I’m not working for the clampdown

No man born with a living soul

Can be working for the clampdown

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On Jan. 29, 2026, Yoweri Museveni will mark 40 years in power. But before that controversial milestone, more than 21 million Ugandans are expected to vote in the Jan. 15 elections. Museveni faces eight other presidential candidates cleared by the Electoral Commission of Uganda to run in this year’s elections.

In 1986, the New York Times described Museveni as a rebel, not a statesman. In 2026, he’s one of Africa’s longest-serving elected leaders. Four decades in office raise hard questions about power and about the promises that once defined his rule.

Many analysts expect Museveni to win reelection, but this election is about more than extending the president’s time in office. It is about how Ugandans read their own political history. Will voters justify continuity as stability? Or will voters give a clear signal for generational change? In many ways, Ugandans will be deciding what 40 years of leadership should mean for the country’s future.

Here are four things to note in Uganda’s 2026 elections:

1. Museveni has reshaped how Ugandans vote – and how they see elections

After nearly four decades in power, Museveni has solidified his position, and shaped how Uganda holds elections. His message is conveyed not only through campaign slogans, but through state institutions, security narratives, internet shutdowns, and public-order controls that frame continuity and stability as national priorities.

Ahead of the Jan. 15 election, for example, the government restricted information flows by banning live broadcasts of protests and limiting coverage of what it calls “unlawful processions.” Critics say these measures narrow public scrutiny of the incumbent leadership and constrain the ability of opposition parties to mobilize. Many now see this election as a referendum on order, rather than an open and democratic competition.

Campaign rhetoric in recent weeks reinforce that framing in campaign rhetoric. Museveni’s slogan – “Settle for the Best, Museveni is the Best” – emphasizes continuity, while opposition leaders offer competing visions. Robert Kyagulanyi (more commonly known as Bobi Wine) promotes a “New Uganda” under “People Power, Our Power,” and Mugisha Muntu campaigns on “Change You Can Trust.”

Museveni’s dominance rests on institutional change. His administration removed term limits in 2005, and age limits in 2017. As political scientist Boniface Dulani notes, Uganda reflects persistent personalist politics, where informal power networks outweigh constitutional rules.

2. The opposition faces heavy pressure – and the erosion of hope

Just four years old when Museveni came to power in 1986, Wine, under the National Unity Platform campaign party, now leads the opposition. But the confidence of opposition candidates in elections as a route to change has faded. In December 2025, Wine captured that mood when he told a CNN reporter, “This is not an election. This is war.”

The opposition is under heavy pressure. Arrests, disrupted rallies, and intimidation by government security forces have raised the costs of participation and reinforced perceptions of a closed political space.

Yet opposition candidates maintain their efforts to get on the ballot, and vie for public office. Research on authoritarian regimes shows why: Participation in elections preserves visibility, signals legitimacy, and ensures political survival. In Uganda, campaigning has become a strategy of endurance, rather than an expectation of being voted into office.

3. Ugandans saw repression and intimidation before election day

On Jan. 9, the United Nations Human Rights Office warned about widespread repression in Uganda’s election campaign. Opposition candidates, journalists, and human rights defenders faced arrests, suspensions, detentions, and restrictions that limited where and how they could campaign.

4. The Electoral Commission of Uganda faces scrutiny over its enforcement efforts 

The Electoral Commission of Uganda, chaired by Justice Simon Byabakama, issued warnings against illicit campaign activities, including negative campaigning and hate speech. At the same time, the commission has faced growing public scrutiny over how consistently and impartially electoral rules are enforced in practice.

According to Afrobarometer data, only a minority of Ugandans have expressed high levels of trust in the Electoral Commission in recent years (see figure). That skepticism raises the stakes for transparent enforcement and equal treatment of political parties and individual candidates.

Kelechi Amakoh is a PhD candidate in political science at Michigan State University and a 2025–2026 Good Authority fellow. His research focuses on elite communication and how it shapes voter perceptions and democratic attitudes in multiethnic societies.

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Donald Trump’s recent interview with the New York Times made headlines for many reasons – including for his comments about the alleged mistreatment in America of white people, his regrets about not aggressively reversing the results of the 2020 election, and his suggestion that the U.S. might establish a years-long presence in Venezuela as it consumes its petroleum reserves. But what might have raised the most eyebrows was Trump’s suggestion that he is constrained in international affairs by nothing more than his “own morality.” Many were shocked by this statement, yet few may be aware how it directly contradicts the philosophy underpinning the Constitution itself, as defended by its authors.

The U.S. Constitution was expressly drafted to account for humanity’s foibles and moral failings. In some ways, this has been understood as a “modern” intervention in politics. Ancient civilizations had relied more expressly on the virtue of rulers to keep republics from descending into chaos and disorder. Prominent among long-standing guidelines was Plato’s Republic, in which Socrates advocates for a constitutional order in which all power is concentrated in a small set of “philosopher-rulers.” These rulers have the power to make and enforce all of society’s rules and control all its institutions.

Students today can hardly conceive of such concentration of powers and always object to Socrates’s proposals. But to stimulate further classroom discussion, I remind them of Socrates’s presumptions: With enough effort, he hoped to educate people who were both stunningly wise and virtuous. These rulers would undergo a 50-year education; they would be tested for their ability to refuse all temptations to promote their own good over that of the republic; they would be denied the rights to own property and even have their own families, to protect against the encroachment of self-interest on their rule. That’s how concerned Socrates was that outside influences might corrupt their virtue. If we could actually have such people, I press students, are Plato’s philosopher-rulers a terrible idea?

No room for philosopher-rulers in America

Like students today, the American Founders were highly dubious of Plato’s assumptions and flatly denied his premise. In Federalist No. 49, James Madison singled him out for his implausible assumption: “a nation of philosophers is as little to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wished for by Plato.” There are no philosopher-kings in the real world, Madison insisted.

