President Donald Trump, it seems, has it out for Venezuela. Over the summer, his administration began massing naval power in the Caribbean, largely near the country’s coast, and striking ships soon after they exit its territorial waters. In October, he authorized the CIA to carry out operations within Venezuela’s borders. And Trump has repeatedly railed against President Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of emptying Venezuelan prisons into the United States and saying that his days in office are numbered. This week, Washington moved an aircraft carrier group to the Caribbean, and Trump was briefed on possible military options, including land strikes. Publicly, the White House maintains its operations are simply designed to stop narcotics—not to facilitate regime change. But the scale of the military deployment (it is the largest in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis) and the accompanying rhetoric suggest Washington’s real objective is toppling the government.

If Trump does attack Venezuela, it is unlikely to end well. Short of an invasion—a move for which there is little domestic appetite and for which the current mobilization is inadequate—a show of force will probably not be enough to bring down Maduro’s regime. As the political scientists Alexander Downes and Lindsey O’Rourke wrote in Foreign Affairs, airstrikes alone have never driven a leader from office. Even if U.S. efforts somehow succeeded here, Venezuela’s military would almost certainly replace Maduro with an insider. And even if, against all odds, Venezuela’s opposition seized sudden control of the country, there is no guarantee that its ascendance would lead to a durable, democratic transition.

Trump, of course, could decide to attack anyway. But the White House probably knows that a simple show of force won’t topple Maduro, and for all of Trump’s fiery rhetoric, he has historically opposed large-scale military interventions involving prolonged deployments and nation building.

Instead, throughout his two administrations, Trump has consistently approached thorny domestic and foreign policy issues via a strategy he laid out in his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal: escalate to negotiate. Shortly after North Korea tested nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States in 2018, Trump threatened it with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” He then held three summits on denuclearization with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump threatened to pull the United States out of NATO if other members did not raise their own levels of military spending. Most did, and so Washington has stayed put. And in April, Trump raised tariffs on almost every country in the world, only to pause many of the levies in order to negotiate with states for lower trade barriers.

If Trump’s plan is to force regime change in Venezuela, then he could be walking into an embarrassing and expensive failure. But if he sees the military buildup as a prelude to a diplomatic overture, he has a shot at notching perhaps the most significant foreign policy win of his administration. To succeed, however, Washington must understand that democratic transitions do not happen overnight. Instead, they tend to occur after extensive negotiations in which the dictatorship agrees to start sharing authority with its critics. Free and fair elections come at the end—not at the beginning—of these transitions, because institutional reforms and a period of coexistence with the outgoing regime are needed to make a peaceful transfer feasible.

The United States should thus use its leverage to get both sides of Venezuela’s internal political conflict to the negotiating table. It should then force each to abandon its maximalist goal—obliterating the other—and instead, accept sharing power. A deal that does this may not feel as satisfying to some as would a military strike. Unlike a CIA operation to remove Maduro, it does not promise immediate results. But it is far more likely to be effective at advancing U.S. interests, improving the lives of Venezuelans, and setting the stage for the country’s democratization.

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN

When it comes to attempts at regime change, Venezuela is a graveyard of ideas. During Trump’s first administration, the United States imposed punitive economic sanctions on the country’s oil and mining sectors, believing that depriving the government of crucial resources would lead to its implosion. It didn’t: Maduro stayed in power, even as the sanctions helped provoke the largest peacetime economic contraction and migration exodus in modern history. The Biden administration took a different approach, offering partial sanctions relief in exchange for commitments to hold free elections. But this, too, floundered. During the country’s 2024 contest, more than half of Venezuelans turned out to vote, and according to the opposition’s methodical collection of official tally sheets, the former diplomat Edmundo González overwhelmingly prevailed. But electoral authorities declared Maduro the winner anyway, and his government forcefully put down the resulting protests.

But there is another approach to handling Maduro, one that has not been properly attempted: brokering a coexistence agreement between the president and his opponents. Rather than forcing Maduro to give up power immediately—a demand that has repeatedly proved unrealistic—the goal with such a deal would be to incentivize his government to gradually yet meaningfully democratize.

