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Not just for a cheap coffee, no. #puppetregime
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Army Chief Asim Munir holds a microphone during his visit at the Tilla Field Firing Ranges (TFFR) to witness the Exercise Hammer Strike, a high-intensity field training exercise conducted by the Pakistan Army's Mangla Strike Corps, in Mangla, Pakistan, on May 1, 2025.
Earlier this month, Pakistan’s National Assembly rammed through a controversial constitutional amendment that grants Field Marshal Asim Munir, the country’s de facto leader, lifelong immunity from all crimes.
“What was effectively already de facto military rule has become constitutional,” said Eurasia Group’s South Asia Practice Head Pramit Pal Chaudhuri. “It’s effectively a constitutional coup.”
So how did Pakistan get here? As a country flanked by two longstanding rivals – India and Afghanistan – Pakistan has relied heavily on its military throughout its 80-year history. As a result, military leaders have typically wielded immense political power, controlling the country both directly and indirectly for most, if not all, of Pakistan’s near-80-year existence.
The military faced a challenge, though, in 2018, when the charismatic and telegenic former cricket star Imran Khan won a free and fair election on a populist platform. Although he initially enjoyed the support of “The Establishment,” as the military is known, Khan quickly got into conflict with the generals. One of his most brazen acts against the brass was, in fact, to reassign the head of the country’s spy unit at the time, one Asim Munir.
Khan’s power didn’t last. He was ousted in 2022, and jailed on corruption charges. His party would remain popular, winning the most seats in the 2024 election, but the government – under military influence – refused to seat many of its female and minority candidates, leaving Khan’s party in the minority.
As for Munir, he would get his own back: with Khan out of power and behind bars, the one-time spy chief rose the ranks of the military to become army chief. In May of this year, he seized on the latest Kashmir crisis – which put India and Pakistan on the brink of all-out war for several days – to become Pakistan’s second-ever five-star general, the highest possible military ranking. His latest effort goes a step further, amending the 1973 constitution in a way that opens the path for an outright power grab.
“One of the things in the 1973 constitution is: if you declare martial law, you’re tried for treason,” Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa, a Pakistani military expert at King’s College London, told GZERO. “So if tomorrow [Munir] declares martial law, he cannot be tried for treason.”
Munir’s in charge – what issues does he face? First and foremost, the economy. Pakistan’s economy has been stagnant for 50 years. In the 1970s it was the richest country in South Asia – now it’s one of the poorest. In addition, it has $6.5 billion in outstanding IMF loans, the fifth-most in the world. Many Pakistanis are seeking opportunities abroad.
“If you look at the size of the middle class in Pakistan, it’s effectively shrinking, which is the exact opposite of what you should want in a developing country. Because the taxation system is rising and incomes are not rising,” said Chaudhuri. “If you’re a smart young businessman, you fly to Dubai.”
The field marshal has been cozying up to the Trump administration – an unusual move given Pakistan’s close ties to China – in a bid to sell some of its sizable deposits of rare-earth minerals to the United States.
The other major issue for Munir is the Taliban, the one-time allies of Pakistan who now hold power again next door in Afghanistan. Last month, the two countries had one of their worst border disputes in years, and now Pakistan is bombing the Afghan capital of Kabul in response to a spate of terrorist attacks in Islamabad.
There’s one thing Munir won’t have to worry about. Pakistan’s opposition is toothless right now, Siddiqa said. The opposition has a top-down structure, meaning that with Khan in jail, the party is largely adrift, with weak local representation.
What’s more: the government has been cracking down on dissent.
“Imran Khan is in jail, and there’s nobody else around his party which can actually start a public movement, get people out on the streets,” said Siddiqa. “And also, as a result of the May 9 [conflict with India], the media has been managed. People have been tortured, people have been picked up, disappeared, etc. So with that kind of authoritarianism, people are too scared to come out.”relatively modest purchase.
The other major issue for Munir is the Taliban, the one-time allies of Pakistan who now hold power again next door in Afghanistan: last month, the two countries had one of their worst border disputes in years, and now Pakistan is bombing the Afghan capital of Kabul in response to a spate of terrorist attacks in Islamabad.
There’s one thing Munir won’t have to worry about. Pakistan’s opposition is toothless right now, Siddiqa says. The opposition has a top-down structure, meaning that with Khan in jail, the party is largely adrift, with weak local representation.
