the 2024 presidential election said that they wanted the U.S. to take a “less active” role in solving the world’s problems, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of interviews with registered voters in all 50 states.
Al says
This is not a world problem, it’s an American problem. The drugs, refuges, and instability in the region. Colombia is hot on the tail of Venezuelan government corruption. This is a regional crisis that extends into the US. The refuges coming from the failed states wind up here with all their problems. The drug lords increase their tentacles into American cities and destroy stable society with both drugs and violence.
Skibum says
“The drug lords increase their tentacles into American cities and destroy stable society with both drugs and violence.”
It’s a bit like blaming the Band-Aid for causing the injury to hurt, rather than identifying what the main causal factor is for America’s insatiable appetite for illicit drugs. Yes, let’s blame the drug lords, the cartels, the nasty, dark skinned foreigners. Pointing the finger any which way except back at us is acceptable, and preferred, right?
Let’s be honest… if it were not for so many of our own citizens who seem unable to obtain enough drugs to satisfy their cravings, those who manufacture/transport/distribute and/or sell all of the illegal drugs brought into the U.S. would be out of business and crying a river of tears. U.S. gun manufacturing corporations that pump out more and more and more and more and more guns of all types, sizes and calibers to giddily sell to anyone and everyone who has a few greenbacks in their pockets… especially those involved in drug trafficking because they seem to have the MOST $$$, don’t have an ethical or moral backbone among the lot of them because they are in business to make more guns, sell more guns, make every Harry, Dick and Tom on the planet with two working legs WANT more guns!!!
We, Americans, lots of whom are their own and our nation’s worst enemies are the problem, and until the time when enough people right here recognize plain facts and decide that enough is enough and start doing something positive and meaningful to help solve these societal problems, nothing will change except it will just keep getting worse and worse.
And the idiots who don’t want to actually acknowledge what the REAL issues are, but keep pointing fingers every which way and spouting idiocies about our societal problems are because of “woke”, are ignoramuses, lunatics and liars!!! Well, and maga republi-cons… we cannot forget that important truth.
BillC says
@ Skibum Agree. It’s supply and demand.
From AMA Journal of Ethics Aug. 2020: “Over the past 25 years, pharmaceutical companies deceptively promoted opioid use in ways that were often neither safe nor effective, contributing to unprecedented increases in prescribing, opioid use disorder, and deaths by overdose.”.
Perdue Pharma, the “Tren de Oxy”, led the way.
joe says
A guy who couldn’t run casinos (how in the hell do you lose money owning a casino? and a guy who couldn’t run a small veteran’s group responsibly are supposed to run a country of 30 million people???
Allyn Susan Feinsetin says
The REAL question: Can Venezuela run Venzuela? IS there really a Venezuela anymore or has it simply become an operative holdover for the worst terrorist and communist regimes in the world?
Pierre Tristam says
It’s not for you, Rubio or anyone other than Venezuelans in Venezuela to ask.
Allyn Susan Feinsetin says
The problem is, the Venezuelan people haven’t been able to have any say and that predates Donald Trump’s administration. Maduro was not elected by the people of Venezuela. I’ve seen more evidence of Venezuelans celebrating Maduro’s overthrow than the opposite.
Laurel says
“[Maria Corina] Machado’s work has been pivotal in mobilizing Venezuelans against the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro. Her recognition as a Nobel laureate highlights her role as a courageous advocate for democracy in a country facing severe political repression. The Nobel Committee emphasized the importance of her struggle for freedom and democracy, which resonates beyond Venezuela, reflecting a global challenge against authoritarianism.
– Search Assist, Wikipedia, Nobel Prize
Do you think that Trump will support her? A Noble Peace Prize winner, a woman, a leader for democracy, the person Venezuelan people wanted and voted in office in 2010 which Maduro overthrew? Nah, he’ll support a Trumpian ass sucker, whom he can threaten into submission.
Sherry says
@ allyn. . . Yet again, you sit in some kind of “superior” place judging others with little or no understand or appreciation of the citizens involved. When is the last time you were in Venezuela or Gaza? What is your resume of extensive international diplomatic experience ? Perhaps it’s time to get your very own intellect/heart/soul together instead of continuously looking down your nose at others.
If Fox/Newsmax is your source for your life views, may I suggest that you educate yourself from more “credible” news sources like the Associated Press and BBC. Otherwise, you will continue to have zero credibility among the readers of Flaglerlive who still live in “fact based reality”. If you prefer the company of “maga indoctrinated whacka doodles”, then so be it. Just don’t expect anyone of character and education to have any respect for your judgemental opinion.
Allyn Susan Feinsetin says
@Sherry–Not meaning to convey any personal disrespect, although I don’t know that you can say the same –You sound plenty “judgemental” yourself.
As for my news sources–I research information from different outlets. For instance, I tend to place more stock in NewsNation which at least makes an effort to present different points of view, than I do FOX or CNN or MS Now. RealClearPolitics also tends to publish different points of view from a variety of sources.
Sherry says
@allyn, News Nation. . . with its hiring of Fox commentators and those leaving because they were pressured into right winged bias. . . not exactly neutral, no matter what they advertise:
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/NewsNation
You’ll notice I did not suggest CNN or MS NOW with their liberal bias. . . why would you bring them up?
Hell yes, I am absolutely opinionated and judgemental against “convicted felon and sexual abuser” trump’s unconstitutional destruction of our democratic republic and roll out of fascism. allyn. . . if you voted for him, what does that say about you, your intellect and your morals?
The huge difference between you and I is that I have an open mind and absolutely do NOT consider myself superior to others based on
skin color/religion/culture/country/financial situation.
I post “credible facts” supporting my political views.
Being raised in a very poor farming family and putting myself through college at night, while working during the day. . . I have been extremely fortunate to actually spend months on end in wonderful countries and cultures that trump and maga (from their “superior” racist place) call “shit hole” countries.
I don’t use a “broad brush” judging entire religious/nations based on personal bias or something I read or watched on a media outlet that provides only “opinion”, with little or no credible facts. If you start posting something more than biased, unsubstantiated “opinions”, you will have more credibility on this site.
Atwp says
If you can’t run your home, how can you run another persons home? What Trump put his hands on becomes a very bad mess. Look at his past.