This idea shares some elements with the first Trump administration’s Democratic Transition Framework for Venezuela. That plan, outlined in 2020, would have created a Council of State featuring both government and opposition representatives to oversee a transition to free and fair elections. But the framework treated the power-sharing council as a short-term bridge to national elections, which would come within, at most, a year. To work, coexistence agreements almost always need to run for a longer time, as this one should.

An anti-Chavista president could become the mirror image of Maduro.

Done right, a coexistence deal would have good odds of democratizing Venezuela, at least relative to the alternatives. Decades of political science research show that these kinds of so-called pacted transitions offer one of the most stable avenues for ending authoritarian rule. Latin America alone has multiple states—Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay—in which reforms initiated by an authoritarian government created a level political playing field that has lasted across multiple governments. It is, by contrast, rare to find cases in which an external intervention has led to a durable process of democratization, in the absence of a prolonged military occupation.

And Venezuela, in particular, needs a pacted transition. After years of dictatorship, the country is deeply divided. Although most of the country opposes Maduro, nearly one-third of the population still identifies with him. Many more people—over half the country—have a positive view of Hugo Chávez, the populist former president who mentored Maduro and, before dying in 2013, named Maduro as his successor. To successfully undertake major reforms, Venezuela’s next leader will thus need support from at least some Chavistas.

Without a power-sharing deal, however, Venezuela’s opposition is unlikely to construct a big tent. Instead, it might use the presidency to seek revenge. It has, after all, failed to condemn the forced deportations and killings of Venezuelans in the Caribbean. It has advocated for sanctions that have severely damaged the country’s economy. It has, in other words, subordinated human rights concerns to political objectives—the hallmark of an authoritarian movement. Coupled with Venezuela’s winner-take-all political institutions, it is not hard to imagine an anti-Chavista president becoming the mirror image of Maduro and using the institutions of the state to viciously persecute opponents.

If anti-Chavista leaders do prioritize vengeance, Venezuela will not only face continued autocracy and economic malaise but also risk civil war. The country’s military is packed with Chavistas, and should Venezuela’s next leader systematically purge them, they might start an armed insurgency—drawing on support from Colombian guerrillas and organized criminal networks that have a strong presence in Venezuela. The result could be a prolonged internal conflict, reminiscent of the one that has plagued Colombia for over 50 years.

AN OFFER YOU CAN’T REFUSE

To work, a Venezuelan grand bargain will need to ensure that both dueling factions are represented in the country’s many political and legal institutions. A stable democracy requires not just elections but also arrangements that limit executive power and make political competition safe and meaningful. Transitioning away from autocracy is difficult precisely because autocratic governments lack such bodies and rules; instead, they tend to concentrate authority, opening the temptation for opposition movements to similarly abuse power once they reach office. Venezuela’s constitution, for example, allows the president to convene elections for a constitutional convention that can dissolve the other branches of government at any time. This prerogative would almost certainly be used by the opposition upon taking charge to drive Chavistas from all state institutions.

But Trump might be able to prevent a vicious cycle—while still easing out Maduro—by compelling Venezuela’s two camps to forge a joint agreement. The country’s opposition is highly dependent on Washington and thus ill positioned to refuse its demands. Meanwhile, by confronting the Maduro regime with an existential threat unlike any it has faced, Trump has gained new leverage over Caracas. This puts him in a position to make both sides an offer they can’t refuse: a framework for political coexistence with institutional guarantees, backed by the United States and other major international actors (who would also promise to help facilitate economic recovery).

In practice, this would mean representatives from the regime would need to agree to carve out quotas for the opposition in key branches of government. Opposition figures should, for example, receive guaranteed representation in the supreme court, the electoral council, and the country’s key oversight institutions. A credible arrangement would appoint opposition representatives to eight of the 20 seats in the supreme court, with another four justices chosen from figures acceptable to both sides; similar ratios should be used for appointments to the electoral council. Opposition-nominated justices should hold a majority of votes in some key supreme court chambers, such as the Criminal Cassation Chamber, which reviews prosecutions for human rights abuses and can overturn politically motivated convictions. Similarly, negotiators must agree to the appointment of a new prosecutor general, comptroller general, and ombudsperson. At least one of these positions should be held by an opposition nominee, and another by a figure acceptable to both sides. An impartial or opposition-aligned comptroller general (who oversees the use of public funds and investigates corruption in public administration), for example, could reassess the bans on political participation that have played a key role in reducing the competitiveness of Venezuelan elections.

