A closer look at the aftermath of Operation Absolute Resolve.

BY JOHN PRICE

For a country that has spent a decade living inside a slow-motion collapse, Venezuela’s weekend shock landed like a thunderclap: Nicolás Maduro, the face of chavismo’s long aftermath, was removed in a U.S. operation now being publicly branded—by its supporters, at least—as “Operation Absolute Resolve.” The name is pure Washington theater. The consequences, however, are Venezuela’s reality.

In Caracas, the first emotion was not ideology but oxygen: a brief, almost involuntary euphoria that the immovable object might finally have moved. In the diaspora—from Bogotá to Miami to Madrid—group chats lit up with a single, disbelieving question: is this real? Internationally, allies and adversaries reacted with the same mix of astonishment and calculation, and the UN was quickly pulled toward the legal and diplomatic wreckage left behind.

The most honest way to describe Venezuela’s “post-Maduro” morning is this: an ounce of euphoria, a ton of uncertainty. The regime’s central figure is gone, but the system that sustained him—military patronage, intelligence services, party networks, and a political economy built on control—didn’t vanish with a helicopter ride. It is being reconfigured in real time, an unsavory fact that US leadership understood they must embrace (for the time being) if they were to navigate a bloodless transition.

The new face of power is familiar—maybe too familiar

Within hours, the country’s governing machinery, with US consent, sought continuity. Delcy Rodríguez—Maduro’s vice president and one of the regime’s most powerful operators—was positioned as interim leader with backing from key institutions and the armed forces, at least as publicly presented.

That matters because Venezuela’s transition is not a clean break; it is, at best, a contested handoff. Profiles of Rodríguez emphasize her deep ties to the security apparatus and her role in managing an oil economy shaped by sanctions, state control, and the survival instincts of elites. The central question is not whether she can “govern.” She can. The question is whether she can satisfy Washington and maintain governing unity in Venezuela.

Legal timelines add another layer of ambiguity. Debates over whether Maduro’s absence is “temporary” or a vacancy that triggers rapid elections are not procedural trivia; they are the battleground on which legitimacy is either rebuilt or buried.

Washington’s gamble: decisive action, indeterminate endgame

The United States insists it has acted to end a criminal presidency and reset the hemisphere’s moral balance. Critics call it a violation of sovereignty that could become a precedent with global consequences. Much of the world is less interested in the rhetoric than in the endgame, because the post-operation phase is where interventions historically go to die.

A cluster of expert reactions—from policy institutions and security analysts—converges on the same warning: removing a leader is the easy part; shaping what follows is the hard part, and Washington may have just assumed responsibility for outcomes it cannot fully control.

The risk is a familiar one. In Venezuela, “regime change” does not automatically mean “system change.” The coercive state—armed forces, intelligence bodies, and patronage networks—can outlive any single politician. The opposition, fragmented and scarred by past failed turning points, may struggle to translate this moment into an organized, credible governing alternative. And ordinary Venezuelans, burned by cycles of hope and disappointment, will judge the new era less by speeches than by whether food prices stabilize, the lights stay on, and basic services return.

The armed forces: the hinge between transition and turbulence

If there is one institution that can make or break the next six months, it is the military. Venezuela’s armed forces are not merely a security institution; they have been a political actor and, in many sectors, an economic one.

That makes the next period exceptionally delicate. A transition that threatens core military interests can provoke obstruction—or fracture. A transition that protects those interests might stabilize the short term but entrench impunity, weakening any democratic renewal.

Cracking down on the transit corridors of Colombian cocaine that travels through Venezuela en route to Europe and other destinations would cut off billions of dollars of revenue that today fall into the hands of select military leaders and the many political and local policing palms they grease. Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello run the two pillars of hard power in Venezuela, the armed forces and collectivos, respectfully. Their cooperation is crucial to maintaining order during any period of transition. How big of a check must be written to convince them to disband the many illicit industries that they oversee (drugs, illegal gold mining, contraband fuel sales, arms dealing), let alone walk away from Venezuela?

Analysts have underlined that the post-Maduro balance will depend on whether the coercive apparatus sees cooperation as safer than resistance, and whether a credible political roadmap exists that reduces the perceived existential risk to insiders.

The danger scenario is not only a coup-versus-democracy binary. It is bureaucratic sabotage, regional powerbrokers acting autonomously, or a slow slide into “managed transition” where elections occur but the real levers remain untouched.

Oil: the tempting shortcut—and the trap

Oil is Venezuela’s obvious lever, and it is also the country’s most seductive illusion. Many outside observers instinctively frame the future as: remove Maduro, open the oil sector, money returns, recovery follows.