Alexander Hamilton pressed even further. Not only were philosopher-rulers implausibly utopian, but humanity is far worse than imperfect. It is in significant part wretched. As he warned in Federalist No. 6, constitutional projects must never forget that “men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.”

James Madison would ultimately explain in Federalist No. 51 how America could produce a functional government. As he famously argued there:

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Madison spelled out checks and balances

This is the core justification of our constitutional system of checks and balances. Acknowledging our imperfections is an essential element in creating a system that can control those imperfections. Madison and the other Founders sought to design a constitution where each branch had its own motives, along with the power to check the encroachments and tyrannical designs of the other two branches. As he insisted, also in No. 51, it is of “great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.” This only happens when there is a robust system of checks and balances.

To be sure, over the past nine years, Trump has demonstrated that Madison’s system was more fragile than most Americans had assumed. The United States Congress has perhaps the most powerful check in this system: the ability to remove presidents from office and banish them from every holding office again. This is, of course, the power of impeachment and removal. But Americans learned in the first Trump administration that the Senate would not actually use this power. The Supreme Court likewise has powerful checks available in ruling against presidential actions, as it did in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., when it told President Harry Truman in 1952 that he could not seize the nation’s steel plants, even to sustain U.S. efforts in the Korean War. But the current court has instead ruled in July 2024 that presidents possess near-perfect immunity from all legal scrutiny while in office.

Are there checks on presidential power in 2026?

Given the weakening of these checks, it should be unsurprising that the president declared last week in the New York Times interview that “there is one thing [that can check him]. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” To be sure, it can be acknowledged, the president has not had the benefit of the extended moral education afforded to Socrates’s philosopher-rulers. 

For context, the president was referring to checks on his behavior in the international sphere, where the executive traditionally has the greatest freedom to act. Yet even within this realm, the Constitution carefully constrains presidential power – both with regard to the declaration of war and to the negotiation of treaties. As John Jay wrote in Federalist No. 64, the power to make treaties is particularly vulnerable to corruption and as such must be divided between the “most enlightened and respectable citizens” – namely, according to his expectations, the president and the Senate, each serving as a check on the other.

Trump’s rejection of the Senate’s constraints may be unsurprising. But it’s also effectively a constitutional revolution, overturning the most basic presuppositions of the Founders. There’s a clear divide between Trump’s suggestion that he will be constrained only by his “own morals,” and Madison’s declaration in Federalist No. 10 that “neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control” on government powers.

To be sure, Madison and even Hamilton thought it was good to have virtuous and wise rulers. It is likely they thought it even necessary to have a decent number of them in office. But it would be foolish to assume leaders can be effectively constrained by fundamentally decent impulses. Plato’s “race of philosopher-kings” was wrong because we can never be certain of having them in office, as Socrates ardently wished. That was utopianism – great for classroom discussion, but not for the realities of managing real people in a fledgling republic. 

Setting aside the question of what Trump’s “own morality” might be, a political system that has abandoned its constitutional checks in favor of relying entirely on an executive’s personal morality seems like a bad bet. And it would also be a thorough rejection of every advance the Founders sought to make to the new science of politics in 1787. 

David Lay Williams is professor of political science at DePaul University and an affiliate at the University of Chicago’s Stone Center on Wealth Inequality and Mobility. He is author of The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx (Princeton University Press, 2024).

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On Jan. 7, 2026, the Trump administration announced that the United States would withdraw from 66 international organizations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained the decision: “It is no longer acceptable to be sending these institutions the blood, sweat and treasure of the American people, with little to nothing to show for it.” To discuss the move, Good Authority editor Christopher Clary checked in with Brian Greenhill, associate professor of political science at the University at Albany and author of Transmitting Rights: International Organizations and the Diffusion of Human Rights Practices. His insights, lightly edited for clarity and length, are below. 

Christopher Clary: When you saw the list of organizations that the United States was withdrawing from, did anything surprise you? 

Brian Greenhill: My initial reaction was shock at the sheer number of organizations that the U.S. plans to withdraw from. Of course, included in that list is the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. By withdrawing from these two organizations – on top of the fact that Trump had already ordered the U.S. to again withdraw from the Paris Agreement – the administration has put a final nail in the coffin of any remaining hopes that the U.S. will continue to remain engaged with multilateral climate efforts in the coming years. 

However, it is at least somewhat reassuring that some especially prominent international organizations [IOs] were not on the list. The U.S. has – at least for now – not chosen to withdraw from the United Nations as a whole, or from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and NATO. Nor has it withdrawn from the OECD, the club of economically developed countries that plays a subtle but significant role in shaping policy on a whole host of economic, political, and social issues. Were the U.S. to have chosen to withdraw from these major IOs, we would be having a very different conversation about the future of global governance. 

It is also important to remember that despite Trump’s rhetorical disdain for “globalism” and his frequent bashing of America’s friends and allies, he is not entirely opposed to the principle of multilateralism. Back in September of last year, when the U.N. was celebrating its 80th anniversary, Donald Trump embraced the opportunity to address the closing session of the U.N. General Assembly. In a long and meandering speech where he railed against the U.N.’s work on migration and climate change, he nonetheless said that he thinks the U.N. “has such tremendous potential.” He did not offer any sort of vision for how the U.N. might change to realize that potential, but in my view, the fact that he appears to view the U.N. as an important forum for international cooperation – vs. choosing to ignore it altogether – suggests that at least on some level he understands that the U.N. has a role to play in legitimizing the actions of powerful countries. 

