Inside Venezuela, where dissent has long been punished and speech tightly policed, the regime’s legitimacy collapsed years before American helicopters ever appeared. Maduro was not governing a nation; he was occupying one. That reality matters because it exposes the central lie repeated in the aftermath of his removal: that this was a foreign imposition against the will of the people. It was not. It was an intervention that aligned with consent long extinguished by repression, corruption, and criminal capture.

Understanding why this moment matters requires understanding what Venezuela became. Under Hugo Chávez, oil wealth funded ideology. That ideology hollowed out institutions: criminal networks captured them, and those networks fused with the state itself. Over time, the regime aligned with hostile foreign powers, and Venezuela ceased to function as a sovereign country in any meaningful sense. It became something more dangerous: a platform. What ultimately forced the issue was not ideology alone but convergence – when corruption, crime, and geopolitics merged into a single operating system.

Venezuela did not merely tolerate narco-trafficking; it fused it with state power. Drug routes became state assets. Cartels became partners. Cocaine was no longer merely a criminal product – it became a geopolitical currency. Proceeds were laundered through shell companies, gold smuggling, and shadow banking networks that bypassed sanctions and funded aligned causes.