By Jared O. Bell
For those of us who have not forgotten the regime changes, interventions, and “limited engagements” that never stay limited, it is obvious that the United States is drifting toward a dangerous precipice in Venezuela. The November 24th decision to designate Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization is not a routine sanctions update. It is a major escalation.
The cartel, a criminal political network embedded within the Venezuelan state, has long blurred the line between organized crime and official security structures. But the FTO designation unlocks sweeping counterterrorism powers, including expanded prosecution, broader sanctions, and potential military or paramilitary actions. As one defense official told Reuters, it “brings a whole bunch of new options”.
Combined with recent U.S. maritime strikes, including boat bombings that experts warn may constitute war crimes, the trajectory is unmistakable. Washington is laying the groundwork for deeper involvement without publicly confronting the risks.
Interventions framed as regime change have consistently haunted U.S. foreign policy. The 1983 invasion of Grenada reshaped regional perceptions of American power. In Nicaragua, U.S. support for the Contras justified through counterterrorism and narcotrafficking narratives fractured the country for generations. In Iraq, terrorism narratives and claims of weapons of mass destruction laid the foundation for an occupation that collapsed a state. These are not distant parallels. They are historical warnings, and Venezuela carries many of the same risk factors.
Aside from the reality that any U.S. invasion would violate international law, there are domestic constraints in Venezuela that undermine any notion of a rapid or clean intervention. The desire to remove Maduro in hopes of installing a friendly, cooperative partner is wildly unrealistic and risks detonating what remains of the country’s governance. It opens the door to competing power centers and warring factions, the kind of fractured environment seen in Libya’s militia-dominated landscape.
The reality is that Venezuela is already deeply fragile. More than 60 percent of the population lives in poverty. Homicide rates exceed 50 per 100,000 residents in some regions. Criminal networks generate billions in illicit revenue and fill the void left by institutional collapse. Even with a revitalized opposition led by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate María Corina Machado, dismantling entrenched patronage networks and reversing decades of state capture is a generational undertaking, not a rapid fix.
Moreover, the United States no longer possesses many of the tools that once anchored its post-conflict engagements. USAID has been effectively eliminated in its traditional form, stripped of the independence and operational capacity that once made it the backbone of American civilian stabilization efforts. Its democracy-building and governance programs have been hollowed out, the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) has faced sustained political attacks, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has seen its expansion stall. These institutions were far from perfect, but they provided the technical expertise and long-term capacity necessary to rebuild governance systems, justice sectors, and economic foundations.
Yet while the administration now speaks openly about the possibility of regime change, it has simultaneously hampered or dismantled the very tools that would be essential in the aftermath. Washington is left primarily with sanctions, coercive pressure, and security instruments, tools that can destabilize but cannot rebuild.
Congress is not blind to Venezuela’s crisis. Lawmakers have passed bipartisan resolutions condemning Maduro, funded humanitarian support for refugees, and enacted measures such as the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act and the VERDAD Act. On December 3, 2025, a bipartisan Senate coalition introduced a War Powers Resolution to block unauthorized U.S. military action. Several senators later revealed they were briefed only after U.S. strikes had occurred, raising serious questions about unchecked executive escalation.
Despite these efforts, Congress has yet to take the steps truly required. Congressional hesitation is precisely what allows abuse to take hold. The framers of the Constitution were clear that decisions over war and peace could not rest in the hands of one individual, vesting the power to declare war and to fund the military in the legislature for exactly that reason. No partisan interest should override that principle, which lies at the core of the oath every member of Congress swears to uphold. Without firm guardrails, the executive can escalate under broad counterterrorism authorities never intended to justify regime change in Latin America, producing a policy driven less by inertia than by strategy, drifting toward confrontation without a plan for what comes after.
History has already shown the consequences of the “you break it, you buy it” model of intervention. It is costly, destabilizing, and rarely delivers the outcomes policymakers imagine. If Washington is not prepared to manage the aftermath of dismantling a deeply entrenched system, politically, economically, or institutionally, then escalating toward regime change risks creating a crisis far larger than the one it hopes to solve.
That risk is dwarfed by the fact that the administration claims these efforts are necessary to confront drugs, strengthen security, and enforce counter-narcotics laws while simultaneously violating core international human rights and the foundational rules governing the use of force.
Congress must act now, before the slide toward conflict becomes irreversible. Escalation is not inevitable, but without oversight, it becomes dangerously predictable. And we already know how that story ends.
Jared O. Bell, syndicated with PeaceVoice, is a former U.S. diplomat and scholar of human rights and transitional justice, dedicated to advancing global equity and systemic reform.