This move seems consistent with advocacy from within the Republican Party over the last couple of years. Anjali Dayal in her conversation with Good Authority contributor Erik Voeten last year called it an “à la carte approach to U.N. membership” where “the U.S. could abandon any other part of the U.N. system that wasn’t working” in Washington’s view. But do we have any sense of how the American public thinks about the U.N. system? 

Unfortunately, people like me who study international organizations are always having to remind ourselves that most ordinary people have very little interest in the work of the U.N. or most other international institutions. This is clear from the fact that even major news outlets like the New York Times did very little reporting on the story of widespread disengagement from IOs that we are discussing here, although they did have some more to say about the U.S. withdrawal from the UNFCCC.

Average citizens often have very limited knowledge of international institutions. (For example, in a survey that I conducted a few years ago, I found that 53% of U.S. adults admitted to never having heard of the International Criminal Court). Nevertheless, Americans have a general preference for a rules-based international order. Evidence of this can be seen across a range of different studies that show that the public is more likely to support policies that are consistent with international law than those that are not.

Another interesting finding from recent opinion surveys is that despite the fact that the U.S. public has elected a president who appears to hold international institutions in contempt, the American public has a more favorable view of the United Nations than we realize. A Pew survey from 2025 found that 57% of Americans approve of the U.N. while only 41% disapprove. This a margin of support that would be the envy of most recent U.S. presidents. And it is consistent with some of my own research that suggests that the U.S. public is more likely to support policies when they have been endorsed by the U.N. 

How do you think about the consequences of a world with weaker (and potentially fewer) international organizations? 

There is no doubt that the reelection of Donald Trump in 2024 has thrust the liberal international order into a moment of crisis. Trade barriers have shot up, norms around sovereignty and territorial integrity are coming under great strain, and the prospects for deeper international cooperation on climate and human rights are not looking good.

But the fact the current U.S. administration is making a big show of walking away from many of the post-World War II institutions of global governance does not necessarily mean that the era of cooperation through IOs is over. In their recently published book, Exit from International Organizations, political scientists Inken von Borzyskowski and Felicity Vabulas argue that there has been long history of powerful countries using acts of withdrawal, or sometimes just the mere threat of withdrawal, to exert leverage over IOs and their fellow member states. Given this perspective, we can perhaps view current policy as signaling the ongoing evolution of the international institutional order, rather than its imminent collapse.

Of course, the decision to withdraw from these 66 IOs is not inconsequential. Many of these organizations do vital work. Yet at the end of the day, governments around the world continue to search for ways to solve collective action problems. In most cases, IOs can provide at least a partial solution to these problems. Countries will still want to find ways to conduct trade with each other, safely fly planes from one country to another, manage transboundary pollution, and impose some guardrails around the use of force. 

One possibility is that most IOs will continue to exist, but the U.S. will relinquish its leadership role in many of them. If so, an important question to consider is whether these organizations can retain their liberal characteristics if powerful authoritarian countries, like China, step into the vacuum that the U.S. leaves behind. One thing that we can say for certain, though, is that right now we are at a critical moment in the history of the liberal international order.

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The Islamic Republic of Iran has entered what is arguably the most perilous era in its history. Unlike previous periods of unrest sparked by singular political shocks or specific outrages, the current wave of nationwide protests is the product of a corrosive, slow-burn deterioration of daily life. This is no longer a crisis of ideology alone; the widespread protests reflect a fundamental failure of state capacity. Iran has entered a state of structural polycrisis where economic, environmental, and geopolitical failures reinforce one another, pushing the social contract toward a terminal rupture.

At the core of this instability is a collapsed economy that has rendered the promise of modest stability a relic of the past. The national currency has descended to historic lows – recently crossing the psychological threshold of 1 million rials to the U.S. dollar. This has effectively decoupled wages from the cost of living. Inflation now persistently exceeds 40%, turning the simple act of grocery shopping into a source of profound anxiety. In urban centers like Tehran, the closure of shops in the Grand Bazaar signals an acknowledgment of economic impossibility rather than mere political defiance. For the average citizen, the daily struggle for survival has replaced any sense of long-term security.

Water and energy shortages have grown worse

Layered onto this economic unraveling is a deeper failure of governance, including an environmental and infrastructural crisis that threatens the very habitability of the Iranian plateau. Large swaths of the country are currently grappling with acute water scarcity, a consequence of both prolonged drought and decades of ill-conceived engineering projects. Reservoirs have been depleted and rivers have shrunk to dust, rendering rural livelihoods unsustainable. This has been driving a new wave of internal migration as people look for work elsewhere. 

Simultaneously, Iran faces a permanent energy deficit. Industrial zones now experience unscheduled blackouts of up to five hours daily, while cities face the grim reality of “Day Zero” water scenarios and winter heating shortages. Iranians no longer view these failures as “acts of God” or temporary accidents of fate, but as empirical evidence that their government cannot sustain the basic infrastructure of a modern society.

Protests began in the bazaars

 Protests began in late December among the bazaar merchants and shopkeepers in Tehran, and spread quickly across the provinces. The bazaar has historically served as a crucial social and economic pillar of the Islamic Republic. Shopkeepers have long been a conservative force that provided the Iranian regime with its traditional base of support. 

That these constituencies have now joined students and professionals in the streets suggests a rare convergence of grievances across previously disparate social classes. What emerges from these demonstrations is not merely a growing sense of anger, but a profound exhaustion with a governing order that can no longer provide predictable services or a baseline of economic security.

The government response has adhered to a predictable dual-track strategy of coercion and concession – yet both paths appear increasingly exhausted. Security forces continue to utilize mass arrests and physical force to dampen overt dissent, but the frequency of these outbreaks suggests that such tactics no longer act as a deterrent. Simultaneously, the administration has now scrambled to offer temporary economic palliatives, such as cash transfers and subsidized credits for the poorest sectors. However, actually funding these measures means adding more fuel to the inflationary spiral. Government officials appear to acknowledge that brute force is insufficient to contain public fury, yet the reliance on short-term injections of cash highlights the lack of a comprehensive strategy for national recovery.

