The Conflict Endures: Venezuela after the Intervention

On 3 January 2026, US forces captured Nicolás Maduro, but the conflict over who is excluded from political power did not disappear with him. Almost six months later, two earth­quakes exposed a state hollowed out by corruption, mismanage­ment and years of confrontation. The damage was not merely physical, since the conflict is also kept alive by each side denying the other a legitimate place in the nation, and because removing those in power is not the same as trans­forming the conflict. Europe now has a narrow window to address what lies beneath the crisis, drawing on its own experience of conflict transformation.