Maduro's out. What next? 

The Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine claims US dominance in the Western Hemisphere is critical to prevent foreign adversaries from influencing the region. This corollary is being tested by the US attempt at regime change in Venezuela. While President Trump claims his fight is against Venezuelan drug cartels, his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles confirmed Trump's interest in removing President Nicolás Maduro. On 3 January 2026, US forces arrested Maduro and his wife Celia Flores, and brought them to New York to stand trial. 

Initially, the US supported Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado or her surrogate Edmundo González, who was elected president in July 2024. Machado promised Maduro’s authoritarian regime would collapse because intensified sanctions on Venezuelan petroleum exports would push senior military leaders to overthrow him. On US television, she suggested that divisions within Venezuela’s military offered an opening for Trump to topple the Maduro regime. 

However, Machado has neither garnered support from exiled or former officers nor presented plans for future civil-military relations. She claims military support stands at 80%, but this figure, based on the participation of officers in charge of the custody of voting ballots and reports in the July 2024 election, may not be accurate. After Maduro’s removal, a call by Edmundo González for the military to fulfil their constitutional obligation — recognising him — has not elicited support. Instead, Minister of Defence General Vladimir Padrino López expressed the military’s support for Maduro’s Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez.  

The Venezuelan military, Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana (FANB), is the pillar of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolutionary regime. Yet the country’s return to pre-Chávez-Maduro civil-military relations also risks repeated military intervention in politics. 

From political military to politicised military 

The FANB's current role in supporting the Maduro regime has a complex history. It originates in the two-party democracy under the centre-left Acción Democrática (AD) and centre-right Partido Socialcristiano (COPEI) established by the Puntofijo Pact of 1958. Harold Trinkunas notes that civilian leaders abdicated budgetary and organisational oversight of the military during the first years of democratisation in Venezuela, after the fall of the Marcos Pérez Jiménez dictatorship. Individual political leaders, meanwhile, cultivated personal ties with senior officers. The result was a military that assured senior personnel high salaries, while frustrating the junior officers it failed to promote.

Senior military officers have for many years occupied positions in state projects including ports, allowing them to profit from narco-trafficking

In the 1980s, as the oil-based economy crashed, this arrangement crumbled. Three failed coups between 1988 and 1992 empowered Hugo Chávez, who had been plotting his rise to power since the 1980s. The Puntofijo system ended in 1998, with Chávez’s election to the presidency. The civil-military relationship metamorphosed after a failed 2002 coup against him. Chávez subsequently took coup-proofing measures that created the regime's current system of civil-military relations. 

John Polga-Hecimovich explains how Chávez, then Maduro, mixed selective and collective rewards, intrusive monitoring, and counterbalances to prevent coups. First, Chávez transferred control over public goods to the military, effectively privatising them. The FANB operates fourteen firms in the agricultural, mining, oil, construction, and banking sectors. FANB officers also occupy positions in other state projects, including ports, which allows senior officers to profit from international narco-trafficking. Following the 2002 coup attempt, Chávez also purged 100 generals and senior officers. Since then, the regime has dismissed suspected disloyal officers, while retaining and over-promoting loyalists. 

Personalisation of civil-military relations 

Reliance on loyalists led to the personalisation of civil-military relations and over-promotion of military staff. General Vladimir Padrino López, for example, has been defence minister since 2014. Officers from the Presidential Honor Guard and the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) are disproportionately promoted. This over-promotion means the FANB has 2,000 flag officers across all branches of a 150,000-strong military. Since 2013, an astonishing 2,118 FANB officers have been promoted to the rank of general or admiral. To put this in perspective, neighbouring Brazil, with the largest Latin American military of 366,500 troops across all branches, has just 403 flag officers.

An astonishing 1.3% of Venezuela's military personnel have attained the rank of general or admiral. In Brazil, the figure is a much more typical 0.1%

Maduro also used monitoring and counterbalancing institutions, whose parallel command-and-control mechanisms and incentives create coordination problems for potential coup makers. In the event of a coup attempt, such mechanisms can also incentivise internecine fighting. The Cuban-trained and sometimes Cuban-staffed DGCIM monitors the military closely to weed out disloyalty. Counterbalancing institutions include the Milicia Bolivariana, a civilian-based paramilitary force with 200,000–300,000 personnel and 8,000 reservists. 

Lessons from the post-Cold War era 

So, the absence of planning for civil-military relations is an obvious weak spot in regime transition planning. Machado wanted the Trump administration to oust Maduro. Trump also expected Maduro to surrender to the military buildup in the Caribbean. In the absence of Maduro's surrender, Trump sent a team to extract him.

The Trump administration is now claiming that the loss of Venezuelan assets as a result of President Chávez's expropriations was the prime motivation for its operation to remove Maduro

Beyond removing Maduro, however, the US doesn’t appear to have a plan. Indeed, politicians on both sides of the US Congress are demanding to know the endgame of Trump's strategy. The Trump administration has recently pivoted to the oil industry, using the loss of assets as a result of Chávez’s expropriations as an argument against Maduro. In his press briefing after Maduro’s capture, President Trump repeatedly referred to Venezuela’s oil without ever mentioning democracy. His administration has also sidelined Machado from the transition, claiming she lacks support and respect in Venezuela. 

Thus, to guarantee regime transition, a more assured path for US policymakers and the Machado team would be to reach out to willing former and serving military officials. Doing so could control recalcitrant members of the military and deter pro-Maduro rebels. Military management of publicly owned enterprises requires cooperation, at least initially. The abrupt dismantling of the military's role in public management could cause more disruptions in civil-military relations. But Machado's team must also guard against backsliding into the kind of pre-Chávista civil-military relations that undermined democracy in the first place.

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