The United States Cannot Go It Alone in Venezuela

“Weak nations,” the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in 1990, “will hope that strong nations will be law-abiding.” Moynihan was no apologist for weak nations. An avowed Cold Warrior whose political career was grounded in his loud and unsuccessful opposition to a 1975 UN resolution that equated Zionism with racism, he entitled his memoir of his time as UN ambassador A Dangerous Place. Even so, Moynihan would have been deeply alarmed at U.S. actions in Venezuela last weekend.

His alarm would not have come from any sympathy for Maduro or his ruling clique, nor any embarrassment at a display of U.S. power. In fact, he would have taken pride that the weekend’s events in Venezuela once again made clear that the United States has capabilities—military, intelligence, and otherwise—that other countries can only dream about. Instead, his alarm would have come from how U.S. adversaries and allies alike are likely to respond over the long term, and the dangers of the United States going it alone.

Let’s start with the adversaries. In the coming weeks and months, they will be treading softly. A journalist friend wrote last night, “I sure hope the Ayatollah’s sleeping with one eye open,” and she’s right. There are governments with long histories of tensions with the United States: not just Iran, but also Cuba, and more recently Colombia. There are rebel groups like the Houthis in Yemen, and the Taliban government in Afghanistan is holding Americans wrongfully. All of these entities are susceptible to the sort of action that the United States just carried out in Venezuela, and they will be extremely cautious about overtly defying President Trump.

Over the longer term, however, they have a vital interest in U.S. failure in Venezuela, and in this they are deeply aligned with Russia and China. Constraining U.S. power is Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s chief foreign policy objective. While each has been quick to threaten the sovereignty of neighbors in Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively, we have already seen howls of protest that the United States has violated Venezuelan sovereignty. Putin and Xi will try to ensure that the specter of an unconstrained United States creates anxiety throughout the Global South (and among the BRICS+ grouping), and they will seek to move these groupings away from their economic origins toward greater political and diplomatic isolation of the United States. The success of the Venezuela operation underlined how the United States can make its own rules when it wants to, but by doing so it breathed life into solidarity among those who seek to resist the United States.

For many of these countries, they will work to turn Venezuela into a morass for the United States (much as the United States did to the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979). They will quietly help insurgents, or perhaps shelter some and decline to isolate others. They will frustrate U.S. efforts to use tools of economic statecraft to help the Venezuelan government achieve stability and isolate its foes. They will complicate efforts to reinvigorate investment in Venezuela, partly through direct engagement with corporations and multilateral institutions and partly through obstructing institutional engagement. Put starkly, for them, the price of U.S. success in Venezuela is high and the costs of ensnaring the United States are relatively low.

But it is not just hostile countries that will seek to hobble the United States. Even countries with deep bilateral relations, such as Brazil and India, have had their share of confrontations with the Trump administration. For them, an even more emboldened United States is a disaster. Already committed to seeking greater equity in international affairs (and, by extension, a more constrained United States), they will look for quiet ways to trim the American sails without attracting attention.

Equally troubled by a seemingly unstoppable United States are U.S. allies with more recent histories of tensions with the Trump administration, including but not limited to NATO allies Canada and Denmark as well as key trading partner Mexico. They will feel a need to hedge not only against U.S. abandonment, but (previously unthinkably) against U.S. hostility. They will seek to be superficially conciliatory in the near term. In the longer term, however, they will feel a deep need to hedge. They will do so partly by deepening ties with like-minded countries, and also by deepening their growing ties with China. For decades, these countries have accustomed themselves to being within the U.S. defense umbrella. To the extent that they now feel an urgent need to build their own defenses against the United States, they will be warier U.S. partners. They will seek to do less to help the United States and more to build leverage against the United States. To do so they will engage more deeply with U.S. competitors.

This broad sense of international wariness contrasts with the sense from the White House team that they are “on a roll.” Their evident satisfaction conjures the unwelcome image of former President George W. Bush appearing before a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” after major combat operations in Iraq ended in May 2003.

While the president is right to celebrate the capabilities of the U.S. military and intelligence community, he would do well to remember that others, and especially authoritarian leaders, are playing a long game. Unconcerned with election calendars, U.S. adversaries are able to play for time. They will count on the administration losing focus on Venezuela, look for ways to force the United States to commit resources to Venezuela, and draw international attention to Venezuela’s domestic chaos. They will portray the United States as a stumbling bully, able to destroy but not to build. While the White House will be determined to show how this is different from decades-long U.S. commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan—ones that President Trump criticized bitterly—U.S. adversaries will seek to show it is just more of the same. The seeming lack of U.S. planning for long-term success in Venezuela is a troubling sign their hopes may be fulfilled.

Few countries need to be reminded of U.S. power, but many need to be reminded of U.S. leadership. There’s something ironic about that. President Trump’s success building a coalition around a ceasefire in Gaza last fall was an important accomplishment. Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and the United Arab Emirates embraced Trump’s peace plan before either Israel or Hamas had accepted it, and the UN Security Council endorsed it afterwards. That is a potential inspiration for U.S. action in Venezuela (although the faltering follow-through afterward in Gaza is a worrying sign).

Bringing others to the table, finding common ground, and persuading leaders that the United States is a partner and not a threat need to be urgent White House priorities. Building on the international consensus that Maduro stole the last election, the U.S. goal should be empowering a legitimate Venezuelan government. Neighbors have a keen interest in Venezuela’s reconstruction and regional stability. So do European partners of the United States. They have economic and political interests at play. The potential for cooperation is there.

The United States has had near-term success in Venezuela, but the end of this story is far off. U.S. adversaries are looking well beyond Venezuela to advance their own interests with the United States, and to build global solidarity against the United States. They may well succeed. U.S. success here requires not just a successful Venezuela, but diverse partners who feel a share in U.S. success, too. That means a United States that helps protect them, not threatens them. Work on that needs to start now.

Jon B. Alterman holds the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.