US wargames played out scenarios for Maduro's fall. None of them ended well for Venezuela
Source: The Guardian
US wargames played out scenarios for Maduro’s fall. None of them ended well for Venezuela
Venezuelan politicians battling to end Maduro’s rule reject claims his downfall would thrust their country into maelstrom of bloodshed and retribution
By Tom Phillips, Latin America correspondent
Sun 14 Dec 2025 10.00 GMT
Last modified on Sun 14 Dec 2025 10.01 GMT
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These three scenarios were all contemplated six years ago during US government “war games” designed to predict what a post-Maduro Venezuela might look like if the South American dictator was overthrown by an uprising, a palace revolution or a foreign attack. None of them ended well.
“You’d have prolonged chaos … with no clear way out,” said Douglas Farah, a Latin America expert whose national security consulting firm was part of those 2019 strategising efforts.
In all three of the discussion-based simulations, the upheaval triggered a fresh exodus of refugees across Venezuela’s borders with Colombia and Brazil, as citizens fled skirmishes between rival rebel groups or foreign occupiers and loyalist troops.
“Everyone wrestling with this issue [is] sort of hoping that you could wave a magic wand and have a new government [in Venezuela],” said Farah. “I think the reason it hasn’t happened is because people sat down and thought: ‘Wait a minute. What the hell are we getting ourselves into?’”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/14/us-wargames-maduro-fall-venezuela
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The three wargame scenarios were 1. Maduro driven out by popular uprising, 2. Maduro toppled in a palace coup and 3. Maduro taken out by a decapitation strike.
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The result? The country collapsed by 2018 under a wave of foreign debt-financed offshoring - just like during the last dictatorship (a regime Macri openly admired).
Trump has had to bail them out twice already: in 2019 ($45 billion) and this October ($20 billion) - but they're unlikely to ever recover.
The judiciary, in turn, has been turned into a Gestapo - whereby opponents were jailed and stripped of their properties (bought long before said defendants were elected) based on charges, as the prosecutor put it in his closing, "without proof - but with no doubt."
"Witnesses" who gave useful testimony have been openly bribed.
Meanwhile, the current president shares a lawyer with the country's top convicted narco...
Three amigos: Convicted Argentine drug trafficker Fred Machado, Trump-backed President Javier Milei - and their shared lawyer, Francisco Oneto.
Machado flashed a Trumpian thumbs-up in a Texas court last month.
