Does Anyone Know What the Word ‘Regime’ Means?

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, January 06, 2026

 

We’re witnessing a bizarre conspiracy of mutual interests among both Donald Trump’s supporters and critics alike, all of whom appear to be invested in the notion that Nicolás Maduro’s ouster constitutes “regime change.”

 

Trump’s Democratic opponents are fit to be tied over the president’s alleged abandonment of his promise to avoid a “regime change” operation in Venezuela. Career diplomats are leery of representing a renewed U.S. mission to Caracas lest they lend legitimacy to America as an “occupying force.” When Republicans in Congress, like Speaker Mike Johnson, contend that Operation Absolute Resolve did not result in regime change, they’re accused of brazenly lying to the American public “with a straight face.”

 

The administration, meanwhile, will not say the words “regime change,” but they do talk about the government in Venezuela as though it has undergone a wholesale makeover. The president mused that American viceroys would “run” the country, that “we’re in charge” now, and that American commercial interests would dictate terms to Venezuela’s representatives moving forward.

 

What are they talking about?

 

As Michael observed yesterday, the regime that Maduro helmed is very much intact. Powerful regime figures like Vladimir Padrino López still lead Venezuela’s Bolivarian Armed Forces. Diosdado Cabello, the head of the Venezuelan interior ministry and one of the regime’s most feared enforcers, hasn’t left his post. Both are tested loyalists to the regime established in 1999 by the late Hugo Chávez, a regime that has purged dissenters and crushed the opposition many times over throughout this century.

 

Maduro’s puppet legislature, which was summoned into existence with the legitimate legislative assembly challenged the regime, remains in place. It is still dependent upon local militias and drug cartels for stability at home, and it relies on the beneficence of anti-American actors abroad, like Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba, for international support. Indeed, the regime figure with whom Trump officials are now invested in propping up — interim President Delcy Rodríguez — is a Chávez devotee implicated in some of the Venezuelan regime’s worst crimes.

 

By any accepted definition of the word “regime,” the one that ruled Venezuela before January 3 is the one that rules it today. So, what explains the confusion — motivated or otherwise — among Americans who use “regime” to describe both the head of state in Venezuela and its governmental system interchangeably?

 

Perhaps their befuddlement is the result of a trick we’ve played on ourselves. For too long, Americans on both ends of the political spectrum have used the word “regime” as a pejorative to describe their political opponents. The word conveys a vague sense of illegitimacy and a tendency toward repressive policies, so, as political insults go, it’s a cutting one. But it’s a slur that perverts the meaning of the word.

 

A regime — even in a system led by a single strongman — is not synonymous with the head of state or government. The word describes an entire schema of societal organization. An untold mass of stakeholders underwrites a regime’s existence. Institutions, public and non-governmental alike, buttress it. It is composed of a variety of power centers that may occasionally be at odds with one another but are nevertheless dependent on the system for their own self-preservation.

 

In the United States, our regime is the Constitution. The regime does not change with shifts in the party controlling Congress or with the transition of power from one president to the next. In Venezuela, the regime is a criminal enterprise festooned with just enough socialist trappings to convince naïve Westerners that its abuses and mismanagement are the unremarkable features of any sufficiently progressive project. Governments might come and go, but regimes are stickier things.

 

Indeed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s allies identified the distinction between a regime change operation like the 2003 Iraq War and the Caracas raid. “This isn’t de-Baathification,” one of the secretary’s supporters told Axios. Which is to say, the United States has not sought a radical revision of the Venezuelan regime’s character. It is not dissolving the military, purging governmental ranks of ideologically suspect figures, or insisting on revisions to the government’s constitutional structure.

 

To the extent that it has demanded anything along these lines from Maduro’s successor, it is only that she “eventually facilitate free elections and step aside,” according to Politico. That process, if it ever came to fruition, may result in a real change in the regime’s character. Until then, the Venezuelan regime as we have known it in the 21st century persists.

 

Words have meaning, and preserving their meaning is important. Perverting them just to win a fleeting partisan argument is to sacrifice the future to the demands of the present.