Venezuela's Regime Change Conundrum

Welcome to Season 3 of The Friday Brief! We're diving into All Things Venezuela today, including an update on the federal prosecution against Nicolas Maduro, the Trump administration's repositioning of the Cartel de Los Soles, and Maria Machado's ongoing campaign to lead her country. When will the U.S. hand over control? Who should Machado ally with now? Do foreign-led regime changes ever end well? 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome
• 0:58 The Capture of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores
• 3:05 "The Cartel of the Sun"
• 4:54 The Nobel Laureate
• 5:59 The Regime Change Conundrum
• 12:13 Until next time!

Transcript

Welcome to The Friday Brief, a news podcast by Girl Friday. I’m Phoenix Ricks, the CEO of Girl Friday and your host. This is your brief for January 6, 2026. 

I hope your year is off to an amazing start. Before we dive into what’s happening with Nicolas Maduro, who is not off to a great start in 2026, allow me to reintroduce myself. I’m a geopolitical advisor. That means I help companies and public figures navigate tricky issues within global affairs, ranging from sharing politically sensitive statements to untangling supply chains in conflict zones. I spent much of my career at the U.S. Department of State before moving to the private sector, where I led government affairs strategies in areas like trade and lobbying. I started this podcast, The Friday Brief, to share perspectives on geopolitics. If you’re looking for a critical analysis of what you see on the news, then you’re in the right place. 

Now, let’s get started. By now, you know that the U.S. military struck Venezuela on January 3rd, capturing Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores while also, according to The New York Times, killing around 40 people and damaging civilians’ homes. You also probably saw Donald Trump’s press conference, where he said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela until essentially the foreseeable future without an end date. Well, yesterday in New York, Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty in federal court. Remember, this case was brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, an office that is synonymous with aggressive prosecutions. This will be an uphill battle for Maduro’s attorneys. Politico reported that Maduro told the federal judge that he had been “kidnapped” from his home. He said, “I am president of the republic of Venezuela, and I am here, kidnapped, since Jan. 3, Saturday. I was captured at my home in Caracas, Venezuela.” The judge replied that “the legal sufficiency of what was done” would be debated at a later date. 

So, what is the U.S. charging Maduro with? Pam Bondi said, on the app formerly known as Twitter, that Maduro is charged with “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States.” Given the Trump administration’s constant communications about Venezuela’s alleged connection to drug overdoses in the U.S., some Americans were confused by the limited drug-related charges. But, on that note, Reuters reported that Flores, Maduro’s wife, is also “accused of ordering kidnappings and murders, as well as accepting bribes in 2007 to arrange a meeting between drug traffickers and the director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office.” 

You may recall that in previous episodes, I explained how the Trump administration redefined narcoterrorism and designated certain cartels as terrorist organizations, including the nebulous Cartel de los Soles in Venezuela. Experts all seemed to agree that the “Cartel of the Sun” is a system of corruption, but not an actual criminal syndicate with a defined structure. Nevertheless, this U.S. administration felt it had enough evidence to not only call it a cartel but also give it the formal designation of a terrorist organization. That has now somewhat changed. Yesterday, the New York Times said they backed off from those claims. The Times wrote, “Prosecutors still accused Mr. Maduro of participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy, but they abandoned the claim that Cartel de los Soles was an actual organization. Instead, the revised indictment states that it refers to a ‘patronage system’ and a ‘culture of corruption’ fueled by drug money.” 

Given the Trump administration’s swift steps over the past year, combined with the recent U.S. military strikes on alleged narcoterrorists in international waters, to me, the obvious next action was to capture Maduro. I was actually baffled that he stayed in his home this long. Unlike some news influencers, I did not believe that opposition leader Maria Machado would be immediately installed as Venezuela's president. I always felt that her acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, an award Donald Trump would like to receive, made that move highly unlikely without an intervention from world leaders and Venezuelans, if they truly want her to lead. Machado has been on the scene pushing for regime change for many years. She wants to privatize Venezuela’s oil because it is the largest oil reserve in the world, which should enrich the country and its people. 

Fortune published an excellent article about her yesterday, titled “Machado once backed Trump’s Venezuela plan. Now the jilted Nobel laureate is frozen out.” The article does a phenomenal job of summarizing her history in the country, including how her years of work to get global governments to see Maduro as the head of a criminal enterprise ultimately paid off. She has been vocal about wanting free and fair elections and trustworthy institutions. Again, her hard work landed her the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s no small feat, given the openly hostile environment she was advocating within. Unfortunately, I think she miscalculated which foreign governments to rely on at this specific political juncture. 