The cracks in the regime have deepened

Compounding these domestic crises is a punctured narrative of strategic competence. For decades, the Islamic Republic justified its domestic failures by pointing to its regional “forward deterrence” and the strength of its “Axis of Resistance.” Iran invested heavily in the failed regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and supported militias in Yemen, Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza. However, recent direct confrontations with Israel and the United States have exposed significant vulnerabilities in Iran’s military and intelligence apparatus. High-profile strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure have revealed a state that is hollowed out at home – and overextended abroad. 

Rather than fostering national unity against an external enemy, these international tensions have deepened domestic doubt, as citizens question why their government spends billions on regional proxies while their own taps run dry and the lights go out.

Compounding these domestic crises is a shift in the international environment that Tehran cannot ignore. A newly assertive United States has demonstrated that the Trump regime is comfortable with decisive and unilateral coercive action, including against distant adversaries. That reality has no doubt sharpened Iranians’ sense of vulnerability. 

Perhaps even more unsettling for Iran’s leadership has been the behavior of countries it once viewed as protective counterweights. Russia has recently proven unable or unwilling to meaningfully defend embattled authoritarian allies in Syria and Venezuela. China has been consistently candid about the transactional limits of its engagement with Iran: China values energy and economic opportunities, but will not jeopardize broader strategic interests for Tehran’s sake. In effect, Iran faces intensified domestic unrest with fewer external certainties than ever before.

What happens now? For the Iranian people, the “slow burn” appears to have reached the point of no return, and the struggle for a sustainable future has moved from the halls of power to the streets. The government cut internet access on Jan. 8, reportedly to interfere with the protests. Many analysts now see the collapse of the Islamic Republic as inevitable, perhaps leaving a radical political transformation as the next step.

Hussein Banai is an associate professor of international studies at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University.

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In November 2025, Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embaló announced he had been deposed, days after the Nov. 23 elections. The announcement shocked the nation and drew immediate controversy.

The opposition party, Social Renewal Party (PRS) accused Embaló and his party, Madem-G15, of blocking their candidate Fernando Dias from being declared the winner. And election observers including former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan questioned the credibility of the coup claims. Instead, he suggested Embaló had fabricated the crisis to avoid announcing an opposition victory.

Across Africa, post-election disputes, opposition stifling, and fragile democratic institutions continue to challenge fair political competition. Contested elections last year highlighted five important takeaways: 

1. Incumbents continue to thrive

Elections throughout 2025 tested the strength of incumbent candidates. The degree of control over electoral commissions, courts, and security forces often mattered more than campaign platforms. In multiple cases, incumbents or transitional leaders won by large margins. For example, President Paul Biya was re-elected to lead Cameroon in October, extending his decades-long rule, despite considerable controversy. Similarly, President Alassane Ouattara secured a fourth term in Côte d’Ivoire’s October election. He won by a wide margin despite low voter turnout and political unrest.

2. Post-coup elections are all about legitimacy

In 2025, three elections in West and Central Africa were shaped by military intervention, each in a different way. Elections in Gabon and Guinea followed earlier coups (in 2023 and 2021, respectively). In Guinea-Bissau, a coup disrupted the Nov. 23 elections before the results were released. 

Gabon’s April elections were explicitly about the legitimacy of the coup leadership. Brice Oligui Nguema, the military leader who came to power after the 2023 coup, ran for president amid widespread debate over his eligibility. His campaign emphasized national unity and post-coup reconstruction. It used the slogan “We Build Together” to frame the vote as a civilian reset rather than a continuation of military rule. 

One video, for instance, shows Nguema dancing at a campaign rally to the 1990 hit “(I’ve Got) The Power” by Snap!, signaling his confidence in winning Gabon’s election. 

3. Several incumbents managed to stifle the opposition

In countries such as Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, and Burundi, incumbents sidelined opposition leaders in the run-up to elections. This suppression limited who could run for office, shaped how candidates could conduct their campaigns, and constrained opposition organizing. 

As I wrote ahead of the Tanzanian elections in October, the government blocked major opposition leaders from running and limited their ability to campaign. 

These actions demonstrate how authoritarian leaders can win elections without stealing votes on election day. Instead, they shape the outcome long before people turn out to vote by controlling who is allowed on the ballot, who can campaign freely, and the messages voters are able to hear. By the time ballots are cast, the election may appear orderly, but any real competition has already been removed.

4. Negative campaigns thrive where institutions are weak

In countries where electoral institutions are already fragile, negative campaigning further weakens public trust in electoral outcomes. Ahead of Malawi’s September election, several incidents of negative campaigning emerged. Former president Peter Mutharika accused Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Secretary General Richard Chimwendo Banda and President Lazarus Chakwera of intimidation in the Central Region. Banda fired back, urging Mutharika to “clean his own house first” and pointing to alleged cases of violence involving members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). This prompted the intervention of the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) chair, Justice Annabelle Mtalimanja.

5. Even when flawed, elections still matter

Elections across Africa remain a vital way to organize, mobilize, and gain international support. However, many of last year’s elections fell short of democratic norms and expectations. 

As political scientists Jaimie Bleck and Nicolas van de Walle argue in their book on elections in Africa, regular elections in sub-Saharan Africa have become “the default option of politics.” Rather than viewing elections only as mechanisms for democratic accountability, the authors emphasize elections as moments of temporary political fluidity. These periods of uncertainty allow citizens and political parties to mobilize, contest power, and signal legitimacy, even if these moves rarely produce lasting democratic change.

