Venezuela Invasion Reprises a US Strategy That Has Never Succeeded
By Tom Kagy | 04 Jan, 2026

Trump's quest for diverting headlines puts him squarely among US presidents who risked the high cost of foreign interventions and paid dearly politically.

For a half a century US Presidents in desperate need of headlines to revive their political fortunes have returned to the same foreign-policy reflex: when a hostile or dysfunctional government resists US pressure, military force is floated as the ultimate solution.

Each time, advocates promise that “this one will be different.”  And each time, the outcome has been costlier, messier, and more destabilizing than advertised.   Trump's invasion of Venezuela fits squarely into this well-worn pattern, reprising a strategy that has failed repeatedly since the Cold War.

The logic behind intervention in Venezuela is superficially simple. The country has suffered economic collapse, mass emigration, authoritarian rule under Nicolás Maduro, and the hollowing out of democratic institutions. Proponents argue that a decisive external blow could topple the regime, restore democracy, and stabilize a region disrupted by millions of refugees. This narrative echoes past justifications used to sell military action elsewhere. History suggests the reality would be far more grim.

Consider the US experience in Iraq. The 2003 invasion was pitched as a quick operation to remove a dictator, eliminate weapons threats, and usher in democracy. Instead, it dismantled the state without a viable replacement, unleashed sectarian violence, empowered militias, and destabilized the broader Middle East. Two decades later, Iraq remains fragile, and the regional aftershocks are still being felt. The lesson was not simply that intelligence failed or that execution was flawed, but that forcibly remaking another country’s political order is vastly harder than advertised.

Afghanistan offers a parallel cautionary tale.  What began in 2001 as a narrowly defined mission to dismantle al-Qaeda morphed into a twenty-year nation-building project. Trillions of dollars were spent, tens of thousands of lives lost, and yet the US-backed government collapsed with stunning speed once American troops withdrew. The problem was not a lack of effort, but a fundamental misreading of local political realities and the limits of external power.

Even smaller-scale interventions have followed the same arc. In Libya, NATO airstrikes helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. There was no serious plan for what would follow. The result was state collapse, rival militias, human trafficking networks, and a persistent source of instability across North Africa and the Mediterranean. Regime change proved easy; building a functioning successor state proved impossible.

Latin America itself provides sobering precedents. During the Cold War, Washington supported or directly participated in interventions in Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. These actions were justified as necessary to stop communism or restore order. In practice, they often produced decades of repression, civil war, and deep mistrust of the United States that lingers to this day. Venezuela would not be an exception; it would be another chapter in the same story.

Advocates of intervention argue that Venezuela is uniquely vulnerable.  Its economy has collapsed, its military is underpaid, and many citizens are disillusioned with the regime. But fragility cuts both ways.  Weak states do not collapse neatly; they fragment. Venezuela’s armed forces, intelligence services, and ruling-party networks are deeply entwined with illicit economies, including smuggling and narcotics trafficking. An invasion could splinter these actors into competing armed groups, turning a humanitarian crisis into a prolonged civil conflict.

Geography and demography compound the risk. Venezuela is a large country with dense urban centers, untamed forests and jungles covering over half its land mass, and porous borders with Colombia, Brazil, and the Caribbean.  Instability won't stay contained.  Refugee flows, already straining neighboring states, would surge. Armed groups could spill across borders, regionalizing the conflict and dragging other governments into an open-ended security nightmare.

There is also the question of legitimacy. US military action in Venezuela would almost certainly be framed by the Maduro government as imperial aggression, a narrative with deep historical resonance in Latin America. Even Venezuelans who oppose Maduro might resist or resent a foreign invasion, particularly one led by Washington. Nationalism has repeatedly proven a powerful mobilizing force against external intervention, undercutting hopes of a quick and clean regime collapse.

Proponents sometimes point to sanctions and diplomatic isolation as having failed, arguing that force is the only option left. But this framing ignores a crucial distinction: the failure of coercive pressure does not imply the success of military intervention. It often signals the opposite. When non-military tools fail to produce compliance, it usually reflects entrenched political dynamics that bombs and troops are ill-suited to resolve.

The economic costs to the United States would also be substantial. Even a “limited” operation would require sustained deployments, reconstruction spending, and long-term security commitments. At a time of high deficits, domestic infrastructure needs, and strategic competition with China, diverting resources into another protracted intervention would weaken rather than strengthen US global standing.

Perhaps the most telling argument against Trump's ego- and PR-driven invasion of Venezuela is the historical record itself. Over the past half century, US military interventions aimed at regime change have consistently overpromised and underdelivered.  They have removed leaders but failed to build stable, legitimate political orders. They have generated humanitarian disasters even when launched in the name of humanitarianism. And they have left the United States less trusted abroad and more divided at home.

Invading Venezuela and abducting its leader has put Trump squarely on the wrong side of US political history.