编者按：本文作者是《纽约时报》专栏作家，文章2026年1月3日由《纽约时报》发表，英文题目是“To Trump, on Venezuela: You Break It, You Own It”。中文翻译2026年1月4日由微信公号“一半杯”发布，中文译文被部分删改。为让读者了解被删改部分，该文英文贴在中文翻译之后。
现在就断言特朗普政府把委内瑞拉总统尼古拉斯·马杜罗抓捕送到美国受审之后委内瑞拉接下来会发生什么还为时过早，不可能有清晰答案。但回想美国在其他地区的类似干预，我有很多问题。
2011年3月19日，一个由北约主导的联盟仅依靠空中力量介入利比亚内战，这场干预最终导致卡扎菲上校的政权垮台，同年10月，卡扎菲被反对派武装杀死。2011年3月29日，我写过一篇专栏，结尾是：“主啊，请让奥巴马总统走运。”那篇文章的主旨是，巴拉克·奥巴马刚刚促成了利比亚领导人下台，但我们在当地没有任何地面力量去塑造之后的局势。
我当时写道：“我不了解利比亚，但我的直觉告诉我，要在那里出现任何像样的结局，都需要地面部队。要么作为军事援助帮助反叛者按我们想要的方式赶走卡扎菲，要么在卡扎菲倒台后充当维和者与裁判，在部族与派系之间斡旋，推动向民主转型的过渡。这些地面部队不能是我们的，我们绝对负担不起。”
那么，下一阶段由谁来当裁判？
结果是，没有人。我们只给反叛者提供空中支持，把掌控地面局势完的事全交给了当地相互竞争的势力、部族与民兵组织。他们当时就四分五裂，直到今天仍然如此。将近15年过去，利比亚依旧一团糟，两个政府争夺控制权，它也仍是非洲难民与移民穿越地中海进入欧洲的危险跳板。
我当然不是在主张美国军事接管委内瑞拉，但我确实想知道，在没有地面军事存在的情况下，我们究竟要如何塑造那里的事态与趋势，既维护美国的利益，也维护委内瑞拉人民的利益。
“拿了就走”用来吃午饭当然方便，但若把它当作地缘政治策略就显得捉襟见肘了。
在周六的记者会上，特朗普总统似乎意识到了这一点，而且毫不回避。他说：“我们要接管并管理这个国家，直到我们能够实现一次安全、适当而审慎的过渡。”他接着说：“我们不能冒险让别人接管。”
他还补充说，如果需要，美国“准备发动第二次、规模更大得多的攻击”。特朗普甚至说：“如果必须，我们并不害怕部署地面部队。”
哇。特朗普并不避讳暗示，美国正在启动自伊拉克和阿富汗以来最大的一项国家建设工程。他知道这会是一项多么艰巨、而且可能没有尽头的工程吗？
特朗普政府打算如何“管理”委内瑞拉，目前完全不清楚。它是否与马杜罗政权的残余力量达成了某种默契，让他们退到一边？特朗普是否计划向马杜罗残余班底下最后通牒，要求其离开，然后由美国组织选举？可以确定的是，由美国来“治理”委内瑞拉将是一项巨大的工作，而特朗普那部分倾向孤立主义的MAGA基本盘，很可能并不愿意拥抱这份任务。
我还要补充一点，听特朗普大言不惭地描述委内瑞拉和马杜罗对美国构成的威胁，我不由得想起乔治·W·布什团队当年如何夸大伊拉克大规模杀伤性武器的威胁，以此为入侵辩护。你不实事求是，你就会惹上麻烦。
许多委内瑞拉人会为马杜罗的垮台而欢呼，但他仍有一批实力不容小觑的武装盟友。要形容这些人，最贴切的说法恐怕就是一伙打手与毒品贩运者。他们一直依靠暴力镇压和窃取选举结果来控制委内瑞拉。亲马与反马两大阵营的力量对比最终会如何定型，又会催生出多大程度的失序与混乱？
再举一个中东类比。有些国家，一旦你把其领导层“斩首”，它就会内爆，自己塌陷下去。也门就是例子，因为它被强邻与海洋包围。但另一些国家则会外爆，比如叙利亚在巴沙尔·阿萨德倒台之后，它向外辐射出难民、毒品与不稳定，冲击周边国家。
根据联合国难民事务高级专员公署（UNHCR）的数据，目前已经有将近800万委内瑞拉人以难民、寻求庇护者与经济移民的身份离开本国，形成全球规模最大的流离失所之一，其中绝大多数流向其他拉美与加勒比国家，给整个地区带来人道主义挑战。
委内瑞拉人口大约2800万。马杜罗被推翻以及其支持者与反对者之间的冲突，会不会加剧难民问题，从而进一步动摇更多拉美国家的稳定？
在世界其他关键节点上，那些握有战略决策权的人此刻在想什么？一方是正在重新评估地区秩序的大国决策层，一方是手握强大军力、善于利用先例叙事的强势政权；与此同时，身处战事压力之下的一国领导层，以及一个高度敏感的岛屿政治实体的负责人，又会如何解读这一幕？美国以贩毒罪名起诉了委内瑞拉领导人，美国司法部周六表示，随后美国又从对方首都把他抓走。当北约在利比亚推翻卡扎菲时，它先拿到了联合国决议。某个在地区内拥有压倒性影响力的行为体，完全可能把这次美国行动视为又一个可援引的先例，从而强化一种叙事：它可以在自己选择的时点，对一个敏感岛屿方向的既有当局采取决定性行动，重塑其政治格局。与此同时，它也很可能从中看到一层“战略红利”：美国将比以往任何时候都更被迫把注意力与资源拴在本半球事务上，留给亚太方向的政策带宽更窄，用于牵制其地区性运作的时间与精力也会相对减少。（本段被译者大部分删除，可阅读文后英文查阅被删除的部分）
还有一个因素必须记住，委内瑞拉的大部分石油出口流向◽️◽️。
至于普京，他肯定在想，如果特朗普政府陷入管理后马杜罗时代委内瑞拉的泥沼，那么它投入乌克兰的时间、精力与资源就会更少。泽连斯基今天也必然担心同样的事情。
特朗普的国家安全团队本身就像个奇怪的混合体，一边是自由职业者式的人物，比如背景来自房地产的史蒂夫·威特科夫，另一边是经验不足的人手，比如国防部长皮特·海格塞斯，以及如今同时兼任国务卿与国家安全顾问的马尔科·鲁比奥。当乌克兰与加沙的和平进程依然远未完成，这个团队究竟能同时把多少个球抛在空中还不掉下来？更何况，他们做事的方式带着一种即兴、凭感觉的味道，像是在等着看特朗普总统先发哪条推文再决定下一步。
