By Luis Manuel Aguana
It has always been of interest to this writer to know, purely for academic reasons of historical monitoring of what is happening in Venezuela (just in case), what the first few minutes following a possible fall of Nicolás Maduro Moros' regime would be like. That is, when the power vacuum generated by such an event became evident. And it is not because I expect this to happen soon, despite the armed pressure from the US in the Caribbean, but because of the complex situation surrounding that event, both before and after, and whose complexity is increasing exponentially at this moment as the hours pass.
For many, it is not so clear why, after so many threats, the US government still seems to be thinking about how it could achieve the removal of Nicolás Maduro Moros' regime from Venezuela. Some may wonder: if they have the best-trained soldiers, aircraft carriers, cannons, planes, and the best war technology, all transferred to the Venezuelan coast, why is Maduro still in power?
Last August, I published an article that partially answers that question, entitled “Politics in Venezuela” (see Making Politics in Venezuela, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/making-politics-in-venezuela.html), which sums up the point: at that time, the opposition did not have a plan for those first few minutes I referred to at the beginning, as revealed by the former US ambassador to Venezuela based in Bogotá, Colombia, James Story, and which I expand on in that note.
Story indicated that if Venezuelans asked the US for help, they should present them with the Venezuelan version of the Framework for Democratic Transition in Venezuela, which, although previously rejected by the opposition, did not propose any alternatives (for those who wish to recall this proposal, I suggest reading –in Spanish- Framework for Democratic Transition in Venezuela, presented by Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, in March 2020, in https://tinyurl.com/2n92p47v).
However, even so, the US President sent his ships to Venezuela without an opposition plan for what to do once they had “taken care of Maduro and his top officials” inside the country, since that was as far as they would go. What happened next would be up to the opposition and “their plan” to stay in power. And if they didn't have that plan, it would be pointless for the US to “do us the favor” of freeing us from the leadership that misgoverns us. But as I said before, things are not as simple as they seem.
And it was not until a few days ago that we learned from the December 8 Washington Post, reviewed in Spanish by the Primicias website, that “the Venezuelan opposition leader (Maria Corina Machado, Nobel Peace Prize winner) presented a plan to the United States to facilitate the removal of Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela” (see in Spanish Primicia, Trump analyzes a plan by María Corina Machado to facilitate Maduro's departure from Venezuela, in https://www.primicias.ec/internacional/plan-maria-corina-machado-salida-maduro-venezuela-estados-unidos-111329/?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=cpc).
According to the Washington Post, although the MCM team “did not share its complete plan with the Trump administration for security reasons, US officials admitted to the Post that ‘they are more prepared than previously believed’” (see note on the Primicia website).
This is not flattering. Going from having nothing to admitting that there is at least “more prepared” is not enough to undertake an action of the significance we are talking about. But what concerned me most were the strategies revealed by the Post:
- " Internal documents from the US government, accessed by the media outlet, indicate that the plan outlined by Machado and her team proposes creating forces to stabilize the country within the first 100 hours and the first 100 days after Maduro's departure.
- After this, new presidential elections will be held during the first year.
- The opposition team conducted a detailed analysis of the Venezuelan Army and concluded that only a “limited” purge of military personnel would be necessary.
- They point out that only 20% of officers are “irredeemable” and the rest are opposed to Maduro or apolitical (see note on the Primicia website).
I am going to venture to comment on this strategy, even though I recognize that, as James Story pointed out, it is a truly significant step, but one that is disconnected from reality. Let's take a look.
What does “creating forces to stabilize the country” between zero and 100 days mean? If those forces do not already exist and are to be created from scratch in a power vacuum, that plan is doomed to failure before it even begins. That is why the US does not want to stay after resolving the regime's departure, and that is completely logical! If they do, they would become involved in the internal confrontation they are precisely trying to avoid. Who would create these forces? The US? Some other government? Edmundo González Urrutia (EGU) and María Corina Machado (MCM)? Any force created beforehand—and it cannot be created any other way—would have to remain in Venezuela to sustain the country's governability and the stability of any new government.
I was not surprised to see a call for elections in a plan like this. I will not repeat what I have already written regarding holding elections after the regime's removal (you can read the reasons in Constituent Assembly before elections, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/constitutional-assembly-before-elections.html). The only thing I will remember here is that any leader who decides to call general elections—ruling out a Constituent Assembly—without completely rebuilding the country's institutions is sitting on a political time bomb.
In 1958, despite the fact that Wolfgang Larrazábal's Military Junta legalized a few existing and well-structured parties so that they could agree on general elections in December of that year, the spirit of unity for the country's political stability prevailed. They signed a political pact—Punto Fijo—so that whoever was elected would respect it and maintain what had been so hard to achieve.