Analyzing individual political leaders’ behaviors is a core part of developing geopolitical strategies. So, let’s take a step back from this situation for just a moment. I do this when I know people are very emotionally invested in an issue. For a foreign-led regime change to work in any country where the current government has a violent grip on its population, an aspiring leader almost always needs a well-trained military or paramilitary force and a powerful foreign government partner that needs them as well. That last part, the part about being needed by the foreign government, is often overlooked. It is one of the many reasons countries cycle through military coups and despots as they try to establish or reestablish fair elections and democratic institutions after a foreign-led regime change. You can look at Afghanistan and Iraq as current examples. 

I keep seeing people on social media who were for Maduro’s capture pushing back on concerned Americans who cite those two nations as potential unintended consequences for Venezuela. But it is an accurate concern at this stage, and it does not in any way diminish the very real relief Venezuelans and others might feel right now seeing Maduro removed from office. Many things can be true at once, including the fact that domestic power vacuums are precarious after a foreign-led regime change. No other country appears to be stepping up to fill the void or create checks and balances. The emergency United Nations Security Council meeting yesterday was just a mix of strongly worded statements about international law, with U.S. allies carefully omitting any mention of who exactly may have broken such laws. Given who is in leadership around the world today, superpower governments rarely view advocates, exiles, or aspiring leaders (even those who may have legitimately won elections but not been installed in office) as necessary parts of the regime change plan. 

If Machado had control of those oil reserves, then she might be perceived as a necessary part of the regime-change plan. But superpowers don’t necessarily need her to implement her oil privatization plans unless her people make it clear that she is their elected leader and they will not cooperate without her at the helm. Superpowers have the economic resources and military might to manage regime changes without the will of the people. And to make matters more complex, superpowers rarely check each other's bad behavior in any meaningful way beyond stern statements. For the record, I believe it is completely unfair how some existing and rising superpower governments behave during regime changes. But I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't directly acknowledge the reality of the situation. It's why I am always leery of these kinds of foreign-led regime changes.

I think at this moment, Machado should look to leaders in similar positions, such as Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya from Belarus. Over the past five years, since fleeing after the 2020 election, she has successfully fostered support for democracy in Belarus and recognition of her unique role as a necessary partner and leader, even outside the country’s borders. She’s been very strategic, in my opinion, in how she positions her cause and which governments she meets with to tackle specific issues in Belarus. One of my last episodes of 2025 was about how she helped free political prisoners at the end of the year, with some negotiating support from partners in the U.S. (we came through by lifting a trade sanction) and Europe. 

The U.S. is an obvious partner option for Machado, too, but it also has a very murky history of leading regime changes. We rarely, if ever, select the right leader at the right time to carry forth the right plans. That’s across political parties and administrations. We have the bipartisan ability to absolutely destroy a successful regime-change plan. I know hindsight is 20/20, and Venezuela was in a dire situation under Maduro’s leadership, so Machado was likely advocating under duress for her people to have their basic needs met. She was likely to grasp whichever hand extended aid. Still, I think the best-case scenario for her would have been to build a small coalition of governments with equal stakes in the operation and a clear agreement to focus on installing new leadership before redeveloping the country’s oil infrastructure. 

Now, the governments I would handpick for this task are seldom involved in regime changes, which is precisely why I would select them. I think the best path forward would be to host a brand-new election by summer, monitored by the United Nations, a delegation from the European Union, Jordan, and Canada. But even that dream scenario still requires first dismantling the rest of Maduro’s regime. Will they go quietly into the night? Doubtful. Remember, the U.S. removed one man, not his entire government. The reality is, the situation is still pretty dire. Machado clearly sees this, too. She went on Fox News, saying that she wants to give her Nobel Prize to Donald Trump. Will that tactic work to install her as a temporary leader? Keep in mind that Donald Trump publicly said she wasn’t even consulted about the military operation. The Hill quoted him as saying, “I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” 

In her shoes, a nation I would now want long-term support from is Denmark. Tomorrow, join me as I dive into what’s happening between the U.S. and Denmark because of Greenland. Oddly enough, my first episode of this podcast was about Trump’s drive to acquire Greenland. We’re coming full circle tomorrow. 

Thank you for listening to The Friday Brief. Thank you for supporting this podcast into a third season. This is my 50th episode! Be sure to follow The Friday Brief on Instagram. Until next time, I’m Phoenix Ricks, signing off from Washington, DC. Let’s work together for a world of good.