The stunning capture and removal of dictator Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela by the United States has raised many questions, including what comes next for the beleaguered South American nation.
Once among the world’s wealthiest countries thanks to its rich oil reserves, Venezuela has been mired in economic collapse for years. As the United Nations noted this month, Venezuela was “already facing one of the world’s largest humanitarian and displacement crises.”
Maduro and his wife and son now face drug and weapons charges in the United States.
Professor Juan Pablo Luna is the inaugural Diamond-Brown Chair in Democratic Studies in McGill’s Department of Political Science. One of the world’s leading political scientists studying political parties and representation in Latin America, Luna also researches how organized crime dynamics contribute to reshaping politics, states, and markets in Latin America.
We spoke to him about the political turbulence in Venezuela and the potential ramifications for other countries in Latin America and beyond following the U.S. ouster of Maduro.
Maduro’s vice-president Delcy Rodríguez is now Venezuela’s interim president. Is this really a regime change?
No, this is a head of government change, and it relates to how fragile the Venezuelan government is. To give you a glimpse of what it looks like, the Venezuelan army has 2,000 generals.
This has to do with the patronage and the patrimonialism that Maduro and his regime established to get the military acquiescent to the government. So, you have this huge military, which is instrumental in keeping things in place. And then you have the civil coalition, which Delcy Rodríguez now represents.
Besides the army, there are many armed groups that can destabilize the country: the colectivos, created by former president Hugo Chávez, were given power to enforce rules as a regime police force. Then you have organized crime groups. And finally, there are 2,000 active members of Colombian guerilla groups who poured into Venezuela after the peace process in Colombia.
That’s the constellation of armed actors. I think what the U.S. is betting is that Delcy Rodríguez can for now, at least, hold things together.
There is a lot of buzz about this notion that President Trump got angry with the official leaders of Venezuela’s opposition because María Corina Machado received the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize and not him. But my sense is that the strongest argument in favor of what he has done is to keep in place a coalition that at least promises to deliver order and resume oil exploitation. This is not democracy; it’s order and extraction.
Having all these armed groups – and the social dislocation associated with that – makes the prospect for democratization thin.
Is the removal of Maduro about drugs, immigration to the U.S., oil – or all three?
I believe it’s more about oil than anything else. It’s also geopolitical strategizing, demonstrating to other countries in the region that the U.S. is asserting its role as a dominant power in the region through new ways.
Many people are mentioning the Monroe Doctrine, this idea of carrots and sticks. And you see this playing out in Trump’s relations with different countries. The U.S. issued a new announcement about visas; it’s retaliating against countries that opposed his move in Venezuela. You see other countries that have fallen in line, like Argentina, receiving help from businesses in the U.S.
This also has to do with the U.S. trying to fend off China and its dealings with Latin American governments. Every country in Latin America today, except for Mexico due to the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, is trading more with China than with the U.S. And this has changed over the last two decades. For instance, Chinese companies have made massive investments in Peru.
To me, that’s the message beyond the oil revenue that the U.S. will get out of Venezuela. The oil is abundant, but you need to invest a lot to make it profitable. The capital returns are not as immediate as the geopolitical positioning the U.S. is getting out of this.
Does it weaken the U.S.’s moral authority to say to Russia ‘get out of Ukraine’ or to China ‘don’t think about going into Taiwan’?
Absolutely. In dire terms, this is the international order falling apart. That order obviously protected small and poorer countries. And when it falls apart, the large and powerful countries get to say what happens. And that’s where we are heading, I’m afraid.
With the removal of Maduro and the U.S. involvement in Venezuela, is there a country in particular in Latin America that needs to be concerned about what this might mean for them?
I think the obvious one is Cuba, especially because of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his agenda on Cuba and the historical reasons that explain this interest. The humanitarian situation in Cuba is really dire. The government is running out of resources. It will get more and more strained due to the interruption of assistance from Venezuela and economic cooperation.
Is there a desire in Venezuela to diversify the economy from a petro-state?
Besides oil, it’s a subsistence economy. It has been like this since the discovery of oil in the mid-20th century. From 1958 to 1992, Venezuela was one of the most stable democracies in the region. This is an economy that for 50, 60 years was essentially reliant on oil and oil exports.
Even if there are people in Venezuela making the argument that you need to diversify the economy, the problem is that the political economy and incentives for doing that aren’t present.
Due to this protracted crisis for several decades now, you don’t have human capital. The people who were more educated already fled the country. Millions have left Venezuela. Those that remain are essentially old or very poor. It will take time to increase productivity and diversify that economy.
