Nicolas Maduro in a tracksuit, blindfolded, escorted by US soldiers. It is not merely the image of a fallen leader, but of a state losing sovereignty in real time.
Then comes the line that matters more. US President Donald Trump, unfiltered, says America will take over Venezuela, run it for now, and bring in American oil companies to manage its most valuable industry.
No moral framing. No diplomatic cushioning. Just power, stated plainly.
This is not how the US usually talks, even when it does something very similar. And that change in language is not cosmetic. It signals a shift with serious consequences for Venezuela, for US allies and for the international order.
For decades, American interventions followed a familiar pattern. The motives were always framed in acceptable terms: weapons of mass destruction, civilian protection, anti-communism. The results often included regime change, foreign oversight and the reopening of oil sectors to Western companies. But those outcomes were described as secondary effects, not objectives.
That distinction mattered. It allowed allies to support US action without publicly endorsing resource control. It preserved a thin but important line between intervention and occupation. It gave international institutions, such as the UN, language to work with. Now that line is being erased.
When the US president says openly that America will “run” another country and place its oil industry under American corporate management, it is not simply blunt talk. It is a rejection of the old American playbook.
In Iraq after 2003, the US governed the country directly through a political coalition. It rewrote investment laws, reshaped state institutions and opened the oil sector to foreign companies that had been locked out for decades. But Washington insisted the war was about security and democracy. When that justification collapsed, the cost was paid in blood and political capital.
In Libya in 2011, Nato intervention was authorised to protect civilians. The result was regime collapse and a fractured state. Oil production quickly became the central concern of foreign diplomacy, with western firms returning even as governance disintegrated. Again, no one said oil was the point. It was simply treated as a technical necessity for “stabilisation”.
In Iran in the 1950s, the US and Britain helped overthrow prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalised oil assets. The public rationale was Cold War containment. The consequence was the restoration of western oil concessions and, over time, deep Iranian resentment that still shapes regional politics today.
In each case, the US avoided explicit language about control and resources. That ambiguity was intentional. It limited backlash, divided opposition and preserved the claim, however contested, that Washington operated within a rules-based order.
The Venezuela rhetoric abandons that ambiguity.
This matters first for Venezuela, one of the most resource-rich countries in the world with a vast wealth of energy and gold. The country, however, is not an abstract oil field. It is a society exhausted by collapse, sanctions, corruption and political repression. Millions of Venezuelans have fled. Any external intervention will be judged by its impact on daily life: food availability, fuel prices, security.
History offers little evidence that foreign control of oil sectors quickly improves living conditions. Revenues take time, and resentment towards external management of national resources tends to grow faster than trust, especially in countries with long memories of foreign interference.
Second, the shift matters for US allies. Supporting American action framed around democracy or humanitarian protection is politically difficult but defensible. Supporting an intervention openly framed around managing another country’s resources is far harder. It exposes partners to accusations of complicity and undermines their own stated commitments to sovereignty and international law. Silence becomes awkward, and endorsement becomes costly.
Third, it matters for US rivals. Russia, China and Iran, all with ties to Mr Maduro's regime, have long accused Washington of hypocrisy, saying one thing while doing another. When the language aligns with the accusation, the argument changes. The issue is no longer whether the US is hiding its motives, but whether it feels bound by shared rules at all.
That invites responses in kind. If resource control can be openly justified by power and failure, other states will draw their own conclusions, in Africa, the Middle East and beyond.
There is also a domestic American consequence. The old rhetoric of democracy promotion, however flawed, imposed constraints. It required public debate, congressional scrutiny and legal justification. A transactional framing like this one, to take over, manage, extract, and move on, lowers those barriers. That may make decisions easier in the short term, but it increases the risk of long-term entanglement without accountability.
Finally, this moment signals something larger. It suggests a world in which the US no longer feels the need to pretend that power must be explained, softened or shared. That is not strength. It is impatience, projected by an administration in a hurry to strike deals, and make things happen its way when those deals are reached, no matter the consequences.
The precedent set by how Washington justifies its actions there will travel far beyond Caracas. The political deodorant is gone.
