Venezuela: Not a Transition, but a Prelude

There are moments in history when informational noise obscures more than it clarifies. Venezuela is living through one of those moments. To try to decipher, and above all to respond honestly, to the recent actions of the United States and the role of Venezuela’s democratic forces, it is necessary to begin by dismantling a word that today is repeated like a mantra: transition.

Since September, when Washington began moving military assets in the Caribbean, the discourse was deliberately ambiguous. President Donald Trump, analysts, and experts oscillated between warning, veiled threat, and diplomatic denial. Will they intervene? Will they not? Is it merely psychological pressure? In hindsight, everything suggests that these messages were not confusion, but strategy: distraction communiqués.

The reality is that the United States did enter. Not through a classic invasion, but through a police operation, with military backing. The regime’s forces realized it only when it was already too late: Nicolás Maduro had been captured. And yet, from that very moment, international media and rushed commentators began speaking of a transition. Even Trump used the term. This is where we must pause. Anyone who has studied political transition processes, and anyone even minimally familiar with the anatomy of the Venezuelan regime, knows that there is no transition under way in Venezuela today.

What exists is something else. Something indispensable.

At this moment, a process is unfolding, in strict order: negotiation, pacification, and stabilization. Three necessary stages. None optional. Without them, any attempt at transition would be an act of historical irresponsibility.

This is why Washington has assumed direct control of the negotiation. It does so not out of imperial caprice or disregard for democratic forces, but out of raw realism. The recognized interlocutor, whether we like it or not, is Delcy Rodríguez. This means that immediate decisions and movements on the part of Chavismo currently rest in her hands, as a final opportunity granted to the regime to exit “peacefully”; otherwise, it would have to face the worst possible scenario. The regime is still there. Its military structure remains intact. Its paramilitary arms have not vanished. Its political cadres continue to operate. Chavismo has not been defeated; it has been contained.

The United States is betting that, through negotiation, the regime will agree to relinquish power without forcing an intervention on the ground. Then will come stabilization: neutralizing forces loyal to Chavismo and dismantling the apparatuses of coercion. Only after this, and not before, can an authentic transition begin.

It is at that point that democratic figures come into play. María Corina Machado and Edmundo González represent the moral, political, and democratic legitimacy of Venezuela’s future. But placing them in power today, without real internal force backing, would be to condemn them. In the best case, to immediate failure. In the worst, to political assassination or the outbreak of a civil confrontation that would directly impact the region, and especially the United States.

History teaches, and punishes those who ignore it, that transitions are neither improvised nor announced prematurely. First the fire is extinguished; only then is the house rebuilt. To pretend otherwise is irresponsible romanticism.

Venezuela is not yet living its transition. It is living the prelude. And like any good prelude, it is not flashy, not heroic, not comfortable. But without it, the play will never begin.