THE US BRINGS CHAOS TO VENEZUELA

Nicolas Maduro

The US Launches a Military Assault on Venezuela

In the early hours of Saturday 3 January, the US launched its military assault on Venezuela, abducting its president, Nicolas Maduro who, with his wife was flown to New York where they face federal charges including narcotics and terrorism allegations. It was the first time the US has apprehended a sitting foreign leader since 1990.

Trump has also threatened Denmark, Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, Canada, Colombia and Iran, and he plans to increase the Pentagon budget by 50% to US$1.5 trillion. Justifications for Trump’s actions include narco-terrorism, illegal immigration, oil and the “maligned presence of China, Russia and Iran”. As the Asia Times wrote, these are the “musings of dementia-addled narcissism” and “All of this will end in tears as it has in Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Red Sea. Somewhere in Trump’s brain is Venezuela’s 300 billion barrels of oil reserves”, even though Venezuela currently produces only about 1% of the world’s oil, a far cry from the  oil production of the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Canada.[i]

Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State cast Maduro’s ouster as central to Trump’s priorities of curbing the flow of drugs into the US, deporting migrants and reasserting US dominance in the region.

Trump also claimed that drugs were pouring through Mexico into the US and he offered to send US troops to Mexico to combat the cartels, but Mexico’s president, Claudia Scheinbaum rejected any US military action on Mexican soil and condemned the US military raid on Venezuela as “a serious threat to regional stability”.

Maria Corina Machado

Maria Corina Machado

On  15 January the Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado met Trump and presented him with her Nobel Peace Prize which was awarded to her in October 2025 for her campaign for free and fair elections in Venezuela. Trump did not hesitate to accept her prize. However, she emerged from the meeting with no public backing from Trump who said she did not have enough support to run the country. Instead, he backed Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodriguez who assumed power following the capture of Maduro.[ii]

During Trump’s first term, Rodriguez was regarded as a pariah and the US administration sanctioned her, citing corruption and mismanagement. Now, Trump has made her the US’s primary partner in Venezuela! Rodriguez has outmaneuvered Machado whose party won presidential elections in 2024 but which Maduro and Rodriguez ignored. The risk is that Rodriguez will avoid free and fair elections which the Venezuelans want and believe Machado would win in a landslide. Venezuela’s petroleum sector needs significant investment, with Trump saying that he hoped for US$100 billion from the private sector. However, major oil companies are reluctant to invest in Venezuela since the removal of Maduro, citing political and economic instability. [iii]

Delcy Rodriguez

Mixed Views

According to the UN International Organisation for Migration, about 7.7 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2000. Colombia received the largest number of about 2.8 million followed by Peru with 1.6 million.

Venezuelans in Australia have been celebrating the removal of Maduro, calling the US military intervention the only way to escape the dictatorship which saw them targeted, impoverished and forced to flee. Social media has shown thousands of Venezuelans in the capital of Caracas celebrating the capture of Maduro. The Argentine president, Javier Milei also celebrated the capture of Maduro and in Florida, members of the local Venezuelan community also celebrated. Throughout Latin America, Venezuelan expats gathered outside their national embassies to celebrate.[iv] 

However, Trump’s military assault and the abduction of Maduro also sparked a backlash from Latin America and across the globe. The former president of Bolivia repudiated the attack while the Colombian president decried US aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela. The Presidents of Chile and Mexico similarly condemned the assault.

In the US, criticism mounted against the military operation in Venezuela and the newly inaugurated New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani  condemned the operation, branding it as an “act of war”. In Manhattan, crowds marched through the streets with signs reading “No War on Venezuela”.

Moscow has expressed “Unwavering solidarity with the Venezuelan people and Government” and the Russian ambassador to the UN has described Washington’s actions in Venezuela as “international banditry”. China, together with several other BRICS nations has also condemned the US actions. However, despite condemnations, neither Russia nor China has taken any action beyond diplomatic protests, and China has deliberately avoided any military role in the region.

Cuba and Venezuela

Venezuela is a long-standing ally of Cuba and sends around 30,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba. Venezuela and Cuba have shared a vision of socialism ever since Hugo Chavez (President of Venezuela 1999-2013) met the ageing leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro in 1999. For years, Venezuelan oil has flowed into Cuba in exchange for doctors and medics travelling to Venezuela. Maduro’s security detail was made up almost entirely of Cuban bodyguards, 32 of whom were killed in the US military operation to capture Maduro.