Recent elections illustrate this clearly. In Cameroon, Biya has been in power for over 40 years, winning multiple terms despite ongoing controversies over term limits. Yet each election cycle still reshapes political behavior. Opposition coalitions reorganize, the risks of protests rise, and external governments and institutions shift how they engage with the regime. 

In Côte d’Ivoire, Ouattara secured a fourth term despite low turnout – but this election still mattered politically. It intensified elite bargaining within the ruling coalition, constrained opposition strategies, triggered localized protests, and prompted renewed scrutiny from regional and international observers.

These cases reflect Bleck and van de Walle’s central insight that elections matter in Africa because they keep political competition alive and make it harder for leaders to rule without challenge. 

Kelechi Amakoh is a PhD candidate in political science at Michigan State University, and a 2025–2026 Good Authority fellow. His research focuses on elite communication and how it shapes voter perceptions and democratic attitudes in multiethnic societies.

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On Jan. 3, the Trump administration invaded Venezuela and abducted Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s sitting president. Since removing Maduro, Trump has claimed that the U.S. is “in charge” of Venezuela while Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated that the U.S. will not in fact govern the country. Both seem to agree, however, that the main U.S. focus will be oil. Rubio elaborated that the U.S. will use the existing oil blockade “as a means to press policy changes in Venezuela.” Trump further suggested that the U.S. government will fund U.S. multinationals to build out Venezuela’s oil infrastructure because “having a Venezuela that’s an oil producer is good for the United States because it keeps the price of oil down.” 

Recent articles in Good Authority have analyzed the international implications of U.S. actions. For example, Elizabeth Saunders noted that Trump’s unconstrained, personalist foreign policy is likely to lead not only to U.S. military misadventures, but may also embolden other countries to invade neighbors and grab resources. And Jeff Colgan suggests that we have returned to an era of unabashed petro-imperialism where might makes right when it comes to the world’s oil supplies. 

Despite the wide-ranging global ramifications of the U.S. military action, in many ways, little has changed within Venezuela itself. Venezuelans did not wake up to a new regime despite Maduro’s departure – in fact, the same security forces that repressed protests under Maduro are currently cracking down on any signs of dissent. Moreover, it’s not even clear that Maduro’s removal will provide the U.S. with a compliant regime willing and able to do its bidding absent the threat of force.

Taking out Maduro without changing the regime

After capturing Maduro, the Trump administration quickly recognized Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as the acceptable replacement for Maduro. In doing so, Trump passed over opposition leaders María Corina Machado – who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her work to promote democracy in Venezuela – as well as Edmundo González, whom many believe won the 2024 presidential election despite Maduro’s claims of victory. A classified CIA brief reportedly outlined that the opposition leaders would likely face “resistance from pro-regime security services, drug-trafficking networks and political opponents.”

Rodríguez has expressed a willingness to cooperate with the U.S. but, as Trump quipped, “she really doesn’t have a choice.” Unlike the opposition candidates the Trump administration sidelined, Rodríguez has never been a proponent of greater integration with the United States. On the contrary, in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in 2019, she described the U.S. as engaging in economic terrorism and criticized the country for flexing its “imperialist claws.” More recently, Rodríguez dismissed U.S. claims that the motive behind the recent boat bombings was drug trafficking concerns, asserting that the real intention behind the attacks was to steal Venezuela’s natural wealth. She warned, “we will never hand over our homeland – never!” 

While she is more of a pragmatic technocrat than Maduro, one recent analysis notes her “ironclad socialist credentials.” Rodríguez served as Maduro’s vice president from 2018 until her recent assumption of the presidency. Despite her recent conciliatory gestures towards the Trump administration, Rodríguez is deeply rooted in the same political tradition and networks as Maduro. 

Venezuela’s complex network of security forces remains

In addition to the continuity in the presidency, all other government institutions, including the military and police, remain intact. While the process of capturing Maduro and his wife reportedly killed some 40 members of Maduro’s security detail, Venezuela’s high-level military leaders all remain alive and in their posts. For example, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, considered a regime hardliner, pledged support to Rodríguez after Maduro’s ouster and remains in charge of the military. Padrino has served as head of the armed forces since 2014 and, over the last decade, reportedly increased military engagement in the drug trade.

Likewise, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, a hardliner accused of widespread human rights violations and linked to drug trafficking activities, remains in charge of the police, counterintelligence agencies, and paramilitary groups known as colectivos. For years, the colectivos have supported the government by violently repressing protests, while also engaging in criminal activities. Just this week, the Venezuelan government declared a state of emergency – and deployed the colectivos to suppress potential expressions of support for Maduro’s removal. Cabello’s control of these security forces makes him an important power broker in post-Maduro Venezuela, leading the Trump administration to threaten him to ensure his compliance.

The landscape of armed security forces is complicated by design. To protect themselves from coups, Maduro and Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president from 1999 until his death in 2013, set up what political scientist Orlando Pérez describes as “a layer cake” of security forces composed of the regular armed forces, the Bolivarian National Guard, several competing intelligence agencies, and the colectivos. Members of varied organizations within this array of military and paramilitary forces also interact with nonstate armed groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN), a Colombian insurgent group that actively engages in criminal activities in Venezuela.

What about the oil?

In his first press conference after the military attack on Venezuela, Trump asserted that U.S. oil companies would go in and “fix” Venezuela’s oil industry, adding that if further military intervention was required it would be paid for by “money coming out of the ground.” Given the nature of the Venezuelan oil industry, what would this look like in practice?

In the 1970s, Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez nationalized the oil industry and created Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). For 25 years, PDVSA operated as a professional, meritocratic state-owned enterprise in partnership with foreign companies. But when Hugo Chávez assumed the presidency, he increasingly politicized PDVSA. After a 2002 general strike paralyzed the oil sector, Chávez fired top management as well as 18,000 PDVSA employees. Then, in 2007, when oil prices were high and rising, Chávez attempted to extract a better deal from PDVSA’s multinational partners. Chevron negotiated and still operates in Venezuela. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips did not agree to a deal and Chávez expropriated their assets. 

