Venezuelans are in the streets as a criminal regime is losing control.
No routine political transition, this is the exposure and disruption of a state that crossed clear legal and moral lines.
Venezuela transformed from authoritarian governance into an organized criminal enterprise operating behind sovereignty’s facade.
Venezuela's collapse was deliberate.
A documented sequence of decisions dismantled lawful institutions and repurposed the state for illicit activity.
Political authority, criminal finance, and coercive force merged over time into one structure designed to preserve power rather than govern.
Between 1999 and 2013, Hugo Chávez nationalized Venezuela's oil industry, eliminated private enterprise, purged professionals, and redirected oil revenues into political loyalty and control systems.
Ideology replaced technical expertise.
Capital investment collapsed.
Maintenance stopped.
Oil production declined from approximately 3.2 million barrels per day in the late 1990s to under 2.5 million daily barrels by Chávez's death.
Under Nicholas Maduro, production by 2019 bottomed at 700,000 daily barrels.
Far from cyclical decline, this was the systematic destruction of state capacity, industrial competence, and institutional accountability. Criminal substitution, not reform, followed.
As legitimate revenue channels narrowed, the regime increasingly relied on sanctions evasion, illegal gold extraction, currency manipulation, and coordination with transnational criminal organizations.
Venezuela became a permissive jurisdiction for money laundering, narcotics transit, and illicit maritime trade.
Forget mere infiltration.
State agencies were operationally integrated into criminal activity, providing protection, logistics, and enforcement.
Criminalization produced measurable catastrophic outcomes.
Hyperinflation by 2018 exceeded one million percent, among the most historically extreme monetary collapses.
Wages, pensions, and savings were effectively erased overnight.
Public hospitals reported shortages exceeding 80% of essential medicines and supplies.
Preventable diseases including measles, malaria, and tuberculosis returned after decades of dormancy. Public utilities failed at scale.
Basic state services ceased to function reliably.
Human rights violations escalated in parallel.
International monitoring bodies documented arbitrary detentions, systematic torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances, particularly during protest periods. Security forces operated with near-total impunity.
Courts disbursed political enforcement rather than law.
Media outlets were shut down or coerced, opposition parties were disqualified, and political leaders were jailed or forcibly exiled. Structurally compromised elections provided no relief.
Over seven million Venezuelans fled, approximately one quarter of the population. The largest displacement in modern Western Hemisphere history represented institutional implosion.
Narco-trafficking was central to this system, not peripheral.
Large-scale trafficking requires territory, protection, logistics, and financial channels. Venezuela provided all four.
As interdiction improved in neighboring regions, trafficking routes shifted east.
Venezuelan airstrips, ports, and coastal corridors became key transit infrastructure.
Security agencies ignored flows because disruption would have severed revenue and alliances essential to regime survival.
This criminal structure extended to armed maritime enforcement.
Venezuelan forces and aligned actors intercepted, seized, and destroyed vessels associated with sanctions enforcement and interdiction operations.
These were not defensive maneuvers within territorial waters.
They were aggressive acts to protect illicit trade routes, further undermining claims of lawful sovereign conduct.
In March 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice formally charged Nicolás Maduro and senior officials with narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and corruption.
Allegations included coordination with Marxist revolutionaries and flooding the United States with cocaine. The DOJ does not indict sitting heads of state casually.
These charges reflected a determination that Venezuela's leadership functioned as a transnational criminal organization masquerading as a government.
Concurrently, the United States issued multi-million-dollar rewards under the Narcotics Rewards Program for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Maduro and senior officials.
These designations are reserved for major criminal threats under U.S. law.
President Donald Trump's response followed a defined and lawful sequence.
In January 2019, after Maduro claimed victory in a fraudulent election, the United States recognized Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president.
This preserved institutional continuity and prevented assets and authority from defaulting to criminal control during pressure escalation.
The U.S. Treasury froze billions of dollars in assets and cut off Venezuelan access to U.S. markets. Oil represented over 90% of Venezuela's export revenue.
Targeting that revenue stream was lawful sanctions enforcement, not collective punishment.
Enforcement is not invasion.
An invasion implies permanent territorial occupation.
A transitional stability framework is a time-limited continuity mechanism designed to preserve institutions, prevent fragmentation, and allow internationally monitored elections. Preventing criminal succession is not imposing governance.
History is clear.
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam did not fail because transitions are illegitimate.
Continuity was destroyed, allowing violent actors to inherit state capacity.
For the United States, this is not abstract. Venezuela's collapse exported migration pressure, drug corridors, and illicit finance networks across the hemisphere.
Criminalized states export instability by definition.
Stabilization is a matter of national security and legal enforcement, not ideology.
The end state is not power.
It's lawful self-government restored through protected electoral processes.
When institutions are shielded from criminal capture, political outcomes can reflect legitimate choice.
Criminal networks transcend borders. Narco states do not operate in isolation.
Maduro himself could become state-level evidence in this matter.
The quiet but unmistakable message is that the era of indulgence is ending.
Criminal regimes have been warned. Reality still rules.
Accountability still matters.
When people demand freedom, America doesn't look away.
Host of "Unapologetic with Judd Dunning" on KABC AM 790, Judd Dunning, is a political author, host, pundit, and producer. He's created and hosted political media projects. Judd is a Newsmax regular guest commentator. As an author, he wrote the bestselling Humanix/Newsmax Book "13½ Reasons Why Not To Be A Liberal: And How to Enlighten Others." He's presently in the production of his next book, "13½ Reasons to Love America: How to Stop the Angry Woke Left and Preserve the America We Love." He's represented by Karen Gantz Literary Management (www.karengantzliterarymanagement.com) and for radio and public relations by Sandy Frazier (www.SandyPundits.com) — More Here.
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