Overthrow the president – then come the challenges
Published 11.59
Violent airstrikes.
A captured president.
The US will once again be accused of colonial methods, but overthrowing presidents is rarely a recipe for success.
Under cover of violent airstrikes on the Venezuelan capital Caracas, US forces last night managed to capture the country's President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. While Caracas and several other areas in Venezuela shook from rockets and fireballs lit up the night sky, the presidential couple were forcibly forced out of the country. The hard-line ruler has been deposed.
Few in Venezuela will miss Maduro as president. He was ruthless and was accused of crimes against humanity in his hunt for opposition figures. Political opponents and human rights activists have been imprisoned, beaten and tortured or disappeared altogether. Many will breathe a sigh of relief now that his regime has fallen.
But there is a downside, a big one.
The regime did not fall from pressure from within, the president was forcibly removed from power. Under remarkably startling circumstances. What we are seeing is not a Venezuelan revolution for freedom, it is once again a great power that claims the right to act according to its own agenda.
The Drama in Venezuela has been building for a long time.
Already during US President Donald Trump's first presidential term, the tone against Venezuela and Maduro was high.
When he was sworn in as president again almost a year ago, tensions with Venezuela increased again.
During the autumn and winter, several ships have been attacked off the coast of Venezuela. According to the US administration, they were in the process of smuggling drugs to the US. Recently, targets in a port were also attacked, so the military escalation has been constant.
The US has accused Maduro of being the worst kind of drug lord, a narco-terrorist, and has announced a $50 million reward for anyone who can ensure his arrest.
In November, Trump gave Maduro an ultimatum: to save himself and those closest to him in exchange for him voluntarily leaving power and the country. That did not happen.
But there are also more motives for Trump's obsession with overthrowing Maduro.
The Venezuelan president himself has accused the US of wanting to get at the country's oil and rare minerals.
Venezuela is also supplied with weapons from one of the US's arch-enemies, Iran.
At the same time, many of the undocumented migrants in the United States that Trump has promised to deport are from Venezuela. In order to put them on a plane to Caracas, the United States needs a regime that cooperates, that allows the plane with the deportees to land and that receives them.
The United States is now probably hoping that Edmundo González Urrutia can be installed as president. According to a long list of countries, González won the presidential election in 2024, but was accused of crimes by Maduro's allies and was forced to flee to Spain.
So given the escalation and the various motives that have existed to overthrow Maduro, many are probably not overly surprised by the latest development. Although it is remarkable in what way Maduro is being overthrown.
But just overthrowing a president and hoping for peace and happiness is not always easy. We have not yet seen the US plan for the future, we do not know which forces have been set in motion. There are plenty of frightening examples in history of how things can go wrong.
The US invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is an example. When the US forces “liberated” Iraq from a decade of tyrannical rule, a bloody civil war broke out instead and the breeding ground for the terrorist sect IS was sown.
In Libya, the dictator Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown. A short-lived euphoria quickly turned into contradictions, civil war and a lawless country with competing governments.
Previously, the Taliban regime had also been overthrown in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It never led to any security and democracy, and now the Taliban are back in power again.
So overthrowing a dictator is not the big obstacle. The difficulties and challenges come later.
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