The departure of multinational partners along with Chávez’s mass firing of the PDVSA managers and workers created a major loss of capital and expertise – and Venezuela’s oil infrastructure suffered heavily. The crumbling infrastructure generates numerous spills and leaks and there are thousands of waste pits not up to international standards – all of which lead to pollution and water contamination. Robert Rapier, a chemical engineer who covers the energy sector, explains that even if foreign operators reengage, “restoring Venezuela’s oil production would take years.” The extensive infrastructure and human capital requirements needed to extract Venezuela’s extra-heavy crude oil would prevent a quick rebound even under the most facilitative political conditions. 

Where does this leave U.S.-Venezuela relations?

Just last month, Rodríguez complained that the U.S. wants “Venezuela’s oil and gas reserves. For nothing, without paying.” Rodríguez’s pragmatism may lead the interim president to focus on the potential benefits of conceding to expanded multinational activity in Venezuela’s oil industry, especially given her experience working with the private sector, including international companies, during her time as oil minister. But given the strong nationalism that runs through the upper echelons of the regime, civilian and military leaders alike seem unlikely to welcome Trump’s recently announced plans to control Venezuelan oil sales indefinitely with anything other than grudging acceptance under the looming threat of another military invasion.

Regardless of Rodríguez’s next steps, the rapid creation of oil output and wealth is not a near-term possibility. And as Jeff Colgan notes, while the U.S. has in the past used force to maintain control over oil and its related profits, petro-imperialism comes with major downsides, “particularly if preserving this model requires violent interventions against uncooperative foreign leaders of nominally sovereign states.” 

While Rodríguez may be less openly hostile to the U.S. than Maduro, this does not mean that the Trump administration is now dealing with a friendlier regime. The U.S. government can continue to exert military pressure to extract concessions, but the efficacy of these tactics seems to bear little relation to the individual holding the presidency. The U.S. had already pressured Maduro into accepting deportation flights, for instance. And whoever holds the presidency would not likely have escaped the impact of the economic and humanitarian catastrophe brewing from the blockade on Venezuela’s oil exports. 

There’s one likely difference in the months ahead, however. Unlike Maduro, it seems doubtful that subsequent Venezuelan leaders will view U.S. military threats as empty bluffs.

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The Trump administration’s Jan. 3, 2026, attack on Venezuela represents a blunt return to petro-imperialism. This mode of foreign policy prioritizes corporate profits and hegemonic control over consumer welfare and international legitimacy. In his press conference after the U.S. attack, President Donald Trump repeated the word “oil” 20 times. According to Trump:

Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms costing us billions and billions of dollars. They did this a while ago, but we never had a president that did anything about it. 

U.S. military actions frequently seem to target oil-producing countries like Iran, Libya, and Iraq – and it’s no coincidence. Oil and war go together, my research finds. Even so, this attack on Venezuela is unlike those previous conflicts in crucial ways.

There are basically two ways to run the global oil market: petro-imperialism and petro-consumerism. Historically, the United States has embraced both modes at various times. Understanding how this works is essential for making sense of what’s happening right now in Caracas, and what the U.S. actions this week mean for American foreign policy going forward.

A brief history of oil politics

Petro-imperialism is characterized by the idea that oil production decisions and profits should be controlled by those who can wield the use of force. A clear historical example of this “might makes right” approach is the Anglo-American cartel that controlled world oil from roughly the 1920s until the 1970s. The “Seven Sisters” cartel, made up of the seven U.S. and British oil firms Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, Gulf, Shell, and BP, didn’t just dominate oil markets through superior business practices. Their business interests were backed by the military might of their home governments, often brutally. Producing countries that attempted to assert control over their own resources faced economic threats, political coercion, or worse.

Consider what happened when Iran tried to nationalize its oil sector in 1951. Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh’s decision directly threatened the interests of the Seven Sisters, particularly the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later called BP). The response was swift and ruthless: The CIA and MI6 orchestrated Operation Ajax, which overthrew Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953. This was pure petro-imperialism – the use of U.S. and U.K. power to protect private oil profits and maintain Western control over Middle Eastern petroleum.

Petro-imperialism keeps profits flowing

This model is great for the owners of oil companies. There are big profits to be had when you can use government force to suppress competition, intimidate producing countries, and maintain oligopolistic control over global supply. Historically, lots of those profits flowed to U.S. shareholders and into the U.S. economy, helping to build American prosperity in the mid-twentieth century.

But petro-imperialism has serious downsides – particularly if preserving this model requires violent interventions against uncooperative foreign leaders of nominally sovereign states. Coups, occupations, and support for brutal dictators are a challenge for international legitimacy and undermine any claim to support democracy or human rights. These interventions also tend to generate long-term instability and resentment that eventually blows back against U.S. interests. One good example was Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Petro-imperialism also tends to contribute to artificially high oil prices, which is bad for consumers in the U.S. and elsewhere. A cartel that controls supply can restrict production to maximize profits rather than meeting demand efficiently. This benefits oil company executives and shareholders but hurts ordinary people who pay more at the pump. High oil prices also act as a drag on economic growth and disproportionately burden lower-income households. And cozy, corrupt relationships between business and political leaders can lead to oligopolies, which are bad news economically and politically for almost everyone.

Petro-consumerism aims for broader economic gains 

The alternative mode of governing the oil market is petro-consumerism. The basic premise here is that oil should be produced and sold at prices close to actual costs under competitive market conditions, in ways that benefit mass consumers rather than corporate shareholders or geopolitical power brokers. The goal is affordable energy that enables economic opportunity.