The US and Cuba have had a strained relationship since Fidel Castro overthrew a US backed government in 1959. Although steps were taken by former President Barack Obama to improve diplomatic relations with Cuba, the Trump administration reversed those moves. The Cuban President, Miguel Diaz-Canel claims that Cuba’s severe economic shortages are the fault of the “Draconian measures of extreme strangulation that the US has been applying to us for six decades”. Since the time of John F. Kennedy every US administration has coerced or threatened Cuba and Washington has  maintained a comprehensive trade embargo on Cuba since the 1960s.[v] 

Trump has said that without Maduro and the oil supplies from Venezuela, “Cuba looks likely to be ready to fall”. He and Rubio have made it clear that the collapse of Cuba’s Communist government was not only a likely side benefit of Maduro’s ouster, but a goal.

A History of US Intervention

James Monroe served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825. The “Monroe Doctrine” emerged in 1823 as a policy to prevent European powers from meddling in the US sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere. Mexico’s independence from Spain was ultimately gained in 1821, but after Mexico’s war with the US in the late 1840s, it lost Texas, New Mexico and California to the US. Spain had earlier ceded Florida to the US in 1819.

Trump has dubbed the new circumstances in Latin America, the “Donroe Doctrine”. Although he had previously vowed to avoid foreign interventions, he is currently making threats similar to those of past presidents. He repeatedly claims that he wants to make Canada American’s 51^st state and to take Greenland from Denmark.[vi]

The US State Department has said the US would exert greater power across the Western Hemisphere saying, “This is our Hemisphere and President Trump will not allow our security to be threatened”. Rubio issued a similar warning saying, “We are not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operations for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States”.[vii]

Following the adoption of the Monroe Doctrine in the 19^th century, the US declared the Western Hemisphere to be its own backyard, and it played a role in staging dozens of coups and government overthrows in the 20^th century alone. Maduro is just the latest chapter.

Examples of successful US regime changes include - In 1954, Guatemala’s elected president Jacobo Arbenz was ousted by mercenaries trained and funded by Washington. In 1965, citing a “Communist threat” the US sent its military to Santo Domingo to crack down on supporters of Juan Bosch, the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic. In 1973, Salvador Allende was ousted in a US backed coup in Chile. This led to a 17-year long dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet and thousands were imprisoned for political reasons.

In a failed coup attempt, Cuban exiles, backed by the US landed in Cuba in 1961 to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro who had come to power in 1959 following a revolution to overthrow Batista, the US backed dictator. The Bay of Pigs invasion ended in disaster as the Cuban military led by Castro defeated the 1,500 strong force in two days. This pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union and set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.[viii]

The Impact on China

The removal of Maduro is likely to change China’s strategic calculations. China is Iran’s largest customer and, if regime change occurs in Iran, disrupting oil supplies to China, it  will need to seek alternative sources. However, with Venezuela being run by the US there is a prospect of China losing both Iranian and Venezuelan oil. This could be catastrophic for China’s economy as Venezuela and Iran together provide almost one third of Chinese oil imports. Despite that, China did not rescue Iran in 2025 during Operation Midnight Hammer nor did it come to the rescue of Maduro in January 2026.[ix]

For two decades China has been building close ties in Latin America but the US removal of Maduro shifts the playing field for China. It also dents the view promoted  by Xi Jinping that American power was waning and that changes were accelerating in China’s favour. The takedown of Maduro potentially throws a wrench in Xi’s calculations.[x] Nevertheless, it would be unwise to dismiss China or to underestimate its resourcefulness.

AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM – HEAR THE OTHER SIDE

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[i] Asia Times (AT) – Contrasting Chinese and US Power Plays, 12 Jan 26

[ii] Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Trump Accepts Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize – 15 Jan 26

[iii] WSJ, Rodriguez goes from pariah to US pick – 16 Jan 26

[iv] I24 News (Israel) – Venezuelans Celebrate Maduro Auster, 4 Jan 226

[v] BBC – Trump tells Cuba to Make a Deal, 12 Jan 26

[vi] South China Morning Post (SCMP), Monroe Doctrine 2.0, 7 Jan 26

[vii] RT (Russia), US threatens Greater control over Western Hemisphere, 6 Jan 26

[viii] RT Maduro’s Capture follows long list of US Interventions, 4 Jan 26

[ix] Nikkei Asia, Venezuela strike to change China’s Calculations, 5 Jan 26

[x] WSJ Madura Capture threatens China’s Ambitions, 5 Jan 26