101. The Venezuelan labyrinth: A crisis reframed
- Author:
- Eduardo Massieu Paredes
- Publication Date:
- 11-2025
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP)
- Abstract:
- Venezuela’s crisis has long been narrated through an opposition prism: crowds in the streets demanding democracy, negotiations or contested ballots. In 2025, the spotlight has shifted. The decisive question is not how hard Venezuelans push but what the United States is prepared to do, and why. A draft defence review proposes a major redeployment. Led by under‑secretary Elbridge Colby, it calls for concentrating military power on the homeland and the Americas. The plan envisages shifting forces away from Europe and the Indo‑Pacific and expanding air and naval operations along the southern U.S. border and throughout the Caribbean. It revives the logic of the Monroe Doctrine: prevent rival powers from embedding in Latin America. For the architects of Washington’s new Venezuela campaign, success will be judged less by what happens in Caracas than by how it plays in Washington DC or Florida. By measuring success in domestic terms, the United States may very well leave Venezuelans no closer to the democracy they seek. Washington’s handling of the Venezuelan crisis could be a preview of a wider strategic realignment. Colby’s “homeland first, hemisphere next” doctrine would pull military assets from the East and surge them into the Americas. Latin America’s response reflects both caution and fatigue. They will hedge: criticise the optics of U.S. gunboat diplomacy while quietly ignoring any weakening of the Maduro regime. The regime’s only remaining legitimacy is the loyalty of its security apparatus and the fear it can instill. The opposition, meanwhile, still holds the moral mandate. That legitimacy now carries even more weight after María Corina Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. Against that backdrop, four trajectories remain on the table for the crisis itself: 1) Ruling‑party managed transition; 2) Negotiated exit; 3) Forced removal; 4) Regime endurance. Venezuela’s impasse is fast becoming a proving ground for Washington’s “America first” doctrine and a primary focus on the Western Hemisphere in their foreign policy in decades. The backdrop is a country with its people exhausted, and its institutions hollowed out so internally in Venezuela very little should be expected. A purely theatrical strike may consolidate the status quo rather than topple it. If the United States genuinely wants systemic change, it will need more than sinking boats and slogans, it will need a strategy that endures beyond the next news cycle. Whether that is what President Trump actually seeks remains an open question.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Democracy, and Political Crisis
- Political Geography:
- South America and Venezuela