The capture of Nicolás Maduro was supposed to mark the triumph of Venezuela's democratic opposition. Instead, it has exposed the transactional logic beneath Washington's intervention. María Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent years mobilizing Venezuelans against the regime, now finds herself speaking from an undisclosed location while the Trump administration quietly negotiates with Maduro's own vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, to manage the transition. Machado's recent Fox News interview, in which she vowed to return "as soon as possible" and transform Venezuela into "the energy hub of the Americas," reads less like a plan of action than a plea for relevance. "Actually, I spoke with President Trump on October 10, the same day the (Noble Peace) Prize was announced, (but) not since then," Machado said on Fox
This sidelining reveals a fundamental truth about great power politics: capabilities matter more than ideals. The United States did not remove Maduro to install democracy. It removed him to secure a more manageable arrangement. Rodriguez, a sanctioned insider from the old regime apparatus, offers Washington something Machado cannot—continuity of institutional control without the unpredictable dynamics of a genuinely popular movement. The choice reflects a classic realist calculation: a pliable autocracy beats an uncontrollable democracy when strategic interests are at stake.
The pragmatist and the idealist
Machado's growing irrelevance becomes clearer when contrasted with her public statements and Trump's actual decision-making. She has positioned herself as Washington's natural partner, praising Trump's "decisive action" and outlining ambitious plans to dismantle what she calls the "criminal structures" that have dominated Venezuela. Her vision—transparent governance, energy sector liberalization, reintegration with international markets—aligns perfectly with liberal democratic norms.
Yet Trump's own comments suggest he views her as a liability. When asked about Machado's role, he remarked that she lacks "respect within the country," a striking assessment given her overwhelming support in opposition polling and her international recognition. The criticism reveals the calculation: respect from the Venezuelan people is less valuable than respect from the Venezuelan state apparatus. Machado's popular legitimacy, far from being an asset, makes her dangerous to a transition strategy built on maintaining existing institutional structures rather than dismantling them.
Rodriguez, by contrast, brings no democratic mandate but substantial administrative capacity. As Maduro's vice president, she knows how the ministries function, where the military loyalties lie, and how to keep the oil flowing. A classified intelligence assessment reportedly backing her interim role suggests U.S. agencies believe she can prevent state collapse—the nightmare scenario that would threaten resource access and invite regional instability.
Members are reading: Why Washington's preference for a regime insider over a Nobel laureate follows the realist playbook for resource-driven interventions.
The coming power struggle
Machado's stated intention to return and claim her role in Venezuela's future sets up a direct collision with the transition Washington appears to be engineering. Her vision of dismantling "criminal structures" would necessarily target the very security and administrative apparatus that Rodriguez represents and that U.S. strategists need to maintain order. The international community may praise Machado's democratic credentials, but those credentials provide no leverage against a great power that has already demonstrated its willingness to act unilaterally.
The situation also reveals the limits of popular legitimacy in a system still governed by state capacity and coercive power. Machado won the opposition primary with overwhelming support and maintains genuine grassroots backing. In a functioning democratic framework, this would translate into political authority. But Venezuela's transition is unfolding in the shadow of military realities and institutional inertia, where control of ministries and security forces outweighs electoral mandates.
The Trump administration's approach confirms what realist theory has long maintained: states pursue interests defined in terms of power, and moral considerations enter the equation only when they align with those interests. Venezuela's democratic future was a useful rhetorical device during the campaign against Maduro. Now that the campaign has succeeded, the priority shifts to securing resource access and preventing instability. Machado's idealism, once an asset for building international pressure, has become a complication in the hard business of managing a captured state.
Whether she can overcome this structural disadvantage depends less on her popular support than on her ability to leverage capabilities Washington cannot ignore—or on the emergence of conditions that make her partnership more valuable than Rodriguez's continuity. Until then, she remains what many democratic movements become in the wake of great power interventions: celebrated in principle, sidelined in practice.
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