Foreign Affairs ‘Regime Collapse’ Is Not a Serious Approach to the Venezuela Problem Toppling a government without even a plan to replace it will create chaos, not democracy. (Photo by Jesus Vargas/Getty Images) In a recent column in Foreign Policy, Ryan Berg, the director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, suggests that the Trump administration can accomplish its goal of removing the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro from power without hazarding American lives by implementing a strategy of “regime collapse.” According to Berg,  A regime collapse would entail a more limited campaign of U.S. strikes on targets at the heart of the Maduro regime’s state-crime nexus, implicating the country’s armed forces and its political elites. These strikes would leverage precision-guided munitions and U.S. standoff weapons fired from a safe distance, possibly catalyzing movement internally to force Maduro’s exit—all without putting U.S. personnel at risk as with a “regime change” strategy. The theory is relatively simple: The U.S. can topple the Venezuelan government by means of long-range strikes against key targets, which will convince significant elements of the regime that their integrity is in danger and thus provoke some sort of change in the internal state of the government.  Berg hypothesizes three scenarios. One, that the strikes destroy the financial infrastructure of the regime by eliminating drug traffickers, illegal mining, and oil extraction, leaving it unable to sustain its basic functions and provoking Maduro to exit (how Berg doesn’t say). The second, that the strikes convince elements of the Venezuelan military to oust Maduro and establish a new government, presumably some kind of military junta amenable to negotiating with the U.S. The third, that the strikes convince the Venezuelan military to abandon Maduro and install opposition leader María Corina Machado or Edmundo González, her stand-in on the last presidential ballot, at the head of the government. First of all, Berg is likely correct that this approach is appealing to President Donald Trump, who prefers quick, decisive, and low-commitment interventions and would certainly prefer to avoid involving American troops in a war in Venezuela. He compares a “regime collapse” operation to the June bombing of the Iranian nuclear program, which degraded Iranian capacity at little to no material cost to the United States.  But the risks inherent to any kind of “regime collapse” approach are numerous and severe, and far outweigh any potential benefits. Most pertinently, when any government collapses, the resulting power vacuum is necessarily unpredictable and chaotic, and leaves room for all kinds of actors, state and nonstate, bad and good, to exert their will. Such a situation is not generally conducive to an orderly transition of power of any kind, let alone a transition to democracy.  Here the expected comparison is usually Libya, after the bombing campaign that destroyed the Gaddafi regime, but Venezuelan society is not comparable to that of Libya; it is not characterized by a fractured, tribal society and fundamentalist revolutionaries. Instead the major danger is that Venezuela becomes a mid-20th century Colombia: a weak state inundated by brutal organized crime, incapable of defending itself or of disrupting the conflicts between cartels and narcorevolutionary groups fighting over disputed territory. This scenario could potentially be avoided by a military coup, which Berg indicates is a likely result of American kinetic strikes on the country. It is true that the younger officers in the Bolivarian Armed Forces are unhappy at finding their avenues of advancement blocked by generals fattening themselves on the proceeds of organized crime and oil extraction. But is establishing a military dictatorship or junta the desired result of American intervention in the country? Berg’s supposition that the military could force out Maduro only to hand over the reins to Machado and the Venezuelan opposition seems a dim possibility in the light of history. More than a few military coups have been conducted in the name of liberty, democracy, and constitutional government; few have readily handed over the reins of power to democratically elected leaders after they find themselves in control of the mechanisms of government. The resultant military government would no doubt be more amenable to dealing with the U.S. than the intractable Maduro, if only out of necessity and a sense of self-preservation. But, given the state of the Venezuelan military, it is unlikely to be durable, stable, or capable of materially confronting the corruption and entanglement with cartels and organized crime that is rampant within the Bolivarian armed forces. Every military dictatorship depends for its survival on maintaining the support of the general mass of soldiers and officers, something Maduro accomplished by permitting them to profit off the extremely lucrative trade in drugs and illegal mining carried on by the cartels. A brass-hat regime with a fragile hold over an already weak state would be in no position to crack down on this behavior. The most probable results of a “regime collapse” strategy—increased chaos and violence in the country, the expansion of cartel influence, and a precarious military government that is incapable of addressing endemic corruption—all directly harm the very interests that American intervention in Venezuela is intended to produce: a decrease in illegal immigration to the United States and the elimination of drug trafficking through Venezuela. On the other hand, the likelihood that using external pressure to precipitate the collapse of a nation’s government spontaneously results in a stable, prosperous, orderly democratic society is minimal. Indeed, while Berg argues that “regime collapse” is a way to avoid American boots on the ground, in practice it is likely to simply end up a roundabout road to regime-change. Even if the U.S. successfully topples the Venezuelan government through long-range strikes and takes no casualties (no guarantee, as Venezuela does maintain active air defense systems), the resulting disorder would prove a powerful justification for further, more direct intervention—particularly if the administration is committed to empowering Machado and democratizing the country.Everyone has learned at least one lesson from the Iraq War, it seems: “Regime change” is still a taboo term. But “regime collapse” is likely to be an equally unsatisfactory approach to problematic powers. It avoids an initial commitment of American troops, but makes boots on the ground far more probable in the immediate future. It offers a high risk of further exacerbating difficulties in the country and damaging American interests in the region for a small chance of accomplishing the objectives of the intervention. If American interests require that Maduro go, then the administration should either come to some diplomatic settlement that will see him hand over control of the government to the opposition (if any such deal is possible), or else convince the American people that military intervention is the proper course of action and depose him by force of arms. Then reconstruction can take place on an orderly basis. But it makes no sense to roll the dice and hope that bombing the country into anarchy will produce a government capable of rooting out corruption and cartels or a nation prosperous enough to stem the flow of refugees abroad. The post ‘Regime Collapse’ Is Not a Serious Approach to the Venezuela Problem appeared first on The American Conservative.