Venezuela isn’t just a dictatorship — it’s a criminal threat to US security
The recent buildup of U.S. military operations in the Caribbean marks a decisive escalation in counternarcotics efforts, reigniting debate over America’s role in the hemisphere. Many abroad recoil at anything resembling another U.S. intervention in a sovereign nation. But despite the outcry from foreign leaders and the skepticism of policy experts, pursuing regime change in Venezuela is a necessary course.
The U.S. is not confronting just another authoritarian ruler, it is facing a regime that facilitates some of the gravest threats to its national security.
The Venezuelan ruling elite and its functions for America’s rivals are more complex than many realize. Nicolás Maduro and Diosdado Cabello are not merely trying to preserve Hugo Chávez’s inefficient and corrupt project. The United Socialist Party of Venezuela — along with its alter ego, the Cartel of the Suns — commands a sophisticated machine of social control and human rights violations. Maduro is the spokesman for a criminal enterprise that harms America in numerous ways. Allowing Maduro and his allies to remain in power means tolerating a syndicate of crime with access to all instruments of national power.
When President Barack Obama designated Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” in 2015, few grasped the full scale of that threat. As author Anne Applebaum notes in “Autocracy Inc.,” an international network of illiberal regimes uses their comparative advantages as collaborative means to maintain power. This network does not merely reshape domestic institutions — it seeks to change the rules of the game and undermine the foundations of the liberal democratic system.
Venezuela under Chavismo functions as a haven in the Americas for transnational criminals and terrorists. Picture a territory larger than Texas and Florida combined, rich in oil, gold and rare earths, able to buy loyalties across the Americas and financing violent non-state actors. This “political” enterprise has used socialism as a vehicle for oppression, leveraging a romanticized but inhumane ideology. Their end is simple: accumulate enough power and wealth to become untouchable.
Chavismo is an alliance of former guerrillas, socialist operatives trained by Fidel Castro, power-hungry military men, and opportunistic elites. Many Venezuelan scholars have examined this phenomenon in depth, but readers may find “Dragon in the Tropics” especially insightful. This political-movement-turned-criminal-enterprise was forged in resentment toward Venezuela’s 20th-century democracy and the ideals the United States embodies. Since Chávez took power in 1999, and especially after his brief ouster in 2002, this coalition has devoted itself to consolidating power at any cost.
If Venezuela were a legitimate state corrupted by a few bad actors, the task would be simple: Identify them and neutralize them. But evidence shows the opposite. Venezuelan generals such as Clíver Alcalá Cordones and Hugo Carvajal Barrios, both indicted in U.S. courts, reveal the regime’s true nature. Chavismo uses the state to advance its criminal enterprise. Government agencies command the population, extract revenue and allocate territories and industries among loyalists. A seemingly functional foreign service enables trade, money laundering and diplomatic cover.
Whether it’s suitcases of cash flying to Argentina or planes of gold headed to Turkey in violation of European Union sanctions, Chavismo’s diplomacy masks criminal activity conducted in plain sight.
The Venezuelan regime’s most effective tools today serve to traffic drugs into the U.S. and assist terrorists and non-state actors. Venezuela has opened its territory to Colombian guerrillas integrated into global illicit networks. Iran-linked operatives and Islamist extremists have found a haven there, even receiving Venezuelan passports.
The country’s military logistics and infrastructure serve drug trafficking and illegal mining, financing the ruling elite, empowering transnational gangs, and supporting other malign actors across the region and beyond. Its porous borders let traffickers cross to and from Colombia and Brazil, dodging law enforcement with ease, while its long Caribbean coastline has made it a major transit point for international drug trafficking, according to U.N. findings.
The regime led by Maduro and Cabello will always enable and participate in transnational organized crime. As a Venezuelan, I cannot deny my personal bias: I want my country to be free by any means possible. However, it is undeniable that the vast majority of Venezuelans have already turned against Chavismo. Even setting aside the moral case for democracy and human rights, regime change in Venezuela is a matter of U.S. national security.
No matter how many smugglers are stopped at the southern border or how many drug boats are intercepted — or blown away — as long as one of the richest and most strategic regions of South America is controlled by a criminal organization, threats to U.S. national security will keep popping up. Washington must treat the Maduro regime not as a government to negotiate with but as a transnational criminal organization to dismantle.
Oswaldo Silva is a graduate student at the George Mason International Security Program.