In Venezuela, there are no shortcuts to a better future.

Some of these reforms will require that Venezuela amend its constitution. Right now, it is the text of an electoral autocracy, not a democracy. A revised document must reduce the power of the executive branch and enshrine protections that ensure the losers of future elections will not be persecuted. It must also abolish the power of constitutional conventions to dissolve nonexecutive branches of government, create a bicameral legislature with binding supermajority requirements for key laws, and establish explicit provisions blocking whatever side wins the next election from manipulating the country’s transitional judiciary and oversight bodies. Most important, the new constitution should emerge from an inclusive national discussion and be approved by Venezuelan voters in a referendum. That referendum would double as an opportunity for the new electoral authority to establish its credibility before Venezuelans—and before the world.

Reforming Venezuela’s institutions will, naturally, be a protracted process. But there are steps the country could take immediately, including ending political persecution and other human rights abuses. The government should begin with the release of all political prisoners and the approval of a new law to limit arbitrary detention. It could create an impartial oversight body, assisted by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and empower it to supervise the conditions of any remaining or new detainees in real time and to order investigations for human rights abuses. This body would also have the authority to ensure that the country’s National Telecommunications Office stops using its regulatory authority to censor speech.

These institutional and legal reforms would go a long way in facilitating Venezuela’s democratic transition. But they are not enough to secure the country’s future. As part of any agreement, the government and the opposition must work together to revive Venezuela’s moribund economy. They can start by crafting an internationally backed economic reconstruction program aimed at reinserting the country into global oil and financial markets. To do so, the government and opposition could jointly appoint nonpartisan experts to head the country’s central bank and oil company. The United States would lift all economic sanctions on the country and, in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund and private creditors, coordinate to give Venezuela the financial and technical assistance it needs to embark on reforms aimed at restoring its economic competitiveness and rebuilding its social and physical infrastructure.

Eventually, the country would hold elections at different levels of government. But the timetable for doing so must be gradual. Venezuela will be unable to carry out a free and fair contest until its new institutional framework is consolidated and the economy is clearly rebounding—a process that is likely to take three to five years. Even then, elections must proceed under a predetermined schedule: first local, then regional, then parliamentary, and finally presidential. The transitory judiciary, electoral, and oversight bodies that embody the power-sharing arrangements will have to remain in place, with the same split membership, through at least the first post-transition presidential term.

LEARNING TO LIVE TOGETHER

For American officials eager to get rid of Maduro, a pacted transition might sound far too slow and far too intricate. But in Venezuela, there are no shortcuts to a better future, and this proposal’s deliberate pace is why it holds more promise than any alternative promising immediate solutions. By limiting the government’s ability to rig elections while constraining the opposition’s capacity to abuse executive authority, it generates the incentives for both sides needed to make a peaceful transfer of power viable. More important, it would cause immediate improvements in the living conditions of Venezuelans—freeing hundreds of political prisoners and leading to a rapid economic recovery that would stem outward migration. It would also contribute to addressing Washington’s political priorities by allowing the United States and Venezuela to work together to reduce transnational crime and migration pressures.

This agreement will be staunchly opposed by extremists on both ends of Venezuela’s political spectrum. But that is not unusual: democratic transitions are, more than anything, a process of finding common ground between moderates on different sides of polarized polities. Other countries have managed to bridge these divides, and Venezuela can, too. The United States and its partners can help by supporting negotiations aimed at helping the country establish a broad political consensus on a path forward.

The potential upside to the current U.S. military buildup off the coast of Venezuela may lie precisely in the uncertainty it has generated. In classic Art of the Deal style, Trump has single-handedly raised the stakes of Venezuela’s political conflict. The risks are now high not just for the Maduro government, which faces the real prospect of a massive military attack, but also for the opposition, whose near-total dependence on U.S. support has been laid bare. Trump’s threat of fire and fury could presage violence. But it could just as easily create an opening for a negotiated transition—one that breaks a catastrophic stalemate and allows Venezuelans to reclaim their future.

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