Oil prices tend to be lower on average under petro-consumerism, which boosts personal mobility, economic growth, and more equal wealth distribution. When energy is cheap and abundant, it’s easier for people to get to work, for businesses to transport goods, and for economies to expand. The benefits flow broadly across society rather than concentrating among oil industry elites.

Oil markets don’t regulate themselves. So governments frequently intervene in the market under either the petro-imperialism or petro-consumerism models. Self-interested firms constantly steer the market to concentrate power and profits, to their benefit. Under petro-consumerism, governments push back by breaking up private oligopolies and managing revenue flows for public goods. This might involve antitrust enforcement, strategic petroleum reserves, adequate environmental safeguards, and competitive auctions for drilling rights.

It’s worth noting that national oil companies can be put in service of either petro-imperialism or petro-consumerism. Saudi Aramco, for instance, has at times served both functions. What matters is not the ownership structure per se, but whether the system is organized to benefit producers and shareholders through market power and coercion, or to benefit consumers through competitive pricing and reliable contracts.

The U.S. government has pursued both models

After the 1970s, the United States tended to favor petro-consumerism, at least in principle. When Iraq attacked Kuwait in 1991 – attempting to seize control of Kuwaiti oil fields and consolidate regional market power – the U.S. military response served petro-consumerism, mostly. The U.S. sought to prevent Saddam Hussein from controlling enough supply to manipulate global prices. The U.S. goal wasn’t about seizing Iraqi oil for American companies.

Domestically, when the U.S. government broke up Standard Oil into many companies like Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron in 1911, petro-consumerism was the motivation. The government recognized that monopolistic control was bad for consumers and the broader U.S. economy. Nominally, that same approach to market competition has continued through to the present. But when the government later allowed reconsolidation of oil companies through mergers like ExxonMobil, it represented a move in the opposite direction, back toward oligopoly. In 2023, a further wave of oil company consolidation was allowed, which I warned would have negative consequences.

Even the controversial 2003 Iraq War offers a revealing case. For all the war’s many problems and deceptions, the United States abstained from seizing Iraq’s oil. Iraqi oil ultimately remained under Iraqi control, even as U.S. forces occupied the country. This restraint – however partial and however motivated by practical concerns about legitimacy – represented a rejection of pure petro-imperialism by U.S. officials.

Petro-consumerism isn’t perfect. It doesn’t fully address environmental externalities, and it is never implemented flawlessly. But this approach typically benefits the average American consumer. And it’s much better for the sovereignty and development of producing countries – and involves fewer wars and human rights abuses than petro-imperialism.

This brings us back to Venezuela 

The Trump administration’s military intervention, openly motivated by a desire to seize Venezuelan oil assets, represents an embrace of petro-imperialism (or what Stacie Goddard and Abraham Newman have called “neo-royalism”). The message from the Trump administration is unmistakable: Venezuela’s oil should benefit American interests. And if the Venezuelan government won’t cooperate, the U.S. government is prepared to install one that will.

That approach brings huge risks. As Elizabeth Saunders points out, the attack on Venezuela hurts the credibility of U.S. foreign policy. Long-term stability in Latin America could be rattled by the U.S. intervention, which may well generate exactly the kind of nationalist backlash and regional resistance that undermined previous U.S. misadventures. For Venezuela specifically, a foreign-imposed government decapitation creates additional risks of chaos and long-term economic hardship. And for the world, the U.S. intervention delegitimizes international law and favors the kind of great power geopolitics that Russia and China have long sought, as Seva Gunitsky argues. 

The choice between petro-imperialism and petro-consumerism has always been a choice about what kind of world America wants to lead and promote. The Trump team has made its choice clear. The full consequences of this foreign policy decision, however, are still to come. 

Jeff D. Colgan is the Richard Holbrooke Professor of Political Science at Brown University and the author of Partial Hegemony: Oil Politics and International Order (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Petro Aggression: When Oil Causes War (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He is on BlueSky at @JeffColgan.

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The Trump administration has captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. What does this mean for U.S. foreign policy and international security? Here are a few thoughts. 

1. This was shocking – if not surprising.

Confession: I didn’t think Trump would actually attack Venezuela, much less put boots on the ground to capture Maduro. I was also wrong in June when I thought Trump wouldn’t bomb Iran.

Why? It’s not because Trump claims to be the “president of peace.” Or because there weren’t signs – there were plenty, from the massive buildup of U.S. forces off Venezuela’s coast, the repeated strikes against alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, and the long, infamous track record of U.S. interventions in Latin America.

Rather, Trump makes a lot of threats (remember “fire and fury” in North Korea?), but in his first administration, seemed to prefer pinpoint strikes that take out a single target. A good example is Trump’s authorization of the January 2020 strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general.

And one of Trump’s most consistent policy statements has been his opposition to military interventions, especially those with boots on the ground. Which makes his statement at this morning’s press conference that the United States will “run the country” until a transition even more shocking. He even said “we’re not afraid of boots on the ground” and confirmed that there were boots on the ground in the overnight operation that captured Maduro.

2. There are no constraints on Trump’s foreign policy.

In his second administration, the few remaining constraints on Trump’s foreign policy – mainly his inner circle, which still constrained him in his first administration – are gone. As I wrote in June in Foreign Affairs, the United States now has the foreign policy of a personalist dictatorship.

A predictable result of unconstrained, personalist foreign policy: military misadventures. 

Perhaps Trump’s views have done a 180. Another view is that the absence of constraints creates a permissive environment for his aggressive instincts and policy whims. It is not clear, for example, whether Trump’s statement about “running Venezuela” was news to the advisers standing behind him, who will, according to Trump, be doing the running.

