Business leaders awoke on Saturday to a new reality in the aftermath of the successful U.S. military capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who were dragged from their bedroom in the early morning hours. The couple was asleep at their home inside the heavily guarded Fort Tiuna military complex until they were seized by a military operation composed of U.S. Marines, the U.S. Airforce and the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force, alongside FBI agents, reinforced by 150 aircraft in a strike lasting less than 30 minutes, with no casualties.
As reported laughter and joking in the hallway died down, President Trump declared with some bravado, at a press conference hailing the smooth military operation, “we’re going to be running Venezuela.” He insisted this would come at no cost to Americans, as reinstated oil reserves will pay for a U.S. occupation. But however CEOs feel about the removal of the brutal, corrupt Maduro, corporate leaders who are doing business in Latin America would be advised that a similar kind of public giddiness may not be their own best response.
I usually encourage CEOs to speak out, but here they should avoid taking sides on such a matter, other than to show the world that Trump’s invasion was not driven solely by U.S. commercial interests. The diplomatic and domestic agenda, along with the legality of such actions, should be debated, but U.S. business leaders must clarify that they were not co-conspirators in such intrigue and governmental overthrow, otherwise trust in their motives globally will be diminished.
There is little dispute that Maduro was an evil, corrupt autocrat who undermined Venezuelan elections, with his brutality leading to the flight of 8 million refugees and impoverishing his resource-rich land. However, there is little incentive for U.S. corporate leaders to gloat and be used as foils. The Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s mantra of “less is more” may be appropriate at this stage.
Here are five key themes that every CEO should consider:
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