With Maduro Gone, Will Venezuelans Choose Freedom?

January 3, 2026, will go down in history as the day Venezuelans recovered something many had believed lost: hope.

That hope did not come from abstract promises, but from the capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro — the first sign in decades that Venezuela may veer off the trajectory of authoritarian rule, economic collapse, and mass exile that has defined the country for 26 years.

Despite this renewed optimism, many critics of the Trump administration have suggested the operation was somehow unethical or misguided.

Those critics miss the point entirely. Toppling Maduro has paved the way for long-term stability grounded in free-market capitalism and the rule of law to take root in Venezuela. If these forces are allowed to flourish, they will reshape the military, political, and economic structures that guide the country, and allow Venezuela to fully re-enter the global community.

It is no accident that authoritarians controlled Venezuela for as long as they did. To topple a regime from the inside, you need either a massive popular uprising or some kind of military coup. Maduro made sure both were impossible in Venezuela.

A 2013 law banned the sale of firearms and ammunition to civilians and imposes prison sentences of up to 20 years for unauthorized possession. Over the past decade, the Maduro regime aggressively disarmed the population, ensuring that ordinary citizens have no means to resist a usurping government or defend a democratic transition.

That means no uprising would succeed without the military’s involvement. Which is why in recent years Maduro expanded the Venezuelan officer corps, which reportedly boasts over 2,000 generals and admirals — more than double the number in the United States.

In a system saturated with generals, no single faction can act decisively without broad internal backing. Plotting a coup becomes exponentially harder when success requires the loyalty of dozens, if not hundreds, of senior figures rather than a centralized command.

And, because so many of those officers have been rewarded with lucrative posts or interests in vast sectors of the economy, it would be difficult for an opposition faction or reform-minded general to rally enough support within the officer corps to mount a successful coup.

Fortunately, the fact that the Venezuelan military is more a patronage program than a fighting force allowed American forces to topple Maduro in just 88 minutes.

That was a major step in the right direction, but hardly a guarantee of future success.

Even with Maduro gone, any Venezuelan regime that hopes to endure will need the military’s buy-in. And because Maduro spent years purchasing officers’ loyalty, it won’t be easy for an opposition leader to swoop in and take control.

That’s why Maduro’s de facto vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, was left in power after Maduro’s capture. Many expected opposition leader María Corina Machado — whose coalition overwhelmingly won the 2024 elections — to assume leadership. Instead, President Donald Trump declined to back her, arguing she lacked sufficient internal support.

Allowing Rodríguez to serve as a temporary bridge likely reduces the number of officers required to defect at once, lowering the coordination threshold needed to maintain stability. And, at a time when the American body politic is highly suspicious of “regime change” and “forever wars,” respecting this reality ostensibly diminishes the need for troops on the ground.

Moreover, immediate installation would have been politically toxic for Machado. A staunch defender of democratic rule, she must earn her mandate from Venezuelans, not appear as a foreign appointee marching into Miraflores on the heels of American troops.

If Machado is to translate political momentum into lasting change, she will need to leverage Venezuela’s greatest asset: its oil reserves. The country holds an estimated 300 billion barrels of proven reserves, the largest in the world.

But Venezuela’s oil is not an easy prize. Most of it is heavy or extra-heavy crude — dense, sulfur-rich, and costly to extract, transport, and refine. Oil production has fallen from roughly 3.2 million barrels per day in 2000 to about 1 million today, and experts agree that rebuilding lost capacity will take years of sustained investment and technical rehabilitation.

Reviving the sector will require tens of billions of dollars in long-term investment. But American companies will not make multi-billion-dollar investments based on speeches, personalities, or election cycles. They will invest if they believe the rules of the game will endure. In this sense, Venezuela’s recovery is inseparable from free-market reform and the rule of law.

This is why the transition underway is about far more than replacing one leader with another. It is about replacing an economic model. Venezuela’s oil sector — and its broader economy — cannot recover without sustained private investment, and sustained private investment requires credible commitment to free-market capitalism, property rights, and the rule of law. Anything less signals instability and thus keeps capital on the sidelines.

Incentives are aligned in a rare and encouraging way. American companies want stability, predictability, and enforceable contracts. Venezuelans want lasting freedom, prosperity, and insulation from the return of authoritarian socialism. Both depend on the same outcome: a durable shift away from state control and toward a market-based system that cannot be easily undone. The more Venezuela commits to capitalism, the safer long-term investment becomes. And the more capital flows in, the harder it becomes for any future government to reverse course without catastrophic cost.

That alignment matters. It creates a feedback loop in which economic openness reinforces political durability, and political durability reinforces economic confidence. This — not ideology, not personality, and not short-term geopolitics — is the most important driver of Venezuela’s future.

Venezuela’s trajectory depends on balancing three forces: military power, political legitimacy, and market-driven recovery. Mismanaging any one of them risks collapse. The United States and its allies must avoid the temptation to pursue oil while tolerating authoritarian continuity. That path would only produce a new class of kleptocrats.

Done correctly, however, this moment offers a rare alignment of interests. Venezuelans want dignity and self-government. Investors want stability and lawful capitalism. And the United States has an opportunity to support a transition that is neither naïve nor imperial, but grounded in realism.

The door is open. What comes next will decide whether hope can walk through it and materialize as the liberty and prosperity millions of Venezuelans, like myself, have been praying, yearning, and working for decades.

Olga Benacerraf de Strulovic is a J.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago Law School. She was born and raised in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas, and was one of many Venezuelans who fled the country during Nicolás Maduro’s rule.