By seizing Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, Donald Trump has demonstrated more powerfully than ever his belief in the power of his will, backed by raw US military might. At his behest, the US has Maduro in prison and now “runs” Venezuela.
The US president made the announcement at his Florida club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, in a remarkable press conference that had a major impact on US foreign policy worldwide. Trump said the U.S.’s responsibility in Venezuela was “until we can have a safe, proper and just transition.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he spoke with Venezuelan Vice-President Delsey Rodriguez, who told him “we’ll do whatever you need… She, I think, was very kind, but she had no choice”.
Trump was light on details. He said, “We are not afraid if our boots are on the ground [them]”.
But does he believe he can rule Venezuela by remote control? Will a demonstration that he will back up his words with the military action at Mar-a-Lago that both Marco Rubio and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lauded be enough to reshape Venezuela and browbeat Latin American leaders into compliance?
It was heard that he believed something like that.
The proof is that it won’t be easy or smooth.
The International Crisis Group, a respected think tank, warned in October that Maduro’s fall could lead to violence and instability in Venezuela.
That same month, the New York Times reported that defense and diplomatic officials in the first Trump administration had war-gamed what might happen if Maduro were toppled. Their conclusion was the potential for violent chaos as armed factions competed for power.
Removing and imprisoning Nicolás Maduro is a remarkable assertion of US military power.
The United States assembled a massive armada and achieved its goal without losing a single American life.
Maduro ignored the will of the Venezuelan people by shrugging off his own electoral defeat and, without question, his departure will be welcomed by many of its citizens.
But the impact of US action will extend far beyond Venezuela’s borders.
The mood at the Mar-a-Lago news conference was triumphant, as they celebrated what was undoubtedly a textbook operation by highly professional US forces.
Military operations are only the first step.
America’s record of using force to change regimes over the past 30 years is disastrous.
Political scrutiny makes or breaks the process.
After the US invasion in 2003, Iraq descended into a bloody disaster. After two decades and billions of dollars of nation-building efforts in Afghanistan, the US pulled out in 2021.
No country was behind America.
Yet the specter of past interventions in Latin America – and the threat of others yet to come – have rarely been more hopeful.
Trump used the new moniker of the Donnero Doctrine for an 1823 declaration by President James Monroe warning against interference in America’s sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere.
“The Monroe Doctrine is a great thing, but we’ve done away with it by a lot,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago. “Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never again be questioned.”
He said Colombian President Gustavo Petro should have “watched his ass”.
He later told Fox News that “it had to do something with Mexico”.
Cuba is also undoubtedly on the US agenda, driven by Rubio, whose parents are Cuban-American.
The US has a long record of armed intervention in Latin America.
I was in Haiti in 1994 when President Bill Clinton sent 25,000 troops and two aircraft carriers to enforce regime change. Then, the Haitian regime crumbled without firing a shot. Far from ushering in a better future, the 30 years since then have been a period of almost unbroken suffering for the Haitian people. Haiti is now a failed state dominated by armed gangs.
Donald Trump talked about making Venezuela great again, but not about democracy. He dismissed the idea that Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who will win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, should lead the country.
“I think it’s going to be very difficult for him to be a leader, he doesn’t have the support … he doesn’t have the respect.”
He did not mention Edmundo Gonzalez, who many Venezuelans consider the rightful winner of the 2024 election.
Instead, the United States, after all, is supporting Maduro’s vice-president, Delsey Rodriguez.
There must have been some kind of internal coalition that gave the US military the inside knowledge it needed to remove Maduro, but the regime created by his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, appears to be intact.
It is unlikely that the Venezuelan armed forces, despite any humiliation its generals may feel unable to resist an American attack, will agree to American plans.
The military and civilian supporters of the regime have enriched themselves through a network of corruption that they do not want to lose.
Civilian militias are armed by the regime, and there are other armed groups in Venezuela.
They include criminal networks, as well as Colombian guerrillas who support the Maduro regime in exchange for sanctuary.
The US intervention in Venezuela perfectly concentrates some of the best sources of Trump’s worldview.
He makes no secret of the way he covets the mineral wealth of other countries.
He has already tried to benefit from Ukraine’s natural resources in exchange for military support.
Trump has made no secret of his desire to control Venezuela’s vast mineral reserves, and believes US oil companies have been robbed when the oil industry is nationalized.
“We’re taking massive amounts of wealth out of the ground, and that wealth is going to people in Venezuela, and people outside of Venezuela who were in Venezuela, and it’s also going to the United States as reparations.”
This will deepen fears in Greenland and Denmark that he will look north and south.
The US has not given up its strategic position in the Arctic, as well as its desire to absorb Greenland for its natural resources, whose ice is melting due to global warming.
The Maduro operation is another serious blow to the idea that the best way to run the world is to follow a set of consensuses as enshrined in international law.
The idea was floated before Donald Trump took office, but he has already repeatedly demonstrated in the US and internationally that he believes he can ignore laws he doesn’t like.
European allies, who are desperate not to anger him, including Prime Minister Keir Starr, are wrestling with how to uphold the idea of international law without condemning the fact that the Maduro operation is a clear violation of the UN Charter.
The U.S. justification for its military assisting in the execution of an arrest warrant for a drug lord hiding as president of Venezuela is thin, especially given Trump’s announcement that the U.S. now controls the country and its oil industry.
Hours before Maduro and his wife were arrested, he met with Chinese diplomats at his palace in Caracas.
China has condemned the American move. It said “US hegemonic actions gravely violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
The US must “stop violating the sovereignty and security of other countries”.
Still, China may see a precedent for American action.
It regards Taiwan as a breakaway province and has declared it a national priority to return it to Beijing’s control.
In Washington, that’s certainly the fear of Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said in a statement that China’s leaders and others are watching closely.
“If the United States asserts the right to use military force to attack and capture foreign leaders accused of criminal conduct, what stops China from asserting the same right under the leadership of Taiwan? What stops it? [Russian President] Vladimir Putin claiming the same justification for kidnapping the president of Ukraine? Once this line is crossed, the rules preventing global anarchy begin to collapse, and authoritarian regimes will be the first to exploit it.”
Donald Trump seems to believe that he makes the rules, and just because his orders apply to America doesn’t mean others can expect the same privileges.
But the world of power doesn’t work that way.
His actions at the beginning of 2026 indicate the next 12 months of global turmoil.