最后，把时间拨回2003年2月12日。那是布什政府入侵伊拉克前大约一个月，我在一篇专栏里写道：“任何入侵伊拉克的第一条规则，是‘陶器店规则’：你打碎了，就得你买单。我们一旦打碎伊拉克，就等于把伊拉克变成自己的责任，也就必须承担重建一个拥有2300万人口国家的首要义务。这个国家与其说更像任何其他阿拉伯国家，不如说与南斯拉夫更相近。”后来，国务卿科林·鲍威尔先在CNN接受拉里·金（Larry King）采访时提到这一说法，随后又对鲍勃·伍德沃德（Bob Woodward）表示，他在向乔治·W·布什总统陈述伊拉克战争选项时采用了我的这套表述。
今天很难不提出同样的问题。特朗普政府刚刚打碎了委内瑞拉的领导层，接下来会发生什么，特朗普就必须承担责任。如果这能为委内瑞拉人民带来一个更新、更好的政府，那当然好，特朗普将被记住，是他推动了这一进程的启动。
但如果这让委内瑞拉变成一口更沸腾、更危险的不稳定之锅，那么特朗普这个喜欢把自己名字贴在各种事物上的人，也将把自己的名字贴在这种不稳定之上，并且很久都撕不下来。正如我当年谈奥巴马与利比亚时说的那样，为了所有人的利益，请让我的总统走运。
我很喜欢《加拉加斯纪事》创办人基科·托罗（Quico Toro）在周六一篇文章里的表述。他曾被迫逃离委内瑞拉统治。他写道：“唐纳德·特朗普和马尔科·鲁比奥今天会绕场庆祝一圈。他们值得这样做。他们对一个真正邪恶的政权打出了沉重一击。但他们并没有推翻它。查韦斯主义仍然牢牢控制着委内瑞拉。”
他还补充说：“世界各地的委内瑞拉人都在庆祝一个残暴暴君的倒台。但如果这个政权设法挺过这场风暴，我们就不会庆祝太久。”
To Trump, on Venezuela: You Break It, You Own It
It is far too early to have clear answers as to what will happen next in Venezuela in the wake of the Trump administration’s removal of President Nicolás Maduro to stand trial in the United States. But I have a lot of questions based on such interventions by the United States in other regions.
On March 19, 2011, a NATO-led coalition launched a military intervention — exclusively using air power — into the Libyan civil war that eventually led to the toppling of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government, followed in October of that year by his killing by opposition forces. On March 29, 2011, I wrote a column that concluded, “Dear Lord, please make President Obama lucky.” The theme of the essay was that Barack Obama had just facilitated the ouster of the leader of Libya, but we had no forces on the ground to shape events after that.
“I don’t know Libya,” I wrote at the time, “but my gut tells me that any kind of decent outcome there will require boots on the ground — either as military help for the rebels to oust Qaddafi as we want, or as post-Qaddafi peacekeepers and referees between tribes and factions to help with any transition to democracy. Those boots cannot be ours. We absolutely cannot afford it.”
So, who would referee the next phase?
It turned out to be no one. By providing only air cover for the rebels, our intervention left the situation on the ground to the local competing forces, tribes and militias, which were divided then and remain divided to this day. Nearly 15 years later, Libya is still a mess, with two governments vying for control, and it’s still a dangerous jumping-off point for refugees and migrants from Africa across the Mediterranean into Europe.
