François Picard is pleased to welcome Christopher Sabatini, Senior Research Fellow for Latin America, the US and the Americas program at Chatham House. According to Sabatini, the removal of a head of state through external force may appear, at first glance, as a decisive rupture. Yet what unfolds beneath the surface reveals continuity rather than transformation. The structures of power, the networks of coercion, and the embedded systems of corruption do not dissolve with the extraction of a single leader.
Instead, they persist, adapt, and often reconfigure themselves within the same, and possibly even more hardened, institutional shell. What is presented as regime change is, upon closer inspection, a targeted decapitation: a symbolic and operational act that leaves the governing apparatus largely intact.
Without a negotiated transition or the reconstruction of political legitimacy through democratic means, the underlying regime not only survives but recalibrates. Personnel may shift, alliances may subtly realign, but the logic of power remains unchanged. This pattern extends beyond Venezuela.
External pressure, when applied without a viable pathway for political transition, risks deepening humanitarian crises while failing to produce structural reform, explains Sabatini. In such contexts, regimes prioritise survival, even at the cost of their people, while international strategies drift between coercion and uncertainty.
What emerges is not transformation, but the endurance of a deep-rooted system, under altered conditions.
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