The extraordinary challenge of dismantling Venezuela's narco-state with its own mafiosos

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 12/01/2026

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Following the capture of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, the United States has set itself the extraordinary challenge of ending the dictatorship/narco-state that controls Venezuela by using its own members of organized crime—known mobsters who are showing signs of reform. In this strategy of dismantling narco-terrorism by using its own members, the greatest threats are time and deception.

Time, “buying time,” is the fundamental weapon of the Cuban dictatorship, which has just completed 67 years of criminally wielding power with impunity. Organized crime, as 21st-century socialism, has demonstrated that, controlled by the Cuban dictatorship, it can cede ground to buy time; it can hand over the government but not the power; the dictator can lose but not the dictatorship; and it can feign defeat while waiting for a more opportune moment to prevail.

The strength of popular sovereignty, which is the temporary mandate given to rulers subject to the law and obligated to be accountable, is a weakness in the face of organized crime dictatorships that only have to wait for a change of president or opposing government to survive. Victory for dictatorships lies in buying time, because time works against democratic governments and leaders but not against crime in power, for the simple reason that criminals are neither accountable nor dependent on the popular mandate.

“Stabilization, recovery, and transition” are the three phases announced by the US in the process of liberating Venezuela. This involves dismantling the most significant center of aggression—which, under the strategy of the Cuban dictatorship, has attacked the US this century with “hybrid warfare” tactics such as forced migration, drug trafficking, support for transnational criminal organizations, the harboring and expansion of terrorist groups, alliances with extra-hemispheric dictatorships, infiltration of internal politics, and a long list of other crimes.

No timeline has been announced for the execution of the three phases, and it would be a strategic error to do so, but it is worth noting that if it is not executed and completed in a few months, before the November 2026 midterm elections in the US, organized crime may remain at least partially and with impunity in power to the detriment of the Venezuelan people, US national security, and the entire region.

Stabilization means “normalizing, regularizing, or putting in order what was not.” Venezuela is a country occupied by crime under the command of the Cuban dictatorship, which has imposed its system of state terrorism as a means of subjugation. Under these conditions, normalization implies, at the very least, that those in power withdraw the Cuban occupation and cease the system of state terrorism, expelling the Castroist intervention forces, paramilitaries, and mercenaries, and publicly dismantling the apparatuses of repression, terrorism, and crime. There is no stabilization with political prisoners or with state protection of drug trafficking and terrorism.

Recovery consists of “reclaiming or regaining what one previously possessed.” The foundation is restoring freedom and fundamental human rights to sustain economic recovery based on oil and natural resources recovered from crime, Cuban intervention, and Chinese, Russian, and Iranian operations. This process may be lengthy, but its foundations will be linked to restoring the essential elements of democracy.

In the situation in Venezuela, “transition” must be understood as the transfer of power. It is the stage in which organized crime, in addition to leaving the government, must relinquish power, and the uncertainty lies in the level of impunity and participation that members of the criminal group of 21st-century socialism or the United Socialist Party of Venezuela will attempt to retain. It should be about the “restoration of democracy” with its five essential elements and without impunity.

A dictatorship/narco-state cannot be ended without eliminating its "infamous laws," defined as those that violate human rights and fundamental freedoms instead of protecting them; change is impossible with impunity; and there will be no recovery if the political instruments of the dictatorship/narco-state remain as political actors. In US history, success has only followed the "unconditional surrender" of its enemies.

This entire process is not possible without a legitimate national counterpart, and the only one that exists is the one led by María Corina Machado, who, regardless of personal sympathies or mistakes, represents the mandate for Venezuelan national liberation that has allowed us to reach the current situation. Without the struggle, courage, determination, organization, and electoral victory of July 28, 2024, led by Machado, the clear public identification of the crimes of Nicolás Maduro and his criminal group would not have been possible.

It is the struggle of the Venezuelan people led by Machado that legitimizes the new US foreign policy, and acting accordingly will strengthen the process of dismantling the dictatorship/narco-state.

The author is a lawyer and political scientist. He is the Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».