Venezuela after Maduro

By Kate Selker
January 14, 2026

In the wake of the United States’ dramatic capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Kennedy School convened scholars, policymakers, and political leaders for a discussion of what this moment means for the nation’s citizens, economy, and political leadership.

Below, we share excerpts from reflections from a conversation with:

• Freddy Guevara MC/MPA 2024, visiting Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School, Venezuelan opposition politician, and former deputy and vice president of the National Assembly
• Ricardo Hausmann, director of the Growth Lab at Harvard Kennedy School, Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy, and former Venezuelan minister of planning
• Dr. Rebecca Bill Chavez, president and CEO of the Inter-American Dialogue, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere affairs
• Juan Gonzalez, resident fellow at Georgetown Americas Institute, former senior director of the National Security Council for the Western Hemisphere

The conversation was moderated by Ned Price, interim co-director of the Institute of Politics, former deputy to the U.S. representative to the United Nations and former senior advisor to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The following excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

Freddy Guevara

On avoiding Venezuela as a “partisan battleship” in the United States

I understand that many Americans and many other international people that might be watching can have serious concerns, or critiques of what happened, and how it happened, and what can it mean for each of your countries…

But at the same time, I want to ask for empathy for Venezuelans. For us, this is not a discussion about legal frameworks or institutions, or theoretical frameworks. This is about real life, torture, imprisonment, exile, families broken apart, a country held hostage for more than 25 years.

Venezuelans are happy and relieved that Nicolás Maduro is no longer free, and is in a prison. And this was not the outcome that we dreamed of. We wanted a democratic decision. We wanted justice through institutions. We tried everything…you can debate everything, but that is very different from defending or calling for the release of a criminal dictator as Nicolás Maduro. You can oppose your administration. That cannot mean—it does not mean—that the enemy of your enemy is your friend.

My ask is simple. Please do not talk Venezuela into a partisan battleship. Do not defend a dictatorship in the name of opposing someone. And help ensure that this moment leads not to stability without freedom...what we want is the democratic transition that Venezuelans have fought for for decades, and that will require all the support from all the American society, but also the free world.

"For us, this is not a discussion about legal frameworks or institutions, or theoretical frameworks. This is about real life, torture, imprisonment, exile, families broken apart, a country held hostage for more than 25 years." — Freddy Guevara

Ricardo Hausmann

On Venezuelan government after Maduro

I want to express my happiness with the fact that President Maduro—dictator Maduro—is in jail, and the news that we have an important set of political prisoners that have just been freed…

[But] Venezuelans have not been empowered. You have the colectivos in the streets. You have Diosdado Cabello as the head of police. You have Vladimir Padrino López as the head of the Armed Forces…the government in Venezuela is the same Chavista government we saw before Maduro has left.

On repairing democracy before economy

Trump says, “oil, oil oil, we have to recover oil, US companies, the oil is ours,"—the idea that we are first going to recover the economy, we’re going to recover the oil sector, and then we can talk about democracy, but that’s for later on.

If you want Venezuela to become investable, you have to get back to a set of rules, a set of laws, or set of empowerments and a macroeconomic stability…so I want to emphasize that the urgency to go back to democratic rule, to constitutional rule, is a prerequisite for economic recovery…you cannot recover without democracy.

On the concept of power

It cannot be—as Stephen Miller said—that this is a world of power, and it's always been a world of power, and the powerful get whatever they want. No, no, the powerful are powerful because they are respected, not feared—because they are seen as expressing a set of shared values that people can support.

"The powerful are powerful because they are respected, not feared—because they are seen as expressing a set of shared values that people can support." — Ricardo Hausmann

Rebecca Bill Chavez

On the operation to capture Maduro and the next steps for the United States military

I would characterize the U.S. operation itself, that removed Maduro, as a very sophisticated, well-organized, well-planned mission. It was a great example of layering human intelligence with signals intelligence…

If we are going to think about a second wave with U.S. boots on the ground, that’s a very different a different scenario, and I think that that is not something that the Trump administration wants.

I think if you look at the new National Security strategy, there's actually an emphasis on ending “forever wars,” and I think that we all know, given the situation within Venezuela, with the competing armed groups, the dissident FARC, transnational criminal organizations, that it could lead to a very prolonged conflict with prolonged time with U.S troops on the ground.

Juan Gonzalez

On alternative paths to Maduro’s departure

The goal for us [under President Biden] was not regime-change by force, but to create basically an internal political opening that Venezuelans could own.

I think the Trump approach is obviously much more coercive. He prioritized speed, dominance, control, removing Maduro outright, and asserting basically U.S. ownership over what followed, particularly the oil. And that reflects, I think, a worldview that has been championed by Secretary Rubio, which is that Latin America responds not to incentive, but to force...there’s a chance, ultimately, that Rubio pulls this off…it would represent, frankly, a genuine paradigm shift in how U.S.-Latin America relations would work. But the risk is enormous.

On what’s next for Venezuela

So, Maduro is gone, but the system very much remains. Repression is rising—though I’ve got to celebrate the release of political prisoners. The legitimacy is absent. There’s still very much a criminal structure in place. The stability is basically being improvised. The ultimate judgment will run not on how Maduro left—though I think it’s a bipartisan issue that Maduro was a bad person and needed to leave—but on whether this approach dismantles the regime that he built or merely manages it from the outside.

You can access the full video of the discussion here

Photo Credit: Banner photo by Marcelo Perez del Carpio/Getty Images.

Read the original article here.