Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 10/Jan 09:44

Venezuela invasion a miscalculation

DR LESTER PHILIP LET ME be clear from the outset: I am a Donald Trump supporter. I have defended his foreign-policy instincts before, particularly his preference for leverage over endless wars and his understanding that power is most effective when it is applied indirectly. That is precisely why Trump’s decision to move into Venezuela on January 3 shocked me. Not because Trump is incapable of bold action – he clearly is – but because this was one situation where boldness was unnecessary. Nicolás Maduro was already exactly where Washington wanted him: isolated, boxed in, and slowly suffocating under economic, diplomatic, and political pressure. The noose was tight. Time was doing the work. I said all along there would be no invasion of Venezuela. The smarter strategy – and the one Trump himself appeared to favour for years – was containment. Keep sanctions calibrated, maintain international pressure, limit escape routes, and allow the regime to implode under its own weight. History shows that systems like Maduro’s rarely fall because of a single dramatic intervention; they collapse because they rot from within. By moving directly, Trump interrupted that process. The best analogy is an unhappy marriage. Instead of staying in a bad but manageable relationship – tense, imperfect, yet predictable – Trump chose divorce, only to discover that divorce brings child support, babysitting, court dates, and permanent obligations. Sometimes staying in the bad marriage, where both parties keep an eye on each other, is far less costly than walking away and inheriting lifelong responsibility. Yes, Maduro and his wife may now be gone. But the architecture of the regime remains firmly intact. Which leads to the most important question of all: what has really changed? Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López is still active. He is the bridge between political power and the armed forces, and his loyalty has always been to the system rather than to Maduro personally. As long as he remains in place, the military spine of the regime endures. Then there is Delcy Rodríguez, who controls the energy sector – Venezuela’s economic lifeline – and her brother Jorge Rodríguez, who dominates the country’s media and messaging apparatus. Between them, they control revenue flows and the national narrative. Add to that Diosdado Cabello, the regime’s enforcer, whose role has always been intimidation, discipline, and internal control. In short, the operators remain. The machinery remains. The culture of power remains. Removing Maduro did not dismantle the system. It merely removed the most visible face of it. This is the classic error of believing that cutting off the head kills the beast. In reality, this looks more like cutting the head off a cockroach – the body continues to move, function, and cause damage. Madurismo, as an ideology and network of control, is very much alive. The predictable outcome is not stability but fragmentation: internal power struggles, score-settling, criminality, and competing centres of authority. And once that happens, the US is no longer applying pressure from a safe distance. It becomes an unavoidable presence, responsible for preventing collapse. That means troops, money, diplomacy, and long-term engagement – precisely the sort of open-ended commitment Trump once criticised. The claim that this move was primarily about Venezuelan oil also fails under scrutiny. Venezuelan crude is heavy, sour, and expensive to refine. Much of the extraction and transport infrastructure is obsolete or destroyed. Reviving it would require massive rebuilding at extraordinary cost. At best, this is a case of paying slightly less for the candle than for the funeral – but paying heavily either way. From a Caribbean and TT perspective, the implications are serious. Regional instability does not remain contained. Migration pressures rise, energy markets wobble, and small states absorb consequences they had no role in creating. Venezuela’s instability has already spilled across borders; deepening it guarantees further disruption. Trump may believe he has delivered a decisive blow. In reality, he has removed a symbol and left the machinery intact. The generals remain. The enforcers remain. The media handlers remain. The energy gatekeepers remain. The same hands still grip the levers of power – only now without a single figure to absorb blame or negotiate an exit. That is not victory, because from this moment forward, every outbreak of violence, every factional clash, every humanitarian failure, and every regional ripple will land, directly or indirectly, at Washington’s door. The US has moved from pressure to custody, from containment to responsibility. The noose was already tight. Trump chose not to wait. In doing so, he transformed a slow, manageable problem into an open-ended crisis. History is unforgiving to leaders who mistake motion for strategy. This was not a masterstroke, it was blunder. In my view, it was a miscalculation. The post Venezuela invasion a miscalculation appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.