After years of extreme suffering, Venezuelans have a chance for real change following the surprise capture of President Nicolas Maduro by U.S. Special Operations forces in Caracas in December. But the turnover of the country to Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, with the narrow objective of opening the oil sector to American companies, threatens to foreclose a golden opportunity to return the country to democratic governance and a more productive long-term relationship with the United States.
What Venezuela needs now is a peace process that could help heal the internal fractures and wounds of the past two decades and restore the country’s institutions. That won’t be easy. But it could best be achieved through a rigorous national dialogue that leads to the establishment of a power-sharing government of national unity, selected from all factions in Venezuela to carry the country through a period of de-polarization, institution strengthening, and ultimately new elections.
Such a process would create space for the restoration of democracy while allowing for a dignified transformation of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) founded by the late President Hugo Chávez. The party still has the support of 30 percent of the population and apparently a majority of the military and security forces. The process would be less about a clean exit for the Maduro regime and more about eventual coexistence between Venezuela’s various factions and movements, including the ruling Chavistas. As such, it would be better-aligned with the successful transitions of the past decades, while avoiding the pitfalls of those that failed.
Second U.S.-Spurred Regime Change
Maduro’s capture marked the second time in seven years that Venezuela has been subjected to a grand experiment in regime change by the United States. In 2019, the United States supported a faction of the opposition that used an obscure plank in the Venezuelan constitution to establish an alternative government. It was a bold move that came with a great deal of courage by acting President Juan Guidó and his inner circle, some of whom paid with their lives during the three years their government was established. But it is now evident that the gambit had little chance of success, given the intransigence of the military and security forces in supporting the new government and its lack of any power base inside Venezuela.
The latest initiative began even bolder, with the capture by Delta Force of Maduro and the First Lady. Into the power vacuum this left, the United States quickly empowered Rodriguez as the country’s acting president and established a kind of vassal relationship with oversight by U.S. officials. President Donald Trump ruled out the option of empowering the most popular Venezuelan opposition figure, Maria Corina Machado, whose party won the July 2024 election and who remains the most popular democratic figure in the country, arguing she did not have the capacity to effectively govern the country. The Trump administration has accepted that democracy through elections would return only very gradually to Venezuela, following a period of stabilization and recovery. But it has made clear the worst authoritarian devices of the regime must be curbed, beginning with the release of more than 400 political prisoners, which has taken place in tranches since the takeover.
Given the hundreds of issues the acting president will manage in Venezuela, it quickly became apparent that Washington oversight will cover no more than a few, with oil prominent among them. Day-to-day governance in Venezuela will continue to be in the hands of the previous government.
A Third Way?
But between the options of turning the government back over to the Chavistas and empowering a weak opposition, there is a third course. The United States could use its still-considerable leverage to draw both sides and key unaffiliated Venezuelan leaders into a peace process that would restore democratic institutions over an extended period of time by establishing a government of national unity.
Such an ambitious peace process would provide the country a broader and more functional governing arrangement and allow time to heal after the fractious and dysfunctional political dynamic of the past two decades. The process, of convening all the representatives of a conflict’s many factions in a limited and defined national dialogue, would look more like the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 or the Afghan Loya Jirga that affirmed the country’s first government in 2002 than the narrower election-centric transitions that countries like Poland and Chile experienced in 1989 and 1990, respectively.
To be sure, the Dayton Accords left ethnically divided Bosnia with a dysfunctional and complex governance structure that has hindered unity, and the Afghan Loya Jirga (which I witnessed firsthand) over time did not overcome the country’s deep divisions and political challenges. Their long-term “product” in the end had limitations. But their “process,” at least in the short term, of ending a bloody war in the Balkans and uniting Afghans for the first time in 40 years, was in each case historic and effective at allowing for a “reset” from a negative political dynamic. The pitfalls of the two cases could be avoided by ensuring the political arrangement is well-designed and is as true as possible to Venezuela’s constitution, which is highly revered, and that it includes all factions and political and social tendencies. Venezuelans would convene the process, supported by key international and especially regional powers, and including all significant players within Venezuela.
On the opposition side, this would mean not just the popular but narrow opposition that won the last election but also prominent leaders from smaller opposition parties who are significant bridgebuilders between the two sides; the business community, also a key bridging factor; the Catholic church, which continues to have considerable gravitas in Venezuelan society; and civil society, which has been working to build a more united Venezuela for decades. For the regime, it would include its various factions, and the military and security forces necessarily would have a prominent, direct role given their potential power as spoilers. (In Venezuela, the military is the conventional uniformed army, navy, and air force and take their constitutional role seriously, while the other security forces are national guard and colectivos that essentially enforce local law and order and the regime’s control.)