But several of the strongest analyses caution against simplistic petro-optimism. Venezuela’s oil industry has been degraded by years of underinvestment, mismanagement, human capital flight and institutional decay. Even if the politics shifted overnight, production increases would still be constrained by infrastructure, financing, technical capacity, and contract credibility. Some analysts point to Iraq’s resurgent oil production as an optimist example to follow. However, despite the horrific body count of the Iraq war, Venezuela lost even more of its oil sector engineers and technicians after Chavez politicized the once highly respected PDVSA. Venezuela’s oil and gas sector technical expertise today works in Colombia, Ecuador, Canada, the US, and the Middle East.

There is also the geopolitical overlay: if Washington signals it wants preferential access or de facto control, that may scare off non-U.S. capital, deepen domestic resentment, and intensify international pushback. US oil service companies may win juicy contracts (Haliburton stocks jumped this week), but outside of Chevron, what US oil companies will sink the promised billions into a jurisdiction that remains physically dangerous, politically and legally unstable?

Sanctions, assets, and the fight over who gets to fund recovery

One immediate signal of how messy the post-Maduro environment will be is the scramble around sanctions, frozen assets, and legal actions. Switzerland’s move to freeze assets linked to Maduro and associates underscores how quickly international finance becomes part of the political battlefield.

In theory, asset freezes and legal accountability can support a transition by limiting elite flight and preserving resources for reconstruction. In practice, they can also harden resistance among insiders who fear losing everything if they compromise. The smartest transition strategy would aim to separate: (1) targeted accountability for major crimes, from (2) structured off-ramps for actors whose cooperation is necessary to prevent violence and administrative collapse.

This is morally fraught—but transitions often are.

Russia, China, and the global backlash problem

Venezuela has never been only a Venezuelan story. Russia and China invested political capital, strategic access, and money during the Maduro years. Their reaction now is less about nostalgia than about precedent: if the U.S. can remove a hostile leader this way in the Western Hemisphere, what does that imply elsewhere?

Reporting and analysis on Moscow’s reaction shows a mix of condemnation, realism, and calculation—especially given Russia’s own constraints and priorities. The broader point is that a Venezuela transition could become another arena where great powers compete indirectly—through recognition battles, oil deals, debt disputes, and influence operations.

For Venezuela, that could mean diplomatic whiplash: one set of foreign actors pushing for rapid market opening and alignment, another warning against “protectorate” dynamics, and a domestic public wary of being treated as a prize.

What Venezuela “will be like” depends on the next 100 days

Forecasting Venezuela after Maduro is not about predicting a single destination; it’s about mapping plausible paths:

• Path 1: Managed continuity with a softer face. Rodríguez (or a similar insider consensus figure) stabilizes institutions, offers selective reforms, negotiates partial sanctions relief, and holds elections on a timetable that preserves regime leverage. This path could reduce chaos quickly—but risks locking in a semi-authoritarian equilibrium.
• Path 2: Negotiated transition with real institutional reset. A credible electoral roadmap emerges, the opposition coalesces around governance competence (not just symbolism), and a pact reduces elite fear while enabling rule-of-law rebuilding. This is the best-case scenario—and the hardest to execute.
• Path 3: Fragmentation and contested authority. Institutions split, security actors defect or localize, protests and repression spiral, and the country becomes ungovernable in pockets. That outcome would trigger another migration wave and deepen economic freefall. Analysts warning about “fluid” conditions are essentially warning about this.

The emotional truth: hope is back, but trust is not

Venezuelans know what outside strategists sometimes forget: political rupture does not automatically deliver electricity, insulin, clean water, functioning schools, or safe streets. Those require institutions—and institutions require time, competence, and legitimacy.

So yes, there is euphoria. A tyrant’s aura has been punctured. An era feels like it might be ending.

But uncertainty is heavier, because the country’s next chapter is being written by actors with conflicting incentives: Washington wanting a quick win; insiders wanting survival; an opposition trying to prove it can govern; foreign powers trying to protect stakes; and a population that has learned to treat salvation narratives with suspicion.

“Operation Absolute Resolve” may have been decisive in its opening act. The problem is that Venezuela is not an opening act. It is a long, complicated play—and the toughest scenes are the ones that come after the curtain rises.

 

John Price is the Managing Director of Americas Market Intelligence. With 32 years of experience in Latin American market intelligence consulting, Price has supervised nearly 1,200 client engagements and advises clients in more than 20 countries across Latin America. He can be reached at jprice@americasmi.com

This article was originally published by AMI. Republished with permission.

 

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