Juan S. Gonzalez: ' Removing Maduro could open the door to a durable transition. It could just as easily draw the United States into a dangerous quagmire.

If Washington manages the next phase with discipline—combining coercion with incentives, and force with political legitimacy—it could reset Venezuela’s trajectory, pull the country back into the community of democracies in the hemisphere, and reassert U.S. influence in a region that has spent the past decade hedging against American power. '

NO.

The End of the Beginning in Venezuela

The real challenges and risks for U.S. policy are still to come.

Foreign Affairs (www.foreignaffairs.com)

Here's the reality: the Trump regime is utterly incompetent at literally everything. There is no possible way for the regime to "manage the next phase with discipline", because it lacks anything even remotely resembling discipline, intelligence, strategy, foresight, or even resolve.

Setting aside the morality and legality of all of this, the US simply does not have the competence to do this, at all. It has proven it does not, over and over again, for decades.

There is nothing more dangerous for a country than an incompetent authoritarian ruler.

No matter how professional its soldiers, no matter how well-trained, no matter how well-equipped, such a country is effectively without a plan, because it is without sound leadership, and in authoritarian regimes, if there is one thing the rank and file fear most, it's acting without orders.

The US military is paralyzed in the face of the chaos on the ground, because they can do nothing without orders.

Juan S. Gonzalez: ' Removing Maduro could open the door to a durable transition. It could just as easily draw the United States into a dangerous quagmire.

If Washington manages the next phase with discipline—combining coercion with incentives, and force with political legitimacy—it could reset Venezuela’s trajectory, pull the country back into the community of democracies in the hemisphere, and reassert U.S. influence in a region that has spent the past decade hedging against American power. '

This is not a question of whether or not this situation can be handled skillfully, because the Trump regime HAS NO SKILLS.

' What happens next will determine whether this moment becomes a hinge in hemispheric history or another entry in the long catalogue of American overreach. '

WRONG. The die is already cast. It's the latter.

@gcvsa Best case, we've installed a more compliant authoritarian dictatorship. Worst case, Venezuela devolves into civil war. This reminds me of the Iran strikes; the military, who are competent, executes their orders, but there's no diplomatic or political plan for what comes after.

@Tim_Eagon The main problem here is not that we don't know what Venezuela is going to do, it's that we don't know what the Trump regime is going to do next, and for that matter, neither does anyone in the Trump regime, *including most especially* Donald Trump.

There's literally no plan that survives contact with Donald Trump, let alone contact with the enemy.