In one of his most perplexing recent initiatives, US President Donald Trump has overseen the capture and removal to US custody of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, while declaring Washington will “run” Venezuela even though it has no troops there. Mr Trump seems to be relying on latter-day gunboat diplomacy, and what amounts to rule by implicit intimidation rather than direct occupation. Concerns are widespread that the Trump administration may be acting without sufficient planning, with perhaps only the re-conquest of Venezuelan oil resources meaningfully thought through.
The present-day and fully realised seizure of Mr Maduro and the not-at-all realised seizure of Venezuela have some obvious precursors, but none appear particularly instructive. In 1989, George HW Bush sent 24,000 troops to impose American will on the relatively tiny country of Panama after its then-leader, Manuel Noriega, turned on his long-time US allies. He was brought to the US and convicted on drug charges similar to those awaiting Mr Maduro and his wife. They are also similar to the drug smuggling charges that Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, was convicted of in 2024 and pardoned for by Mr Trump last month. Consistency was never a hallmark of Trumpian policies.
Washington had a long-term significant military presence in Panama, while it has no comparable troops or deep history of control in Venezuela. Noriega had little external support, while Cuba is a crucial mentor in heavy-handedness to the Venezuelan establishment set up by Mr Maduro’s predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez. In 2013, Mr Maduro inherited an intricate system of national control based on interlocking alliances between his self-styled “Bolivarian revolutionary” political base with drug-running generals and nationwide street gangs known as “colectivos”.
This nightmare of pervasive repression, endemic self-enrichment and systematised corruption created sufficient socio-economic pressure to prop up a Latin-American equivalent of Bashar Al Assad’s Syria, with cocaine instead of captagon. Precious few Venezuelans will shed a tear for Mr and Mrs Maduro, but the only practical step clearly articulated by Mr Trump is the proposed US seizure of the vast Venezuelan petroleum industry (Opec was founded in 1960 by a coalition of Venezuela and Gulf countries) – a move that would probably be overwhelmingly unpopular and therefore rejected by any plausible alternative government. Mr Trump claims Venezuelan oil has been “stolen” from the US, but few in Venezuela would agree.
How does Mr Trump propose to “run Venezuela” with the existing system fully intact and no US forces on the ground? Largely through intimidation, apparently. Washington seems to agree that Mr Maduro has been lawfully succeeded by his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez. She has reportedly been in talks with the architect of this policy, US Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, and Mr Trump says he’s convinced that she’s “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary in order to make Venezuela great again”.
Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia convincingly claimed an overwhelming victory in the July 2024 presidential election, yet Mr Trump has ignored him. He has also dismissed his principal backer and last year’s Nobel Peace Laureate, Maria Corina Machado, as unfit while she insists that Mr Gonzales is the legitimate president. There are no apparent plans for a new election in Venezuela. Instead, the “Bolivarian” system is chugging along, much as it would have if Mr Maduro had suddenly passed away of natural causes.
Mr Trump is insisting on US control of Venezuela’s oil resources, which are still embargoed by Washington, on the grounds that they were “stolen” from American petrochemical companies in the 20th century. One would assume, given his emphasis on this “combat deliverable”, or booty, that there is an agreement with Ms Rodriguez and US petroleum interests about what that entails.
But with this administration, such assumptions have typically proved over-optimistic. If Ms Rodriguez has a secret understanding regarding Venezuelan oil with the Trump administration and US-dominated energy multinationals, she’s doing a very good job at misdirection. She has insisted that Mr Maduro remains president, even though she has been sworn into office as his successor, and has passionately criticised his arrest and expatriation.
Thus far this isn’t regime change. It’s barely regime decapitation. The entire power structure that Chavez built remains intact. Mr Trump may be gambling on Ms Rodriguez to both hold on to power within the existing system and co-operate with his plans to seize Venezuelan oil assets. But it’s hard to imagine any government of whatever ideology in Caracas agreeing to that.
Besides, at least superficially, this operation doesn’t look much like traditional “Yankee imperialism” in Latin America, or more recent operations such as the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq or the 2015-2019 largely aerial intervention in Libya, although it does bear some hallmarks to the 2011 assassination of Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. The trouble is that Mr Maduro has been presiding over a complex socio-economic as well as political system with deep roots and potent external guidance from Cuba. Simply removing him doesn’t change any of that, unless secret understandings greatly exceed what appears evident.
Mr Trump is threatening additional military interventions, including “boots on the ground”, if Ms Rodriguez is not forthcoming. That conveys a strong sense of hesitation, thereby unintentionally offering her considerable leverage. She has a metaphorical gun pointed directly at her forehead, yet she surely sees Mr Trump doesn’t want to pull the trigger and can craftily exploit that.
This operation strongly reinforces the sense that Mr Trump is seeking to manage the transition to global strategic multi-polarity by clearly and aggressively defining a new, and much smaller although more rigidly enforced, US sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, parts of Europe and the Middle East.
This was the gist of the national security strategy document published a few weeks ago and that I outlined in these pages almost exactly a year ago: “the retreat of the US into a smaller but much more firmly controlled sphere of influence, presumably based mainly in the western hemisphere” and permitting “regional spheres of influence by former adversaries such as Russia, China and even Iran, or others, in their own immediate environs”.
Whatever Mr Trump is up to in Venezuela, it certainly reinforces the sense that the US is pulling back from a truly global role in favour of a much smaller, but more tightly controlled, sphere.
Champagne corks should be flying freely in Moscow and Beijing.
