The Ineluctable Logic of Regime Change

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, October 01, 2025

 

A little less than a month ago, we learned of the first lethal U.S. military operation targeting what Trump administration officials claimed were Venezuelan drug boats bound for ports unknown in the Caribbean. Following that action, I pointed out what I thought was the primary strategic flaw (to say nothing of its legal and tactical shortcomings) in what the administration promised would be a sustained kinetic campaign:

 

The problem with a drug war are the trade’s twin pillars — supply and demand. The demand is not going away. Many have tried to use the power and influence of the state to compel Americans to abandon their taste for illegal intoxicants. All have failed. So, the administration is going after the suppliers. They and their sponsors will adapt to these attacks, shift tactics, and perhaps even attempt to retaliate. Even if those efforts come up short, there will be drug boats so long as there are suppliers and a market for their goods.

 

Invariably, then, American military planners will be compelled to target suppliers closer and closer to their sources. Those options are surely already available to the president. If those sources cannot be disrupted because of their support from the regime, regime targets must be next. So, up the escalatory ladder we go.

 

The administration was correct to conclude that the illegitimate, criminal, anti-American regime in Caracas would continue to pose a threat to U.S. interests so long as it remained in power. “That is why the logic of a kinetic war on the drugs that emanate from Venezuela invariably will lead to escalation,” I wrote.

 

Welp.

 

“The push by top aides to President Trump to remove Nicolás Maduro as the leader of Venezuela has intensified in recent days, with administration officials discussing a broad campaign that would escalate military pressure to try to force him out,” the New York Times reported Monday.

 

The four-bylined dispatch identifies Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio as the foremost advocate of a broad strategic effort aimed at securing regime change in Venezuela. It contends further that Rubio is supported in that initiative by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and the president’s domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller.

 

“Because administration officials assert Mr. Maduro sits atop Venezuela’s cartel network, they can argue that removing him from power is ultimately a counternarcotics operation,” the Times report continues. For now, the administration is “focused on fighting drug cartels,” but the U.S. has not amassed the naval firepower that is presently floating off Venezuela’s coast to interdict drug boats. The president has options.

 

“Some people briefed on the discussions suggested that Mr. Rubio and his allies were first looking for ways to oust Mr. Maduro without having to resort to direct U.S. military action,” the Times concludes. And there are voices inside the administration who advocate covert and diplomatic offensives designed, if not to usher Maduro out of power, at least to safeguard America’s economic and strategic interests in the region.

 

But those interests will not be wholly secured without the collapse of the Maduro regime and, perhaps, its sponsors in places like Havana. It always seemed like that was where the logic of the president’s muscular approach to relations with Venezuela was going — not a repudiation of the hated neocons, what with their penchant for the maximum, disproportionate application of force in the pursuit of strategic objectives, but a ratification of the rationale that culminated in Saddam Hussein’s ouster.

 

You can practically hear the gears turning as administration officials wrestle with their own cognitive dissonance.