What’s more: the government has been cracking down on dissent.
“Imran Khan is in jail, and there’s nobody else around his party which can actually start a public movement, get people out on the streets,” said Siddiqa. “And also, as a result of May 9, the media has been managed. People have been tortured, people have been picked up, disappeared, etc. So with that kind of authoritarianism, people are too scared to come out.”
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi (R) answers a question from Katsuya Okada of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan during a House of Representatives Budget Committee session in Tokyo on Nov. 7, 2025. At the time, Takaichi said a military attack on Taiwan could present a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan.
Tensions between Tokyo and Beijing hit a boiling point last Friday when China accused Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of “a grave violation of international law.” Her alleged crime? Statements that a Chinese attack or blockade of Taiwan could threaten Japan’s survival and be met with military intervention. The ensuing diplomatic crisis has not just upended relations between China and Japan, but threatens to ensnare the United States in a geopolitical showdown in the Pacific.
Why were Taikachi’s comments so incendiary? Takaichi used the phrase, “situation threatening Japan’s survival,” to describe potential Chinese aggression towards Taiwan. That’s a specific legal designation under Japan's 2015 security legislation that allows the prime minister to deploy the military in self-defense.
This breaks with Tokyo’s traditional ambiguity on the use of force in the case of invasion, and signals publicly that it would stand with Washington in a crisis – something China considers a direct challenge to its sovereignty. Article V of the US-Japan security treaty obliges the US to defend Japan if it is attacked.
What has China done in response? Beijing has suspended seafood imports, discouraged Chinese tourists from traveling to Japan, and allowed mass cancellations of flights and tours without penalty. Concerts by Japanese artists in China have been abruptly pulled from venues and cruise ships that once filled ports in Kyushu are now being rerouted to South Korea. The goal is to hit Japan where it hurts: tourism has helped boost the economy post-Covid, and many small cities rely heavily on Chinese visitors.
On the diplomatic front, Beijing sent a letter Friday to UN Secretary-General António Guterres urging Japan to “deeply reflect upon its historical crimes,” a reference to Japan’s invasion of China during World War II, and calling on Tokyo to “retract its erroneous remarks.” On Sunday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi posted a statement to the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s website that Japan’s leadership has “said things they shouldn’t have said, and crossed a red line that should not have been touched.”
How is Japan reacting? Tokyo is not taking back Takaishi’s words, saying instead that Beijing is misinterpreting them. According to senior Japanese government spokeswoman Maki Kobayashi, “The claim our country has altered its position is entirely baseless” and Tokyo remains “committed to dialogue” with Beijing.
What’s China’s goal? Beijing hopes to frustrate Takaichi’s pledge to accelerate Japan’s military buildup and raise defense spending to 2% of GDP by fiscal year 2025, two years ahead of the target set by her predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba. According to Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, China is seeking “to box Takaichi in and put her on the back foot early on – so she will be more reluctant to push forward on Japan’s investment in defense.”
But so far, the public is backing the prime minister. According to David Boling, Eurasia Group’s director of Japan and Asia Trade, “Takaichi’s approval ratings are very high – even climbing higher in some polls. The Japanese public has a very negative view of China, and China’s extreme response will only reinforce that view.”
Could Japan’s position deter an invasion of Taiwan – or accelerate it? If China believes that a Taiwan crisis would trigger a US-led coalition response, Beijing could escalate its preparations to get ahead of Japan’s planned military buildup. Beijing is already conducting invasion drills using its “shadow navy,” and Chinese coast guard ships have increased their presence around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, putting the Japanese air force and navy on high alert. That could increase the odds of a takeover – or an unintended encounter that could spiral into an international crisis.
All Too Well, indeed. #puppetregime
Watch more of GZERO's award-winning Puppet Regime series!
Many commenters erupted, some with humor and others with intense political anger. Ian walks through the most colorful reactions, why satire triggered so many people, and why he posted it in the first place.
Drawing on his early career studying the Soviet Union, where real breadlines and real repression existed, Ian argues that humor is essential in a healthy democracy: “If Soviet citizens under true political control could still laugh, surely we can too.”
He closes with an apology to those who were genuinely upset, and a promise that the humor isn’t going anywhere.
German Chancellor and chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Angela Merkel addresses a news conference in Berlin, Germany September 19, 2016.
