{"id":674455,"date":"2026-01-05T01:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T01:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/674455\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T01:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T01:50:14","slug":"can-the-us-run-venezuela-military-force-can-topple-a-dictator-but-it-cannot-create-political-authority-or-legitimacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/674455\/","title":{"rendered":"Can the US \u2018run\u2019 Venezuela? Military force can topple a dictator, but it cannot create political authority or legitimacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

An image circulated over media the weekend of Jan. 3 and 4 was meant to convey dominance: Venezuela\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, blindfolded and handcuffed aboard a U.S. naval vessel<\/a>. Shortly after the operation that seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would now \u201crun\u201d Venezuela until a \u201csafe, proper and judicious transition\u201d<\/a> could be arranged.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s move is not an aberration; it reflects a broader trend in U.S. foreign policy I described here some six years ago as \u201cAmerica the Bully<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

Washington increasingly relies on coercion<\/a> \u2013 military, economic and political \u2013 not only to deter adversaries but to compel compliance from weaker nations<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

There is no dispute that Maduro\u2019s dictatorship led to Venezuela\u2019s catastrophic collapse<\/a>. Under his rule, Venezuela\u2019s economy imploded<\/a>, democratic institutions were hollowed out<\/a>, criminal networks fused with the state<\/a>, and millions fled the country<\/a> \u2013 many for the United States. <\/p>\n

But removing a leader \u2013 even a brutal and incompetent one \u2013 is not the same as advancing a legitimate political order. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

An image of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro after his capture, posted by President Donald Trump and reposted by the White House.
\n White House X.com account<\/a><\/p>\n

Force doesn\u2019t equal legitimacy<\/p>\n

By declaring its intent to govern Venezuela<\/a>, the United States is creating a governance trap of its own making \u2013 one in which external force is mistakenly treated as a substitute for domestic legitimacy.<\/p>\n

I write as a scholar of international security, civil wars<\/a> and U.S. foreign policy, and as author of \u201cDying by the Sword<\/a>,\u201d which examines why states repeatedly reach for military solutions, and why such interventions rarely produce durable peace. <\/p>\n

The core finding of that research is straightforward: Force can topple rulers, but it cannot generate political authority. <\/p>\n

When violence and what I have described elsewhere as \u201ckinetic diplomacy<\/a>\u201d become a substitute for full spectrum action \u2013 which includes diplomacy, economics and what the late political scientist Joseph Nye called \u201csoft power\u201d \u2013 it tends to deepen instability rather than resolve it.<\/p>\n

More force, less statecraft<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

One striking feature of the trends we uncover is that if Americans tended to justify excessive military intervention during the Cold War between 1945\u20131989 due to the perception that the Soviet Union was an existential threat<\/a>, what we would expect is far fewer military interventions following the Soviet Union\u2019s 1991 collapse<\/a>. That has not happened.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This pattern is reinforced by institutional imbalance. In 2026, for every single dollar the United States invests in the diplomatic \u201cscalpel\u201d of the State Department to prevent conflict, it allocates US$28 to the military \u201chammer\u201d of the Department of Defense, effectively ensuring that force becomes a first rather than last resort<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cKinetic diplomacy\u201d<\/a> \u2013 in the Venezuela case, regime change by force \u2013 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 Rodr\u00edguez<\/a>, the acting leader of Venezuela, \u201cdoesn\u2019t do what\u2019s right, she is going to pay a very big price<\/a>, probably bigger than Maduro.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lessons from Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya<\/p>\n

The consequences of this imbalance are visible across the past quarter-century.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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<\/a> in 2021. No amount of reconstruction spending could compensate for the absence of a political order rooted in domestic consent. <\/p>\n

Following the invasion by the U.S. and surrender of Iraq\u2019s armed forces in 2003<\/a>, both the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Defense proposed plans for Iraq\u2019s transition to a stable democratic nation. President George W. Bush gave the nod to the Defense Department\u2019s plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That plan, unlike the State Department\u2019s, 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<\/a> to a democratic Iraq. The United States became responsible not only for security, but also for electricity, water, jobs and political reconciliation \u2013 tasks no foreign power can perform without becoming, as the United States did, an object of resistance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Libya demonstrated a different failure mode. There, intervention by a U.S.-backed NATO force<\/a> 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<\/a> over sovereignty and economic development that continues today. <\/p>\n

The common thread across all three cases is hubris: the belief that American management \u2013 either limited or oppressive \u2013 could replace political legitimacy.<\/p>\n

Venezuela\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"Men<\/a><\/p>\n

Iraqi Sunni Muslim insurgents celebrate in front of a burning U.S. convoy they attacked earlier on April 8, 2004, on the outskirts of the flashpoint town of Fallujah.
\n Karim Sahib, AFP\/Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

Costs of \u2018running\u2019 a country<\/p>\n

Taking on governance in Venezuela would also carry broader strategic costs, even if those costs are not the primary reason the strategy would fail. <\/p>\n

A military attack followed by foreign administration is a combination that undermines the principles of sovereignty and nonintervention<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

The United States has historically been strongest<\/a> 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 \u2013 one that relies on force to establish authority and is prohibitively costly to sustain over time.<\/p>\n

These signals are read not only in Berlin, London and Paris. They are watched closely in Taipei, Tokyo and Seoul \u2014 and just as carefully in Beijing and Moscow. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Beijing needs only to point to U.S. behavior to argue that great powers rule as they please where they can \u2013 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<\/a> and not just in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Force is fast. Legitimacy is slow. But legitimacy is the only currency that buys durable peace and stability \u2013 both of which remain enduring U.S. interests.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An image circulated over media the weekend of Jan. 3 and 4 was meant to convey dominance: Venezuela\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-674455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115839986825339110","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}