The Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado, accompanied by the deputy leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Asle Toje. EFE | Confidencial
Forcing Maduro’s resignation should not be a Trump adventure, but part of an international effort to respect the 2024 results.
By Andres Oppenheimer* (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – There are three myths about President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro that are repeated in several international media outlets, and all three are completely false.
The first myth is that Trump’s support for Venezuelan opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado is a replay of Trump’s failed attempt to bring then–opposition leader Juan Guaido to power in 2019.
But there are major differences. At that time, there was no US military pressure on Maduro like there is today. And although Guaido was the legitimately elected president of the National Assembly, neither he nor his team had won a presidential election.
Machado, by contrast, carries greater political weight: she was the key figure behind the opposition’s victory in the 2024 presidential elections.
After winning the opposition primaries and being disqualified by Maduro from running, Machado chose a little-known diplomat—Edmundo González Urrutia—to run in her place, and he won by a landslide. However, Maduro stole the election and unleashed brutal repression.
The second myth, prevalent among parts of Trump’s isolationist MAGA base, is that the US president is being dragged into a foreign adventure by Venezuelan exiles.
According to this theory, just as Iraqi exiles allegedly misled former President George W. Bush in 2003 into believing that the United States could maintain order in Iraq after an invasion, Machado and Venezuelan exiles would be leading Trump to make the same mistake.
But Iraq, unlike Venezuela, had not held a presidential election won by the opposition, as Venezuela did in 2024. Few people would take to the streets to die for Maduro or fight against a transitional government.
The third myth, raised by Celso Amorim, the chief foreign policy adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in an interview with The Guardian, is that a US invasion would lead to a war like Vietnam, in which many countries would support Maduro.
Most likely, few countries would lift a finger to defend the Venezuelan dictator. Not even Russia, Venezuela’s main military ally, is doing so. Unlike in 2018, when Russia sent Venezuela two Tu-160 bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons at a time of rising tensions between Washington and Venezuela, Russia has done nothing of the sort this time.
All of this does not mean that Trump is playing his cards well. He is threatening a military invasion for the wrong reasons, and he is doing so unilaterally instead of building alliances with other democracies.
Rather than trying to force Maduro out because he is a brutal dictator who has driven more than 8 million people into exile, Trump says he wants to remove him because of alleged fentanyl smuggling into the United States. In fact, experts say that 70% of fentanyl smuggling into the United States comes from Mexico.
Instead of joining the 27 European countries, Argentina, and other Latin American nations, Trump threatens to act like an imperial ruler, which could give left-wing regimes propaganda ammunition for generations.
Nor is Machado, despite her courage and legitimacy, free of mistakes. Dedicating her Nobel Prize to Trump—ignoring the fact that he attempted to cling to power after losing the 2020 election and is deporting hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans—has cost her significant support abroad.
But as Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said in his speech at the award ceremony, “Machado is one of the most extraordinary examples of civic courage in recent Latin American history.”
Regarding those who criticize Machado’s apparent support for US military action, he said that expecting Venezuela’s democratic leaders to pursue their goals with a moral purity that Maduro’s dictatorship never displayed is “unrealistic” and “unfair.”
Machado and the Venezuelan opposition deserve the support of the entire world. Forcing Maduro’s resignation should not be Trump’s personal adventure, but part of an international effort to respect the results of Venezuela’s 2024 elections and to stop the largest mass migration in the world in recent times.
*This article was originally published in El Nuevo Herald.
Published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.
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