Angela Merkel was elected chancellor of Germany on November 22, 2005, becoming the first woman to hold that job. In many ways, she was the ballast of Europe through the Eurozone crisis, the refugee surge, and the COVID pandemic.
During that time Merkel was arguably the most powerful woman in the world, presiding over one of its largest economies for four terms in the Bundesregierung.
Twenty years on, the anniversary is a reminder of how singular her breakthrough remains. It’s still the exception when a woman runs a country.
Consider the scoreboard. As of September 2025, 29 countries had a woman as head of state or government, just 14% of nations on a planet that is half female. Even after 2024’s “year of elections” which sent more than 4 billion people to the polls, men still outnumber women by three to one in legislative positions.
In 1995, when then First Lady Hillary Clinton famously declared, “Women’s rights are human rights,” 11% of parliamentarians globally were female. Today it’s 27%, but their share of cabinet leadership roles slipped over the past year. In short: representation in legislatures inches forward glacially, but control of the levers of power remains overwhelmingly male.
There are high-profile women in top offices, Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni among them, but they are still swimming against a powerful tide: more than 100 countries have never had a woman leader.
Why does it matter who sits at the top? Beyond basic fairness, evidence keeps mounting that diverse leadership broadens policy priorities and improves decision-making. Studies have pointed to reduction of violence, greater gender equality, and strengthened education, healthcare, and social welfare policies. In geopolitical terms, it also affects how states engage in multilateral forums and crisis response.
At the Paris Peace Forum in October, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said women are more likely to bring empathy to positions of power. “Empathetic doesn't mean sympathetic,” she told GZERO. “It means that you can put yourself in the shoes of the other so you can understand the problem.”
Madam Secretary-General. About a third of the 193 United Nations member states have had a female leader, but the UN itself has never elected a woman to its top spot. As the organization marks its 80th anniversary, there are growing calls to change that next year, when a new Secretary-General will be chosen.
The organization GWL Voices has backed a campaign called “Madam Secretary-General,” and several prominent geopolitical players vocally supported the movement at this year’s General Assembly.
Ecuador’s Permanent Representative to the UN and GWL Voices Executive Director Maria Fernanda Espinosa told GZERO, “I think after 80 years of history, the organization deserves to have a woman at the helm. If the UN really wants to be transformed, there is a shift in styles of leadership that is needed. And the question I ask is, ‘Why not a woman?’"
After Merkel. While in office, Chancellor Merkel often promoted women’s rights in her speeches and once said, “I hope we won’t have to wait 100 years to achieve [full equality].”
Actually, the organization UN Women reports at the current pace it will take 130 years to attain an equal balance of men and women in positions of power.
While there has been progress since Merkel made history two decades ago, the path to parity remains elusive.
So the United States is gearing up for what looks like regime change. And I think it's a bad idea.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see the back of Maduro. He’s a brutal dictator who's rigged elections, destroyed Venezuela's economy, overseen a humanitarian catastrophe that's displaced 9 million people, and turned his country into a narco-state playground for transnational cartels and Cuban intelligence. The opposition leader María Corina Machado is a genuine democrat who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Her running mate Edmundo González won last year's presidential election in a landslide that Maduro brazenly stole.
If we lived in a world where removing tyrants by force was very likely to produce better outcomes, I'd be all for it. But we don’t live in that world.
The 1989 Panama regime-change intervention gets trotted out as the model to emulate here – quick, surgical, successful. Remove Manuel Noriega, restore an elected government, get out. But Venezuela is not Panama.
Panama had 2.5 million people; Venezuela has nearly 30 million. Panama is tiny; Venezuela spans a territory the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined. The US had deep knowledge of Panamanian politics and faced minimal armed resistance; even then, the operation killed hundreds of civilians and left lasting scars.
Venezuela is far more complicated. It's got a heavily armed, economically entrenched, Cuban-supported military apparatus. Dissident FARC units. The ELN. Hezbollah. The Tren de Aragua gang. Armed colectivos loyal to the regime. And American intelligence on the ground has been spotty – which is why, despite months of military buildup, the US has mostly been blowing up fishing boats it claims are running cocaine, killing over 80 people since September without much evidence to show for it (and with little legal justification).
The Trump administration's theory of victory is that targeted strikes will crack Maduro's inner circle. Hit enough cartel assets, maybe take out figures like Iván Hernández Dala – who runs military counterintelligence and is responsible for kidnapping Americans – and senior military leaders will do the math and push Maduro out.