3. Scholars agree: Regime change doesn’t work. Neither does occupation.

International relations scholars love to argue – primarily with each other. So it’s notable that the deluge of research after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq came to a clear conclusion: Regime change doesn’t work, and can unleash terrible consequences for both the target and intervener. That’s true of overt regime change, as Alexander Downes’ book Catastrophic Success demonstrates. It’s also true for secret efforts to topple governments, as Lindsey O’Rourke’s study Covert Regime Change shows. Little wonder, then, that Downes and O’Rourke wrote last year that a regime change operation in Venezuela was likely to go badly.

Scholars are equally skeptical about occupation and foreign rule – making Trump’s announcement in his Jan. 3 press conference that the U.S. is “going to run Venezuela” until the transition to a new government all the more concerning. David Edelstein’s study of military occupation shows that these occupations are highly likely to fail. Those that succeed usually have favorable conditions, like an external threat, that make occupation a more attractive option for the local population. No such threat exists in Venezuela.

Trump has apparently decided, like so many presidents before him, that This Time Is Different. 

4. U.S. national security capabilities are not what they were a year ago.

So what happens next? If Trump’s press conference is any indication, there is no clear plan. 

But even if the United States wanted to “run” Venezuela or facilitate a transition to a new government, it’s not clear it has the capacity to do so anymore. As I wrote last year about a potential Venezuela operation, the current Trump administration has highly inexperienced civilians running U.S. national security, adding another layer of risk to an already-risky operation.

Additionally, Trump has gutted the U.S. government’s foreign policy toolbox, particularly essential tools like diplomacy and foreign aid. U.S. allies have criticized the boat strikes–in November, even the U.K. suspended some intelligence sharing in the region–and some have already condemned the operation that captured Maduro. All of these tools would be critical if there is any hope for an operation like this to be successful.

Trump has also stretched the U.S. military in new ways, including the large-scale deployment of force in the Caribbean since August. Trump makes threats against countries on multiple continents on a weekly basis. And he has deployed the military on U.S. soil, stretching military resources even further while undermining morale and damaging civil-military relations. 

Ironically, Trump’s expansionist version of an “America First” policy may end up constraining itself, if the U.S. ends up with what historian Paul Kennedy famously called “imperial overstretch,” when great powers collapse under the weight of their foreign commitments. This overstretch, however, would be far speedier and driven by its own self-undermining policies than other great power declines. Call it “Trump Overstretch.”

5. There’s a huge vacuum in the international order.

Almost every international relations course starts with the principle of anarchy, because there is no world government to keep order in the international system. But since the end of World War II, for better or (often) for worse, the U.S. has dominated the global order. To be sure, the rules the U.S. imposed were often self-serving, and the U.S. violated them many times. But the U.S.-led order was not a world of pure anarchy. 

As Susan Hyde and I recently wrote, Trump didn’t start the attack on the U.S.-led order, but he dealt it mortal blows. Once countries feel there are few penalties for invading neighbors or seizing resources, all bets are off. As the IR scholar Paul Musgrave put it, “We are about to speedrun the rediscovery of why states stopped acting like this.” It is not so much falling dominoes, as the U.S. feared would happen during the Cold War if countries joined the communist camp, as smashing the domino table. 

With the U.S. not just unwilling but unable to underwrite any order, it’s Trumpian anarchy. There is a sudden vacuum in the world order, while Trump wields diminished U.S. military and diplomatic power wildly, with no constraints.

Nobody knows what happens next. But Trump’s actions this weekend have made the range of outcomes huge. Regime change and occupation can unleash unpredictable and terrible consequences. The big question is whether any of this will make the United States more secure.

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As we wrap up 2025, here’s a closer look at the posts that caught readers’ attention this year.

#10 Three big takeaways from that “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Sarah Binder explained how the bill got passed, how Senate Republicans quietly nuked the filibuster, and what the bill means for our fiscal future.

#9 How to explain the weird ideas of RFK Jr. What explains a guy who wants environmental regulation and organic food but not vaccines? John Sides introduced the concept of “intuitionism” and how it explains RFK’s ideas and a lot of other people’s, too.

#8 How the GOP became the party of vaccine hesitancy. John Sides documented the sharp increase in Republican skepticism about vaccinations and traced it to GOP opposition to the covid-19 vaccine in particular. It’s another example of “partisan metastasis.”

#7 U.S. democracy is under attack. Here are some lessons for democracy’s defenders. Jennifer McCoy and her co-authors explained how “democratic backsliding” occurs and offered six key lessons for how to defend democracy in the face of threats.

#6 Why the blame game finally turned on Trump. Writing in March, Michael Tesler showed how quickly the public came to see Trump, not Biden, as responsible for the country’s economic challenges.

#5 ICE’s popularity is plunging. Michael Tesler documented the decline in ICE’s popularity and linked it to the broader “thermostatic” backlash to Trump’s immigration policies.

#4 What South Africa’s new land act really says. Carolyn Holmes explained South Africa’s Expropriation Act and why it doesn’t constitute the threat to Afrikaners that Trump and others have suggested.

#3 Trump may strike Venezuela. His team makes that very risky. Elizabeth Saunders describes how an inexperienced foreign policy team makes it hard to do the planning that Trump’s military actions in the Caribbean require.

#2 Trump’s verbal attack on Zelenskyy was shocking – and predictable. Elizabeth Saunders unpacks Trump’s fraught Feb. 28 Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and shows how it is the natural consequence of Trump’s longstanding views about foreign policy.

And now for the most-read article….

#1 Good to Know: The public is a thermostat. Good Authority fellow Alex Kustov explains the political science behind the never-ending cycle of governments doing something – and the public demanding the opposite.

Onwards to 2026! Stay up to date on all things politics and political science. Bookmark our landing page and sign up for Good Authority’s weekly newsletter by entering your email address in the box below.

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