America faces overlapping crises in the Middle East and Latin America, most of its own making. The January 2026 capture of Nicholas Maduro and the cycle of negotiation and escalation with Tehran both follow the same pattern: tactical events dominate the headlines while the harder questions go unasked. What is America’s objective, and do its actions actually produce that outcome?
In Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb described systems that grow stronger under stress rather than succumbing to it. That distinction exposes a weakness in American strategy, not in the regimes it targets. Washington rarely states what victory looks like, and it leaves untouched the institutions that keep the regime in power.
Recommended Stories
The failure is not that these regimes are invincible. It is that Washington cannot tell the difference between what can be replaced and what cannot. Militaries can be destroyed. Economies can be crippled. Leaders can be captured or killed. The infrastructure that regenerates all three survives because it displays the antifragile traits Taleb described.
Pressure that destroys assets while leaving the regenerative infrastructure intact produces tactical wins without strategic victory. Wars are won only when they produce a durable political outcome, and that is the problem.
TRUMP AND PUTIN ARE LEARNING PARALLEL LESSONS ABOUT THE REALITIES OF MODERN WARFARE
Pressure is a tool, not a strategy. Strategy names the political objective, defines what must change to reach it, and states how success will be recognized. Washington has rarely done the first two. It has almost never done the third.
Consider Iran. Is the objective to prevent a nuclear weapon, protect shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, compel better behavior, contain the regime, negotiate an accommodation, or replace it altogether? Each demands a different strategy and definition of success.
The United States and Israel have inflicted serious damage. Iran’s nuclear facilities were struck, its military degraded, and much of its senior leadership eliminated. Yet within weeks, new leadership had assumed control, military operations resumed, and negotiations picked back up as if nothing had happened. The losses were real; institutional continuity remained intact.
Satellite imagery obtained by CNN and the Institute for Science and International Security shows Iran already rebuilding the underground Taleghan 2 facility at Parchin, one of the sites destroyed in February. By early July, bomb-penetration holes had been excavated further and reinforced with concrete and rebar for what analysts call a permanent, hardened cap. Tehran is not simply rebuilding. It is adapting.
The military cycle has followed the same pattern. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard navy struck the container ship M/V GFS Galaxy and declared the Strait of Hormuz closed until American “interference” ended. The United States answered with a third round of CENTCOM strikes within the week and reinstated the naval blockade suspended after June’s memorandum of understanding, a policy Washington says costs Iran roughly $435 million a day. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summarized the response directly: Iran made a poor choice, now it pays.
The costs are real, but the question is whether the pain advances a defined political objective. If the goal is only to punish Iran, the policy may be working; if it is lasting political change, the evidence is far less convincing.
THOMAS JEFFERSON SAW THROUGH IRAN’S PLAYBOOK 240 YEARS AGO
Iran’s economy is under severe strain. Inflation has devastated purchasing power, food prices keep rising, and nationwide protests reflect deep public frustration. Yet hardship alone rarely dismantles entrenched authoritarian systems.
Venezuela presents the same problem more clearly. In January, American forces captured Nicolás Maduro and transferred him to the United States for prosecution. If the objective was removing Maduro, Washington succeeded. If the objective was democratic transition, the outcome is harder to defend.
Delcy Rodríguez assumed power within forty-eight hours and remains there, though the constitutional mandate under which she took office has expired. Neither Washington nor Caracas has an interest in acknowledging the contradiction. Washington says it favors democratic reform, yet deals with a government whose legal basis has lapsed and whose coercive structure remains unchanged.
Following the earthquakes in La Guaira, SOUTHCOM’s commander joined reconstruction talks with Rodríguez’s government. Also present was Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, whom the United States still accuses of narco-terrorism, and for whom it still offers a $25 million reward. Under what pretext do American officials sit next to a declared narco-terrorist?
So what is the American objective in Venezuela: democracy, stability, energy access, migration control, commercial arrangements, or some combination? Until Washington says which matters most, it cannot know whether it has won anything beyond the operation that removed Maduro.
Cuba raises the same question over a longer period. Is the goal democratic reform, containment, migration management, or simply preventing collapse? Six decades of sanctions have imposed enormous costs on ordinary Cubans while leaving the state’s governing infrastructure intact.
HOW THE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL BECAME LAW: READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER’S 10-PART SERIES
The Trump administration’s own overtures illustrate the problem. After the oil blockade following Maduro’s capture pushed Cuba toward collapse, Secretary of State Marco Rubio opened talks with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of Raúl Castro, reportedly discussing an “off-ramp” deal that would let Díaz-Canel and the Castro family remain on the island. Trump has floated something closer to a “friendly takeover.”
Neither outcome touches the apparatus that has kept the Castro family’s networks in power since 1959. Washington is negotiating with the infrastructure it claims to be dismantling, and calling it leverage.
Afghanistan offers the clearest warning. For two decades, the United States won nearly every significant battlefield engagement against the Taliban while degrading its leadership and capabilities. Yet when the institutional infrastructure supporting the Afghan republic collapsed in 2021, the Taliban returned to power within days. Winning nearly every battle did not produce victory, because battlefield success was never matched by durable political institutions.
History offers few examples of hostile regimes falling while the infrastructure that sustained them survives intact. Germany and Japan remain the clearest exceptions, but both followed unconditional surrender, prolonged occupation, and comprehensive institutional reconstruction. Libya and Syria show how much harder externally driven political transformation has become.
Dismantling that infrastructure does not require American occupation or nation-building. Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba all possess domestic opposition movements that seek political change. Supporting them seriously and consistently offers a plausible path toward changing the political architecture itself, not merely the individuals who temporarily occupy it.
Whether pressure, accommodation, or support for opposition movements, Washington faces a prior obligation before choosing among them: define the desired political end state. None of the available choices is quick. None is inexpensive. None guarantees success. Strategy rarely offers perfect options. It offers tradeoffs. But tradeoffs cannot be judged without a clear objective.
THE VENEZUELAN REGIME IS GOVERNING ON AN EXPIRED MANDATE
Confrontations are ultimately contests over political systems, not simply military forces. Until Washington states what success means in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and similar crises, and aligns its tools with that outcome, it cannot know whether its policies are working.
The danger is not merely that America will lose wars. It is that it will continue winning battles while preserving the very tyrannical regimes it claims to oppose.