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Latin America & Caribbean
The Trump administration is ramping up pressure on Venezuela, with the USS Gerald R. Ford deployed to the region, CIA covert operations approved by the White House, and strikes on suspected narco‑trafficking vessels attributed to Caracas. Many analysts now see regime change as the ultimate goal. On the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer and former US Ambassador James Story game out what a US intervention in Venezuela might look like—and more importantly, how the US would manage the aftermath.
Story points out that while removing Nicolás Maduro may sound feasible, rebuilding Venezuela’s institutions, economy and social fabric would be far harder. “The country is a failed state,” he says. “You’re going to need the military to help you secure peace while you rebuild.” As Washington talks of sanction relief and diplomatic pressure, Story asks: does the US have the capability, resources or will to stay for the long haul?
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In the latest “Ian Explains,” Bremmer traces the US invasion of Panama in 1989. He then asks: how is Venezuela different?
Well, it's bigger, more oil‑rich, more chaotic. With recent US deployments at sea and covert operations inside Caracas, the risk of escalation is real. While regime change may be tempting, Bremmer reminds us that the success of an intervention depends not just on toppling a leader, but on what comes next.
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Argentine President Javier Milei speaks during the America Business Forum at the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida, USA, on November 6, 2025.
$20 billion: Argentine President Javier Milei had a fantastic midterm election last month, but the celebration might be coming to an abrupt end: A group of US banks shelved its $20-billion bailout plan for the South American nation, favoring instead a short-term loan package.
6: A group of six US Democratic lawmakers published a video telling military and intelligence officials that they must disobey illegal orders. The move irked President Donald Trump, who suggested that the move constituted, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
70 million: The Louvre wasn’t the only site of a successful heist in broad daylight this fall, as a group of men posing as Indian central bank officials robbed a vehicle that held 70 million rupees ($800,000) in the southern state of Karnataka on Wednesday afternoon, per police. Law enforcement is still searching for the culprits.
41: Relentless rains and flooding in central Vietnam have killed at least 41 people, left nine missing, submerged over 52,000 homes, and cut power to half a million households. Hard-hit cities like Hoi An and Nha Trang face evacuations, landslides, and infrastructure collapse as typhoons grow increasingly frequent.
10.5: The former leader of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party was sentenced to ten-and-a-half years in prison this morning for accepting pro-Russian bribes. Nathan Gill was paid thousands of pounds to deliver TV interviews in favor of an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Reform UK has taken a more dovish position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine than other parties in the United Kingdom.
$1 trillion: During his White House visit this week, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pledged to increase his investment in US firms to nearly $1 trillion. There’s just one problem: Riyadh’s Public Investment Fund is running low on cash, according to a New York Times report.
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.
Who's "quagmire"? #puppetregime
Watch more PUPPET REGIME!
Supporters of Jose Antonio Kast, presidential candidate of the far-right Republican Party, wave Chilean flags as they attend one of Kast's last closing campaign rallies, ahead of the November 16 presidential election, in Santiago, Chile, on November 11, 2025.
This Sunday, close to 16 million Chilean voters will head to the polls in a starkly polarized presidential election shaped by rising fears of crime and immigration.
The vote comes after a tumultuous few years in normally staid Chile, the world’s largest copper producer and the wealthiest large economy in Latin America.
Under the presidency of youthful left-winger Gabriel Boric, who was elected in 2021 following mass protests over inequality, Chilean voters rejected two separate rewrites of the constitution which were meant to address living costs, pensions, and employment.
One was too liberal, enshrining “cosmovisions” in the national charter. The other was too conservative, hewing too closely to the existing constitution written half a century ago under rightwing autocrat Augusto Pinochet.
Now, despite some successes in strengthening labor laws and winning a bruising fight over pension reforms, Boric is set to leave office deeply unpopular, with an approval rating in the 30s and an economy in the doldrums.
After so much upheaval, “the public appetite for sweeping changes has receded,” says Maria Luisa Puig, an expert at Eurasia Group.
Chileans’ main concerns now are, as in many Latin American countries, crime and migration. Nearly half of voters say crime is the number one issue for them, while 30% point to the border, according to Chilean pollster Activa. Only about 20% cite unemployment.
Although homicides have been falling since a 2022 peak, they are still double what they were ten years ago. Kidnappings remain near historic highs.
At the same time, immigration has soared, in particular from Venezuela – there are nearly 700,000 Venezuelan migrants in the country, almost tenfold the number from 2017. A rash of high profile killings and shootouts by Venezuelan gangs has fueled a backlash against immigrants more broadly.
Who’s running in the election?
Topping the polls, with about 27% support, is Jeanette Jara, a lifelong member of the Communist Party who served as Boric’s Labor Minister. She wants to increase the minimum wage, boost social spending, and modernize the police.
Trailing her are two hard-right politicians. One is José Antonio Kast, an ultra-conservative Catholic father of nine who lost to Boric in 2021, who wants to seal the border, cut spending, and expand prisons. He polls at roughly 20%. The other, libertarian Johannes Kaiser, goes further, pledging to slash two-thirds of government ministries immediately, to crack down on migration, and to withdraw from global pacts on climate change and human rights. Like Kast, he openly admires Pinochet.
Jara’s lead is deceptive. The right wing vote is badly fragmented – a result of the conservative candidates’ inability to agree on a unified primary earlier this year.
With no one set to win more than 50% of the vote, the election will go to a December runoff featuring the top two finishers from this Sunday. Jara will be one of them, and Kast is likely to be the other, though Kaiser has seen a late bump in the polls.
Polls suggest Jara, facing a united right wing and conservative vote, would lose in any head-to-head matchup. With Chileans in a “throw-the-bums out” frame of mind, her ties to Boric are a liability.
In the end, Puig says, “this is a ‘change’ election.” And according to polls, Chileans are ready for it. For the first time in more than four years, a majority say they are “optimistic” about the future of the country.
More soon: the results should be in by Monday morning.
Argentina's inflation rate year over year October 2024 to Oct 2025
Argentina’s president Javier Milei inherited inflation that was over 200%, but after 18 consecutive months of it falling, it now stands at just 31%. While that is still one of the world’s highest, it is an impressive improvement. It comes as the US has sought to prop up Argentina’s economy, recently giving nearly $1 billion of its International Monetary Fund reserves to help Argentina make a critical debt payment to the IMF. The transaction follows the US recently providing Argentina with a $20 billion currency swap to stabilize the peso.