In this special interview, we're diving into the heart of Venezuela's prolonged crisis—a story of economic collapse, humanitarian suffering, and a fractured political stalemate. Against this backdrop, we’ll examine a pivotal but often overlooked factor: the Trump administration's decisive rejection of the established international order. By sidelining multilateral diplomacy in favor of unilateral pressure, his approach didn't just fail to unseat Maduro; it intensified the nation's agony and reshaped the rules of global engagement. We’ll unpack how this deliberate ignorance of complex, coordinated solutions has left Venezuela trapped and the world order more fragile.

Professor Kurt Weyland is Mike Hogg Professor in Liberal Arts in the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin. Professor Weyland's research interests focus on democratization and authoritarian rule, on social policy and policy diffusion, and on populism in Latin America and Europe. He has drawn on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, including insights from cognitive psychology, and has done extensive field research in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, and Venezuela. His latest book, Democracy’s Resilience to Populism’s Threat: Countering Global Alarmism.