When thinking about the future of Venezuela, parts of the Trump Administration seem to be embracing the theory that democratization is mostly a staffing problem. Replace the “bad team”—President Nicolás Maduro and his inner circle—with a new team committed to democratic norms, and democracy will follow.

Since his first term in office, President Donald Trump has considered Maduro an illegitimate leader and has since designated him as a member of a terrorist organization. The Trump Administration has placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro and reportedly given him an ultimatum to step down.  

But the trouble with the Trump Administration’s staffing theory of democracy is that it ignores the institutional foundations required for democratization. Democracies are built by people, yes, but fundamentally, by institutions. Given the scale of Venezuela’s crisis, those institutions cannot be constructed without assistance from major powers. It is far from clear that the Trump Administration would be prepared to offer that assistance.

All new democracies depend on three institutional pillars, each providing a distinct collective good: security, economic restructuring, and de-radicalization. External support is indispensable for each. President Trump is unable to provide these pillars and is therefore unlikely to successfully democratize Venezuela. 

New democracies require an encompassing security umbrella. Benn Steil of the Council on Foreign Relations argues that the key lesson from Europe’s democratization after World War II is the U.S. decision to create NATO—the largest security umbrella ever deployed in European history—combined with efforts to modernize local defense forces. Without this broad security umbrella, no amount of financial aid could have produced........

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