Venezuela Under U.S. Tutelage: 

A Transition Designed for Control, Not Democracy

Eduardo A Gamarra

 

The January 3, 2026, removal of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces marked one of the most consequential and controversial U.S. interventions in Latin America in decades. Framed by the Trump administration as a decisive strike against a narco-terrorist regime, the operation has since evolved into something far more complex: a U.S.-managed political transition in which sovereignty is conditional, democracy is deferred, and stability is prioritized above all else. The result is not a clean break from authoritarianism but a precarious experiment in external tutelage whose long-term consequences for Venezuela—and for U.S. policy in the hemisphere—remain deeply troubling.

From the outset, Washington made a deliberate choice that defines the current moment: rather than empowering Venezuela’s democratic opposition, the United States opted to work through the existing regime’s institutional core. Delcy Rodríguez, a central figure of Chavismo and Maduro’s longtime deputy, was installed as interim president under a constitutional interpretation validated by institutions still firmly under regime control. U.S. officials have offered an explicitly strategic justification: avoid a power vacuum, preserve the chain of command, and prevent the kind of institutional collapse seen in Iraq after 2003. Stability, in this view, must precede democracy.

This logic may be internally coherent, but it is also profoundly problematic. By privileging regime continuity over democratic legitimacy, the United States has placed itself in the role of arbiter of Venezuela’s political future, deciding not only when Maduro must go, but when Venezuelans themselves may choose their leaders. The danger is not merely moral or legal; it is strategic. Transitions designed primarily around control rather than consent rarely produce sustainable democratic outcomes.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the U.S. approach to Venezuela’s oil sector, which has become the central instrument of political leverage. Since January 3, Washington has effectively imposed an oil trusteeship: seizing tankers, controlling export routes, selling Venezuelan crude at market prices, and depositing proceeds into U.S.-controlled accounts. The administration argues that this prevents corruption and ensures that oil revenues benefit the Venezuelan people. In practice, however, it places the country’s most critical economic asset under external management with minimal transparency and no clear legal or temporal limits.

This oil-centric strategy exposes a core tension in U.S. policy. While officials speak of democracy and reconstruction, the sequencing of priorities tells a different story. Energy stabilization, market access, and the reintegration of U.S. firms have advanced faster than any credible roadmap for elections, judicial reform, or institutional accountability. The message, intentional or not, is that political legitimacy is secondary to economic functionality. For a society emerging from decades of authoritarian rule, this is a dangerous signal.

Equally troubling is how narcotrafficking has been used to justify both the intervention and its aftermath. Designating the Maduro regime as a narco-terrorist structure and emphasizing the dismantling of criminal networks resonates with U.S. domestic security concerns. But conflating counter-narcotics enforcement with regime change blurs legal boundaries and expands executive authority in ways that should alarm policymakers. Drug trafficking, however severe, does not constitute an armed attack under international law. Treating it as such risks normalizing unilateral military action under the banner of law enforcement—a precedent the United States may face in the future.

The political dimension of the transition is perhaps the most revealing and the most fragile. María Corina Machado embodies the democratic mandate the U.S. claims to support. Yet she has been sidelined in the name of stability. Washington has engaged with her symbolically, even ceremonially, while denying her any meaningful role in shaping the transition. The implicit argument is that Machado lacks the institutional control necessary to govern in the short term. By excluding her, the U.S. also weakens the very democratic forces it will eventually need to legitimize any post-tutelage order.

This creates a paradox: the longer the United States governs Venezuela through regime insiders, the harder it becomes to credibly pivot to a democratic transition. Regime actors adapt, entrench themselves, and rebrand as indispensable partners. Opposition forces, meanwhile, fragment, demobilize, or lose public trust. What begins as a temporary stabilization phase risks hardening into a new equilibrium—less violent than Maduro’s rule, perhaps, but no less exclusionary.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s three-phase framework—stabilization, recovery, transition—captures the administration’s intentions but also exposes its weaknesses. The first two phases are concrete and coercive: oil control, security containment, and economic conditionality. The third phase, democratic transition, is aspirational and undefined. There is no timeline, no electoral calendar, no agreed-upon institutional benchmarks. This asymmetry is not accidental. Stabilization and recovery serve U.S. interests immediately; democracy introduces uncertainty.

From a policy perspective, this is a critical flaw. Successful democratic transitions require early, visible commitments to political inclusion, not open-ended promises. They also require clear rules, credible intermediaries, and limits on external control. By delaying these elements, the United States risks turning Venezuela into a managed dependency rather than a sovereign democracy.

Regionally, the implications are significant. Latin America is deeply polarized in its response to the intervention, not only along ideological lines but also along lines of historical memory. For many governments, particularly on the left, the episode confirms long-held fears of U.S. unilateralism and a revived Monroe Doctrine. For others, Maduro’s removal is welcome, but the method and aftermath raise uncomfortable questions about precedent. If Washington reserves the right to decide when sovereignty can be suspended in the name of stability, no country is entirely insulated.

The United States now faces a choice. It can continue down the path of technocratic tutelage, managing oil flows, negotiating with regime insiders, and deferring democracy indefinitely, or it can recalibrate toward a genuinely political transition. The latter would require difficult steps: setting a clear electoral timetable, internationalizing oversight through multilateral mechanisms (highly unlikely given this Administration's complete disdain for multilateralism), restoring opposition participation, and accepting that democratic outcomes are inherently unpredictable.

Venezuela’s transition will be tumultuous regardless. The damage inflicted by decades of authoritarianism, corruption, and economic collapse cannot be undone quickly. But a transition designed primarily for control risks reproduces the very pathologies it claims to resolve. Stability without legitimacy is not a bridge to democracy; it is an invitation to a softer, more internationally palatable form of authoritarianism.

If U.S. policymakers seek a democratic Venezuela, they must recognize that tutelage is not neutral. It shapes incentives, empowers some actors over others, and defines the boundaries of the possible. Without a decisive shift from control to consent, Venezuela’s future may be decided not by its citizens but by how long Washington is willing—and able—to manage a country it has already reshaped.