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Crisis en Venezuela: Trump, Maduro, Xi, y Putin CANTAN!!!
La crisis... en MÚSICA! 🎤🇻🇪 Trump, Maduro, Xi, y Putin nunca sonaron mejor // never sounded better! #puppetregime
Watch more videos from PUPPET REGIME aqui!
Toppling Maduro would be "the easy part" says former Ambassador
Former US Ambassador to Venezuela James Story warns that removing Maduro would be the easy part—what comes next is the real challenge.
In this clip from Ian Bremmer’s interview with former US Ambassador to Venezuela James Story, the two discuss the risks and realities of a possible regime change in Caracas. While the Maduro government is increasingly isolated and unpopular, Story cautions that the collapse of the regime would only be the beginning of a much larger crisis.
“For 25 years, the institutions in that country have been systematically destroyed,” Story says, adding that Venezuela has become a failed state teeming with criminal organizations like the ELN, Hezbollah, and the Tren de Aragua. Any transitional government, he argues, would have to rely on a military that has long been complicit in repression and corruption. “The easy part would be getting rid of Maduro,” Story says. “The hard work happens after that.”
Drawing on lessons from past US interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Haiti, Story urges careful planning and warns against dismantling institutions too quickly. If the US plays a role in removing Maduro, he says, it must also take responsibility for what comes next: “You break it, you fix it.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
- Regime change in America’s backyard? ›
- Is Trump aiming for regime change in Venezuela? ›
- Can Venezuela's opposition leader María Corina Machado unseat Nicolás Maduro? ›
- Is the US about to invade Venezuela? ›
- Trump wouldn't actually invade Venezuela...would he? ›
- New Venezuela talks: Maduro won, so what’s there to talk about? ›
- Trump’s risky Venezuela strategy, explained ›
Could the US really invade Venezuela?
If the US does intervene in Venezuela, former US Ambassador James Story explains why the real battle begins after boots hit the ground.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with Ambassador James Story, former US envoy to Venezuela, to examine one of the most urgent questions in US‑Latin America policy: could Washington go to war with Caracas? With US naval assets and aircraft carriers now stationed off the Venezuelan coast and President Trump declining to rule out deploying troops, Story says regime change is only the beginning.
“The easy part would be getting rid of Maduro,” Story says. “The hard work happens after that.” With lawlessness, paramilitary control, narco‑trafficking networks and a collapsed economy, Venezuela is broken. Story warns: “How do you trust any part of a government whose sole purpose was keeping a criminal organization functioning?”
Even if opposition leaders like María Corina Machado or Edmundo González take power, how do you rebuild faith in a government that, for decades, served only to protect a criminal enterprise? “You’re going to need the military,” Story says, “but it’s the same military that’s been keeping Maduro in power.”
The bigger question? If the US plays a role in removing Maduro, who takes the lead on what comes next—and how much are Americans really willing to take on?
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube.Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
- Regime change in America’s backyard? ›
- Is Trump aiming for regime change in Venezuela? ›
- Can Venezuela's opposition leader María Corina Machado unseat Nicolás Maduro? ›
- Is the US about to invade Venezuela? ›
- Trump wouldn't actually invade Venezuela...would he? ›
- Trump’s risky Venezuela strategy, explained ›
Gaming out a US-Venezuela war with ambassador James Story
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?
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published
Could the US pull another Panama in Venezuela?
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.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Trump’s risky Venezuela strategy, explained
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.
Putin wants Trump to DO IT
Who's "quagmire"? #puppetregime
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Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro reacts after shooting an arrow during a rally on the Day of Indigenous Resistance, his first public appearance after opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in Caracas, Venezuela, on October 12, 2025.
What We’re Watching: Venezuela clamps down on dissidents, Democrats celebrate election successes, Leading economist warns of triple bubble
Venezuela’s Maduro turns the screws as Trump ponders regime change
Amid intensifying US attacks on alleged Venezuela-linked drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro is cracking down on dissent at home. The largest US military buildup in the Caribbean in decades has raised concerns that US President Donald Trump may seek to knock Maduro out of power altogether. Maduro — who remains deeply unpopular after evidently rigging last year’s presidential election — has deployed loyalist vigilantes to police dissent and arrested dozens more critics. (For more on this see our latest “Debrief” with Eurasia Group’s Venezuela expert Risa Grais-Targow here.)
Democrats celebrate a good election night
As Democrats plot a path back to power in next year’s midterms, last night’s local election results give them much to chew over. First, voters in California authorized a redistricting that gives Dems a shot to overturn five GOP-held seats. Second, centrist Democrats comfortably won the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, while voters in swing-state Pennsylvania re-elected three liberal state Supreme Court justices. A key factor in VA and NJ was that voters of color who had voted for Trump in 2024 swung back to the Democrats. Lastly, of course, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral race will intensify internal party debates about whether to double down on centrism or populism.
Leading economist warns of three big bubbles
Is the world economy about to take a bubble bath? The head of the World Economic Forum has warned of three potentially crippling financial market bubbles: in crypto, in AI, and in public debt. If any of the three bursts — that is, if a critical mass of investors think they are overvalued and start a mass sell 0ff – we could be in for a world of hurt. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon have both recently warned of a coming market correction. The WEF comments came amid a brief selloff yesterday in tech stocks over concerns about over-investment in AI.