I am certainly not arguing for a U.S. military takeover in Venezuela, but I am certainly wondering how we can shape events and trends there to support our interests and the interests of the Venezuelan people without a military presence on the ground.
Grab-and-go is great if you are doing lunch, but as a geopolitical strategy it has its limits.
In a news conference on Saturday, President Trump seemed to recognize that — and did not shy away from it. He said, “We are going to run the country until such time that we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” going on to say that “we can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over.”
He added that the U.S. was “ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so.”
Trump even added, “We are not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to.”
Wow! Trump did not shrink from suggesting that we are undertaking the biggest nation-building project America has engaged in since Iraq and Afghanistan. Does he have any idea what a daunting and open-ended project that could be?
How the Trump administration is going to run Venezuela is simply not clear. Does it have an arrangement with the remnant of the Maduro regime to step aside? Does Trump plan to pose to Maduro’s rump team an ultimatum to leave and then the U.S. will organize elections? What is clear is that America running Venezuela would be a huge job, and there will be a significant portion of Trump’s isolationist MAGA base that is not likely to embrace that task.
I would also add that listening to Trump vastly exaggerate the threat posed by Venezuela and Maduro to the United States had very disturbing echoes of the way the George W. Bush team exaggerated the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify its invasion. When you don’t call things by their real and honest name, you get in trouble.
Many Venezuelans will celebrate Maduro’s demise, but he has significant armed allies — a band of thugs and narco-traffickers would be the best way to describe them — who have been controlling Venezuela through violent repression and the stealing of elections. What will be the balance of power of the pro- and anti-Maduro camps and what level of disorder will it produce?
Another analogy from the Middle East: Certain countries, when you decapitate their leadership, implode — they fall in on themselves; Yemen did so, for instance, because it was surrounded by strong neighbors and the ocean. But others, like Syria after the fall of its dictator, Bashar al-Assad, explode — they radiate out refugees and drugs and instability to the surrounding states.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are already nearly eight million Venezuelans — refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants — who have fled their country, making for one of the world’s largest displacements, with the vast majority flowing into other Latin American and Caribbean nations, creating a humanitarian challenge for the whole region.
Venezuela has roughly 28 million people. Will the toppling of Maduro and clashes between his supporters and opponents exacerbate that refugee problem, destabilizing more countries in Latin America?
Another question: What are the leaders of other key nations — Xi Jinping in China, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine and Lai Ching-te in Taiwan — thinking now?
America indicted the leader of Venezuela on drug trafficking charges, the Justice Department said Saturday, and then went out and grabbed him from his own capital. When NATO ousted Qaddafi in Libya, it got a U.N. resolution first. China could well see this U.S. action as just one more precedent that would justify its toppling of the government of Taiwan at the time of its choosing. China will also most likely celebrate the fact that the U.S. will be more preoccupied than ever with its own hemisphere and have much less time and energy for curbing China’s regional power plays.
Another factor to keep in mind: Most of Venezuela’s oil is exported to China.
As for Putin, he is surely thinking that if the Trump administration gets bogged down trying to manage a post-Maduro Venezuela, it will have even less time, energy and resources to devote to Ukraine. Zelensky surely has to worry about the same thing today.
The Trump national security team is already a strange hybrid of freelancers — like Steve Witkoff, whose background is in real estate — and inexperienced hands like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, who is now serving as both secretary of state and national security adviser. With the peace processes in Ukraine and Gaza still very much unfinished, how many balls can this crew juggle effectively, with its seat-of-the-pants “wait to see what President Trump tweets first” way of doing business?
Finally, on Feb. 12, 2003, roughly a month before the Bush administration invaded Iraq, I wrote a column in which I said: “The first rule of any Iraq invasion is the pottery store rule: You break it, you own it. We break Iraq, we own Iraq — and we own the primary responsibility for rebuilding a country of 23 million people that has more in common with Yugoslavia than with any other Arab nation.” Secretary of State Colin Powell told CNN’s Larry King and later Bob Woodward that he adopted my formulation in presenting the Iraq war options to President George W. Bush.
It is hard not to ask that same question today. The Trump administration just broke the leadership of Venezuela; Trump now owns responsibility for what comes next there. If it leads to a new and better government for the people of Venezuela, great. Trump will be remembered for setting that process in motion.
But if it leads to Venezuela becoming a bigger boiling pot of instability, well, Trump, who likes to put his name on things, will have his name on that instability for a long time. As I said before of Obama in Libya, for everyone’s sake, please make my president lucky.
I like how Quico Toro, the founder of Caracas Chronicles, who was forced to flee Venezuela’s dictatorship, put it in an essay on Saturday. “Donald Trump and Marco Rubio will take a victory lap today. They deserve it,” he wrote. “They’ve struck an enormous blow against a genuinely evil regime. But they’ve not overthrown it. ‘Chavismo’ is very much still in control of Venezuela.
“Venezuelans all around the world are celebrating the fall of a vicious tyrant,” he added. “But if the regime manages to ride out this storm, we won’t be celebrating for long.”