And yet, despite the stability provided to the government by the military at the time, and all the political forces working together to move the country forward, coup attempts were the order of the day. There was one in 1958, and the president who was elected faced five other coup attempts and military uprisings. Instability during those six years, Larrazábal's in 1958 and the five years of Rómulo Betancourt's government, was the order of the day, despite the political consensus among the real parties. But it was sustained by political and military cohesion. Will that cohesion exist after the removal of Nicolás Maduro Moros, with the parties destroyed? Definitely not...
The government that EGU would preside over would have a fraction of the political stability of that era, and even less so the government that would come after those supposed elections, with a Constitution specially designed for an authoritarian government, without a bicameral parliament, without constitutional controls on the ruler, highly centralized, and with a dismantled Armed Forces, without solid parties—not the current shells—to defend democracy because absolutely all of them, along with their leaders, were co-opted by the regime. What part of the word REFOUNDING do you still not understand? Very different from the situation in 1958 and beyond. Would a government resulting from those supposed elections last? I very much doubt it...
But the cherry on top of the cake that concludes the strategy published by the Washington Post is definitely memorable. The analysis carried out by the opposition team concludes that “only a ‘limited’ purge of the military would be necessary” since “only 20% of officers are ‘irredeemable’ and the rest are opposed to Maduro or apolitical”.
I was intrigued by where these numbers came from, assuming that only 20% of the Armed Forces' officers were “irredeemable,” until I saw Nitu Pérez Osuna's program on her YouTube channel, interviewing Vladimir Petit Medina, and why the opposition thinks that 80% “are opposed to Maduro or are apolitical.” There, Petit talks about a study that highlights the reasons why it is thought that the majority—80%—of the military would not act in the face of a change in the system. I inferred that this was where the numbers published by the Post came from:
VPM: Because, you see, people assume and understand that these people are not professional soldiers, they are businesspeople. What they do is business, they like business, they know about opportunity cost, numbers, payroll, inflating things, how much is left for commission on the deposit, and so on. And that makes them highly opportunistic, but they also disguise it as pure praetorianism, because an army that does not serve the state and its fellow citizens professionally is an army that has become a kind of political party or a group, let's say a council of princes of a state in which they have everything and lack nothing. And they are widely rejected by Venezuelans. So, this type of person allows me to conclude that at a certain moment, faced with a change of system, they, because of their business spirit and their sense of opportunity cost, are the first ones who are going to see, especially if there is a referendum going on in the streets and everyone is out and about, what is happening? Since their ability to preserve the system is greatly diminished or non-existent, they will opportunistically support change.
NPO: So, let's go back to the initial question. We'll read some comments and you can answer it. Take a look. The initial question is, who will control the armed forces once democracy arrives?
VPM: The transitional government will be in a position to control the armed forces...
NPO: But with whom?
VPM: But it's coming... With the legitimately constituted scheme of María Corina and González Urrutia.
NPO: Okay, but that's not the question...
VPM: But let me tell you, because opportunistically they're going to give in, but the thing is, they're going to give in, but they're not going to stop doing what they do because the type of business they're in is not the kind of business that people can get out of” (see in Spanish Interview by Nitu Perez Osuna with Vladimir Petit Medina, Who will control the army after the regime? December 15, 2025, in https://youtu.be/JsUg3z4oNEo?t=2074).
In other words, 80% of the military would willingly accept this change because they are now “business people,” and eliminating (in my opinion) the remaining 20% would be sufficient, after which a civilian government led by EGU and MCM would control the country. I regret to say that I have a different interpretation of this theory.
Precisely BECAUSE IT IS NOW that they control the businesses, which according to Petit Medina could not continue in a democracy, and which we all know what they are, they would clearly be against a change of system. Nitu, with his extraordinary journalistic instinct, did not consider the question of “who will control the armed forces after democracy arrives?” to have been adequately answered. And my answer to that question can only be the same Armed Forces that hypothetically change sides (and I say this because someone would have to be doing the work PREVIOUSLY to guarantee it), or another force that, on the contrary, surpasses them and forces them to sustain a new state of affairs, with a new government. And I do not believe that this other force will be the United States, for many geopolitical reasons that cannot be discussed in this space.
And that is the situation that the Venezuelan opposition repeatedly refuses to accept. And until that question is adequately answered, with a credible and executable plan, the state of affairs in Venezuela will hardly improve. On the contrary, it will worsen. Again, as I indicated in August, any opposition plan must include all sectors, civil society, churches, workers, etc., but especially those who have participated in this struggle against what is happening in Venezuela. That's what I call politics! And that's what was done during 1958, resulting in a governance pact with 40 years of political stability and a constitution. And until that is understood, we will not get out of this problem...
Caracas, December 19, 2025
Blog:
TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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