It's not crazy. These guys aren't ideologues; they're in it for money, power, and – ultimately – survival. Change their risk calculus enough and maybe Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López or other top brass decide Maduro isn't worth dying for.
But if that pressure campaign fails – and history suggests it will – Trump will face pressure from Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe to escalate by targeting Maduro directly. A full ground invasion remains off the table despite Trump saying Monday that he doesn't "rule anything out." The president wants to avoid the political costs of a botched operation or a lengthy quagmire; he’s increasingly comfortable with limited strikes à la Iran.
But then what? Even if the US manages to force Maduro out, the most likely outcome is an internal transition. Someone from the regime takes over, probably from the military or existing power structure. Maybe it's Vice President Delcy Rodríguez or her brother Jorge, the National Assembly president. They're no democrats but they’re pragmatic, have negotiated with Washington before, and could potentially mend fences while keeping enough of the state apparatus functioning to prevent anarchy.
Getting from that to an actual opposition-led government with Machado or González at the helm? That's the hard part. It requires street pressure, contentious negotiations, and credible guarantees for the security apparatus – you know, the guys currently running drugs, torturing regime critics, and starving millions of their fellow citizens. Some need to stay for the sake of stability; others need to go because of their crimes. Who decides which is which? Who enforces it?
Not Machado, who has moral authority but no armed forces and limited organizational capacity on the ground. When I interviewed her on GZERO World earlier this year, she told me she has plans for the first 100 hours and the first 100 days of a transition. But Ambassador James Story, who served as US Ambassador to Venezuela from 2018 to 2023, thinks Machado needs to be much more public about her plans for regime figures. "There needs to be a plan in place that says when we change, not everybody is gonna be out," he told me. “De-Baathification was a disaster.” No matter how unpalatable it sounds, some form of amnesty or integration will be necessary.
This is where the "anything is better than Maduro" argument falls apart. Not because Maduro doesn't deserve to go – he does. But because US-led regime change risks creating the kind of chaos that produces more refugee flows, more drug trafficking, and more regional instability. Iraq taught us that toppling a dictator is easy; building a functioning state is hard. Libya taught us that even "leading from behind" can produce chaos. Afghanistan taught us that twenty years and trillions of dollars can't conjure competent governance from scratch.
Now, Venezuela isn’t Iraq or Libya. The country is not riven by deep ethnic, religious, or sectarian cleavages. Any violence following Maduro's fall would likely be short-lived, rather than a protracted civil war. But the underlying problem remains: removing a dictator creates a vacuum, and vacuums get filled by whoever has the most organization and firepower. Not necessarily by the people with the best democratic credentials.
These are risks the Trump team doesn’t seem equipped to manage. Rubio is a true believer who sees Caracas as the linchpin for toppling the regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua – a domino theory for the 21st century. Trump himself is uncomfortable with prolonged foreign entanglements and wants quick wins he can sell to his MAGA base. That's a recipe for going in hard, declaring victory prematurely, and leaving a mess behind.
What Venezuela needs is a multilateral diplomatic solution with buy-in from Brazil, Colombia, and other regional players. Back-channel negotiations to guarantee safe exit for regime figures. A phased transition roadmap – the kind that worked in Brazil and Uruguay – that brings in opposition leadership gradually while keeping enough institutions functional. And a commitment to stick around – diplomatically, economically, maybe even with security assistance – for years, not months. Does any of that sound like Trump 2.0 to you?
There's one asterisk. Trump's Gaza ceasefire, like the Abraham Accords during his first term, showed that the president can occasionally pull off complex diplomatic breakthroughs when he's personally invested and has capable people executing. Maybe – and it’s a big maybe – Venezuela could become that if Trump sees it as legacy-defining. But stacking maybes on top of maybes isn't a bankable strategy.
Even as it has ramped up preparations for military escalation, the White House has simultaneously reopened negotiations with Maduro – "I talk to anybody," Trump told reporters Monday, though he rejected Maduro’s offer to step down after a two-to-three-year transition. It’s classic Trump: maximize pressure while keeping diplomatic options open. But if talks fail – and they probably will – the massive buildup leaves him little choice but to strike, likely before the year’s end.
So here we are. Maduro needs to go. But we've seen this movie before, and it doesn't end well.