Once again, we are told that a “regime” must be “changed”, and, as is often the case, it is the United States government claiming the right to enforce it. 

Although the term ‘regime change’ only gained prominence towards the end of the Cold War, the practice of removing a leader or government by force and installing a preferred successor has occurred more than a hundred times in modern history. 

Sometimes it leads to a period of apparent stability, often at significant military or economic cost to the instigating power, like in West Germany and Japan. 

Sometimes, it results in civil war as resentful local populations direct their anger at the occupying force and its collaborators, whom they see as traitors or sellouts. 

When the occupying power deems the costs of maintaining control too great, violent conflicts can ignite and persist as in Iraq, Libya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Most often, however, it seems to lead to authoritarianism, violence, reprisals, and lasting tensions that can ebb and flow over generations, as evident in Chile, Argentina, Haiti, and Indonesia.

Nobody – least of all the architects of Maduro’s abduction – knows what will happen next in Venezuela.

Experts assumed that the US President Donald Trump and Rubio would immediately install Maria Corina Machado, the divisive Nobel Peace Prize laureate, as Venezuela’s new leader, but Trump quickly

© TRT World