Let Freedom Ring in the Caribbean in 2026

The new year presents the greatest opportunity for the expansion of freedom, and the demise of repressive and anti-American regimes, in the Caribbean that we have seen in decades. In an article in National Review magazine this week, I explained why.

First, Venezuela. Last year the democratic forces there won a landslide victory in the presidential election — despite the fact that the regime tried desperately to fix the outcome. Edmundo González, the opposition candidate and a virtual unknown prior to his candidacy, won 70-30 and would have won by a greater margin had the election been fair. Had María Corina Machado, whom the opposition had chosen as its candidate, been permitted to run, the margin would, again, have been greater. The desire of the Venezuelan people to get rid of the corrupt and brutal Maduro regime is clear.

President Trump is pressing, harder than we did in his first term (when I served as special representative for Venezuela), for change. This is very much in the interests of the United States. The greatest refugee flow in the history of this hemisphere, the 8 million Venezuelans who have fled, will not stop as long as Maduro is in power. The drug flows out of Venezuela will not stop as long as his regime remains, because it relies on income from drug (and also gold and human) trafficking to survive. And the cooperation between that regime and hostile powers — Cuba, Russia, China, Iran — and terrorist groups like Hezbollah will not stop because they help the regime survive and share its hostility to the United States.

I read and hear the objections: After Maduro may come chaos, as in Libya or Iraq, or divisions such as we see in Syria, and there’s no reason to think what comes next will be any better.

These arguments show a lack of familiarity with Venezuelan history, today’s Venezuela, and Latin American politics and society. The divisions that we see in many Middle Eastern countries — historical and geographical, such as in Libya, or social and religious, as in Iraq or Syria, do not exist in Venezuela’s quite homogeneous society. Venezuela is surrounded by democracies and is one of the rare non-democratic countries in this hemisphere. Venezuela, unlike most Middle Eastern countries, has a history of democracy starting with its overthrow of a military dictator in 1958 and lasting until Hugo Chavez began to destroy it 40 years later. Democratic institutions do not need to be invented, but rather restored and reinvigorated.

Nor is there a case in Latin America where a transition to democracy was followed by the kind of social and political collapse into anarchy that some analysts seem to fear. In Venezuela, a new government will of course have to deal with the military — but that was true of every Latin American transition, and in no case has there been a successful military coup reversing the transition. As to the “colectivos,” irregular paramilitary groups that the regime has organized to intimidate the opposition, they too will have to be dealt with — but their power comes from their ties to the regime. Once its ideological, political, financial, and military support ends, the strength of the colectivos will wane steadily.

Nor are arguments that the Venezuelan opposition is hopelessly divided and incompetent true. The opposition united behind Machado despite ideological differences and past rivalries. Today there are serious internal discussions about how to staff the cabinet once Maduro is gone and González is sworn in, how to organize free elections in which traditional parties including the Chavista party will be able to compete fairly, how to pay the armed forces and win their loyalty, and all the other critical moves a new government must make early on.

I’m not suggesting a smooth and easy transition, only that the opposition is led by people who understand the challenges and are facing up to them already. They do not expect that Venezuela will return easily to the prosperity and stability of the decades before Chavez took power and began to destroy both the free market economy and the democratic system. What took Chavez and Maduro two decades to destroy will take years to restore, especially on the economic front. When Chavez came to power, Venezuela was exporting more than 3 million barrels of oil a day. That is now down to about 900,000 barrels per day, and while an increase of perhaps a half-million barrels per day may be achieved in months, a further increase will take years longer and billions of dollars in new investments. But that additional 500,000 barrels a day may mean Venezuela can quickly move to exporting 1.4 million barrels, and the world market price for the kind of sour crude produced in Venezuela is today over $50 per barrel. That means 1.4 million barrels per day could earn $25 billion per year from oil exports — and begin Venezuela’s economic reconstruction. And that would be a firm base for political reconstruction.

The near collapse of Cuba’s economy presents an additional opportunity in the Caribbean to end a brutal, failed, hostile communist regime there. This year water cuts, blackouts, and energy shortages have grown even worse — even with the roughly 35,000 barrels of oil that Venezuela sends per day. Without subsidized oil, Cuba’s economy will collapse further — and the value of the Cuban peso is already collapsing, down about 95 percent since 2020. Foreign tourist arrivals were down 20 percent in 2025 over 2024 — and 2024 saw the lowest number in 20 years. The sugar harvest in 2025 was down about half from 2024 — and the 2022/23 harvest was the worst since 1898. That’s the glory of Castro’s communist system: Cuba produced 8 million tons of sugar in 1898, and after a half century of communism it produced roughly 160,000 tons in 2025. Roughly a quarter of the island’s population has fled since 2020, an astonishing figure and one that rivals only Venezuela, where, similarly, a quarter of the population has fled, and for the same reasons: economic collapse and brutal repression.

There will be no recovery under Cuba’s communist regime, which even now refuses the economic reforms — essentially allowing a privet economy outside state control — that might help reduce poverty rates exceeding 90 percent. The end of the Maduro regime in Venezuela and its oil subsidies of Cuba will bring a final collapse of the Cuban economy, and a new opportunity for Cuba to throw off the political and economic disease of communism.

And that would leave one repressive, brutal, failed anti-American regime in the Caribbean area: that of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Could it survive alone, without Cuba and Venezuela? The internal situation is worsening. Human Rights Watch, normally sympathetic to leftist regimes, starts it 2025 report on Nicaragua this way: “President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, intensified repression. They have expanded the use of forced exile and citizenship revocation as ways to target critics. The government also continued to arbitrarily shut down non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and universities in large numbers, and to engage in other systematic methods of censorship and persecution against critics and opponents.” The result has been a significant refugee flow, as more Nicaraguans flee this disaster.

Daniel Ortega is now 79 and apparently in bad health; his appearance when he does show himself (and he was absent from public view for nearly a month last spring) confirms this. Last February, Ortega changed the constitution to extend his term and to call his wife Rosario Murillo “co-president” rather than her previous title of vice president. Clearly they are planning for her takeover upon his demise — to be followed by their son Laureano, a “presidential advisor” being given increasing power and publicity. But as Humberto Ortega, the late Sandinista leader and longtime defense minister who was Daniel’s brother, said shortly before his death in 2024, it is not at all clear that Murillo can hold on. She lacks any revolutionary legitimacy as a Sandinista and the firm support of the military, he suggested. Whether that’s right will be tested when Ortega dies. As “co-president” Murillo is also co-head of the Army now, but will the Army agree to her leadership when Daniel is gone — and agree to a perpetual family dynasty that resembles nothing more than the Somoza dynasty the Sandinistas overthrew in 1979? Murillo has been purging the Army of any leaders whose loyalty was to Daniel, regardless of their own Sandinista histories. Perhaps Daniel’s death will leave her in complete control, as a new Somoza — or perhaps it will be the moment when the Army says no or the people rise up again as they did in 1979.

President Trump’s policy toward Venezuela opens new opportunities, in the three years remaining in his presidency, to end the three brutally repressive, anti-American, illegitimate regimes in the Caribbean region. That would be a historic achievement for Trump and exactly in line with his new National Security Strategy. The NSS section about this hemisphere begins this way:

After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.

U.S. security interests, an end to regimes working closely with hostile nations, a desire to end mass migration and drug trafficking in the Caribbean, and an expansion of democracy in this hemisphere all point to an energetic policy that starts with the Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela but can end in Havana and Managua. Trump has three years to make it happen.