Venezuelan Experience With Transition
Venezuela has done this before. The country had a long history of democracy based on the Punto Fijo Pact of 1958, which ended a period of violent political struggle by establishing a form of co-existence between the political parties and factions of the time. The pact only broke down in the late 1990s, when it failed to keep up with changing economic and social conditions.
Over the past years, several proposals for a renewed Punto Fijo have emerged, one cleverly named the Pacto de Caronoco, referring to two of the country’s rivers — the Caroni and Orinoco — which converge, one blue, one brown, into a single stream. It was a proposal for raising the country’s sights above the destructive polarization of the last decades to a shared vision of what Venezuela can be, and it included a conceptual governing arrangement that could make that vision a reality.
Another proposal is called simply a Coexistence Pact. It was prominently advanced by economist Victor Alvarez prior to the last election as one way to ensure the losing side had a way forward, averting the all or nothing contest that has been the bane of Venezuela’s political existence for decades. Alvarez continues to float and develop that effort.
A third set of proposals are those put forth by the Boston Group, an organization originally designed to bridge the gap between the United States and Venezuela after the coup of 2002, but which pivoted to be more of a bridge builder between Venezuela’s internal factions. It is led by former Venezuelan lawmaker Pedro Diaz Blum, and counts support in Venezuela by National Assembly members, business executives, and prominent civil society leaders. It has had a remarkable ability to convene all sides inside Venezuela to design new approaches for the recovery of the oil sector, economic development and investment, and political accommodation.
Rather than simply negotiating an exit for the Chavistas and entrance of the opposition, these pacts are about negotiating a detailed system for power-sharing that would stabilize the country on the road to fresh elections. Political prisoners would be released, institutions reformed, sanctions lifted, and a roadmap for economic reform developed.
Power-Sharing
In the fall of 2025, Venezuelan economist and analyst Francisco Rodriguez laid out what such a power-sharing arrangement might look like in what he then envisioned would be a negotiated arrangement with Maduro still in power. The current reality makes such an arrangement much more realistic, but still difficult to execute.
In his arrangement, “representatives from the regime would need to agree to carve out quotas for the opposition in key branches of government.” This would include the Supreme Court, the electoral council, and the country’s key oversight institutions. Given the shifting of the tectonic plates brought on by Maduro’s absence, it should now be a broader, blended government, including ministries and elements of the military and security forces. This would be an extremely complicated government to manage, but with the right selection of moderate leaders, acceptable to all sides, could be made to work.
It would also give life to a concept many Venezuelan leaders have shared with me for years, a process of re-institutionalization, whereby even in the absence of a full democratic transition, the country’s battered institutions are restored to full capacity under the rule of law. Venezuelan democracy researcher and data scientist Pablo Hernández Borges captured this when he wrote recently, “Under the current circumstances, elections themselves are not as decisive as elite commitment and coordination around a re-institutionalization process.” Elections, when they come, would then allow for a transition of a functional government.
Both sides would need to be pressured to accept the process and further pressured in the future to live by any agreement that is reached. The opposition would need to know it will see free and fair elections whose outcome is respected, soon. And the Chavistas will need to see a viable political and social future that allows them to re-tool from a revolutionary socialist party to a modern free-market, social democratic party, and does not include incarceration. But in the meantime, power-sharing would provide a safe venue for working through the many issues of co-existence, as opposed to the blunt instrument of abrupt regime change that an election or coup would create.
Fewer U.S. Sticks, More Carrots
The United States will not be able to leave a carrier parked off the coast of Venezuela forever (indeed, it has already left, though some U.S. naval assets remain), but it could use other means of pressure and incentives to keep the agreement on track. Washington could begin by applying fewer sticks and more carrots. This could start with walking back the threat to take over and unilaterally run Venezuela’s oil sector, a historic place of nationalistic pride for all Venezuelans that will over time make cooperation more difficult. A more visibly respectful arrangement would go a long way to eliciting goodwill for the United States and for the new governing arrangement. Other carrots would include lifting bounties and sanctions on prominent Venezuelan leaders (at least those deemed redeemable, some should remain), trade concessions and support for Venezuela’s exporters, and direct assistance to Venezuela’s battered agricultural sector, among many others. Key regional and European partners and the United Nations would also play a key role.
For the first time Venezuela has the opportunity for real change. But it will take support for the hard work of a peace process to bring it about. Missiles and Delta Force will only go so far.
– Keith Mines, Published courtesy of Lawfare.
