Strategic Errors

When the powerful are mistaken, they don't simply make mistakes; they shift tectonic plates. They don't merely trip up; they trigger consequences.

I want to believe that in some Washington office there is someone capable of understanding what is happening. Someone who does not confuse persistence with rigidity, nor strategy with stubbornness. Someone who dares to warn President Donald Trump that the scenario he thinks he sees no longer exists. Because that's the underlying problem: He is proceeding, guided by a map that is out of date.

There was a time before the earthquake when the three phases of what they call the “Venezuela Plan” could be sustained. It was not easy, nor linear, nor guaranteed. But it was viable within certain margins of error. It fit into a logic of pressure, transition and repositioning that could produce functional results for Washington's interests. That moment has disappeared.

Recent statements by Trump and the words of U.S. Embassy Chargé d’Affaires John Barrett leave no room for doubt: All was settled prior to the collapse. As if reality could be frozen by political will. As if facts have not altered the equation.

That, in strategic terms, is not mere nuance. It is a greater mistake: a reading error. And in international politics, to misread the terrain is to start losing the game.

Today, the gameboard itself has changed. Today, Venezuela is not just a risky country; it is a collapsed space. The catastrophic earthquake has added to the existing crisis. The risk of the country has not only increased, but it has mutated from being a calculated risk to being a liability. No one invests in a structure that guarantees nothing. And nothing means nothing at all: no services, no legal certainty, no stability, no compliance.

The rest is narrative. And the most forceful evidence is not in the speeches, but in the silence. The silence of corporations, recently aligning themselves enthusiastically around the Trump Plan, is now an unequivocal sign. Chevron, Schlumberger, General Electric and all the corporations, so given to the action, have disappeared from the radar.

There are no ads, no gestures. There are not even symbolic gestures of stepping forward — not even the donation of a box of diapers. That silence is not prudence. It is a diagnosis.

Capital is not ideological. It's selective. And when it is withdrawn en masse, the message is that the land is no longer useful. It is always said that money is cowardly — an error. Money is not cowardly: It discriminates. And it has already taken a stand.

Added to that is something of even greater concern. According to a leak, Trump opposes the return of María Corina Machado. This opens up two possible interpretations, both problematic: Either there is weakness in decision-making or there is a gesture of unnecessary political arbitrariness — one just as bad as the other. Because, historically, the U.S. has been recognized for its ability to play on multiple levels at the same time: Press and negotiate. Move forward and backward, tactically. Manage ambiguities. That flexibility is not improvisation; it is power. That's why the current rigidity is surprising. Because it doesn't look like calculation; it looks like impulse.

And in the meantime, the government supposedly in charge does not administer a country; it administers a vacuum. It does not lead a state structure; it manages the remains of something that no longer functions as a state. And that difference is critical. A state in crisis still has leverage. A collapsed state has nothing. It does not guarantee, does not regulate, does not comply, does not impose. It is a territory without guarantees.

In that context, Nicolás Maduro's exit — clean, silent, surgical — has stopped being a linear achievement and has become an open variable. Because the subsequent silence was not stability; it was containment. And containment is giving way.

Today Venezuelan society is not aligned or expectant. It is contained, beaten, irritated. It lives in a state of accumulated tension, with low confidence and high frustration — a dangerous combination in any political equation. Insisting in that context on a strategy designed for another time is not coherence, but operational blindness. And strategic blindness has consequences.

If one insists on emphasizing the three-phase plan when everything indicates that it would fail in its execution, then a window will open that other actors will know how to exploit. Actors who are not subject to electoral cycles or public opinion. Actors who play longer-term: China. Russia. They don't improvise. They don't doubt. They don't announce more than necessary. And above all, they have resources and patience far beyond what they are officially demonstrating.

And there's the real risk. Because the United States — particularly Trump — is no match for that scenario. Having China and Russia “breathing down our necks” is not a minor metaphor: It is a geopolitical redefinition of the strategic neighborhood. It wouldn't just be losing Venezuela again. It would mean activating multiple sources of pressure in the region. It would disorder balances that have been contained. It would reoxygenate Cuba in a matter of weeks.

It would be, in simple terms, to turn a discrete error into a systemic problem. We then would no longer be talking about a bad decision. We would be talking about vision failure.

Think before you speak; think before you act: Strategy and tactics. And flexibility, so one does not break when the wind is strong.