What counts as terrorism in Venezuela is rewarded when it comes from Qatar and Turkey. The Maduro Test reveals a simple truth: security labels are enforced not by actions, but by usefulness.

When the Trump administration designated Nicolás Maduro’s government in Venezuela as “narco-terrorist”, it did not introduce a new ideology. It changed the application. For the first time, Washington moved beyond the familiar and evasive category of a “state sponsor of terrorism” and applied a functional definition: a sovereign regime that operates as a terrorist organization. Not a failure of governance, but a governing model – one that integrates violence, financing, and state protection, and deliberately employs harm to civilians as a tool of policy. The criteria were clear: an organic relationship with violent organizations, their use as instruments of state power, and a willingness to absorb international costs. Venezuela met them.

This pattern is not incidental. The designation of Maduro’s regime was substantively justified, but its selective enforcement reveals how standards give way to performance and........

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