Details
It sounded like brazen colonial rhetoric: at his press conference on Saturday, 4 January, Donald Trump announced that the US plans to, at least for now, “run” Venezuela. The night before, US forces had attacked several military facilities and airports in the country, including the Fuerte Tiuna military base and the La Carlota military airport in Caracas, without a UN mandate or authorization from the US Congress. Special forces managed to overpower Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, apparently in their sleep, and fly them out of Caracas in helicopters. The two are now imprisoned in New York, where they are to be tried for “narcoterrorism” and other crimes.
Tobias Lambert is a freelance author, editor, and translator with a focus on Latin America and Venezuela in particular.
The US attacks followed an unprecedented escalation in recent months. Since August, the US has dispatched thousands of troops to the southern Caribbean under the guise of fighting drugs. Disregarding international law, US forces have sunk more than 30 alleged “drug boats” in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, killing over 100 people. The US government described the unknown boat occupants as “narcoterrorists” and compared drug cartels to Al Qaeda.
Yet Venezuela is a comparatively minor transit country for cocaine from Colombia. As a further justification for the military presence, Trump repeatedly emphasized that, along with the drugs, Venezuela was purposefully directing criminal migrants to the US. In December, US forces also captured two Venezuelan oil tankers, further ratcheting up the pressure. Yet the hoped-for removal of Maduro by the Venezuelan military once again failed to materialize.
“We’re In Charge”
What exactly Trump meant by “running the country” remains largely unclear. After all, the US did not occupy Venezuela and the Chavista government remains in office without Maduro for the time being. Apparently Trump is counting on Maduro’s successor Delcy Rodríguez to follow the US line. The US President said his government was in contact with her. If she failed to cooperate, he threatened further violence. “We are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so”, Trump said. A day later he followed up: “If she doesn't do what's right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
Rodríguez has been a member of the ruling inner circle in Venezuela for years, widely considered an ally of Maduro and a pragmatist on economic issues. In recent years, for example, she has built up relations with the private sector. In the summer of 2021, she even appeared as vice president at the annual meeting of the Fedecámaras business association, which tried to overthrow Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez in 2002. Her brother Jorge Rodríguez heads the Venezuelan parliament; the secret police tortured their father of the same name to death in 1976 for his socialist activism.
The US President made it clear that he wanted to open the Venezuelan oil industry to US companies.
Also on 4 January, Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) declared that Delcy Rodríguez would initially take over the reins of government on an “acting” basis. In doing so, the TSJ avoided declaring an “absolute” absence of the president, according to which Rodríguez would have to call new elections within 30 days in line with the constitution. The military immediately recognized the new president.
It is still unclear to what extent there was some kind of internal agreement with the US to overthrow Maduro while leaving the current ruling circle in power. Delcy Rodríguez herself officially initially appeared combative. “There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro”, she said on Saturday. Venezuela will “never again be anyone’s colony”. This means that the domestic debate remains anti-imperialist, as usual. On Sunday, she announced that she wanted to talk to the US about a “agenda of cooperation”. But if she, those around her, and the military meet all US demands, the government could lose the last remnants of its Chavista base and soon be confronted with protests. Indeed, there is little room to counter Trump in the face of military threats.
The US Wants Oil and Power
The US President also made it clear at the press conference that he wanted to open the Venezuelan oil industry to US companies. In recent weeks, he has repeatedly stated that the United States has a right to Venezuelan oil because it built the South American country’s oil industry. In order to get the oil, Trump could possibly have struck a deal with Maduro. According to the New York Times, last summer the Venezuelans promised the US extensive access to oil and other raw materials in order to avoid a military conflict. However, under the influence of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump decided to embark on a confrontation course with the government in Caracas.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado, on the other hand, had been promising US companies gigantic profits for months if they invested in Venezuela after a change of government. The current Nobel Peace Prize winner expressly supported Trump’s military threats. That the US President is now apparently planning without her and initially relying on Delcy Rodríguez as interim president completely sidelines Venezuela’s right-wing opposition. After Machado was not allowed to contest the presidential election in June 2024, her replacement candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won against Maduro according to all available evidence. The National Electoral Council (CNE) did not publish an official, verifiable final result. Marco Rubio emphasized in an interview on Sunday that Machado was a “fantastic opposition leader”, but the majority of her movement was no longer in the country. Therefore, the US would now negotiate with Delcy Rodríguez, a figure with whom one could “work”, unlike Maduro.
Mixed Responses
As expected, the politically divided continent has not responded to the US aggression in a uniform manner. Left-wing governments in particular such as those in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil condemned the attacks. China and Russia also expressed opposition. At the same time, they are likely to cite the US approach in their own self-defined sphere of influence, i.e. Taiwan and the former Soviet republics.
Venezuelan human rights organizations also condemned the US attack and the kidnapping of Maduro and Flores. Provea, the country’s oldest human rights organization, pointed out that “unilateral actions, especially in the military sphere, only serve to undermine the multilateral peace and security system”. The crisis in Venezuela must be resolved “civilly and democratically”, with a focus on the victims of human rights violations.
These actions are largely directed against China, which has been able to expand its influence in Latin America significantly through trade relations and infrastructure projects over the past 25 years.
The left-wing human rights collective Surgentes spoke of a “colonial act” in a communiqué. Tolerating the attack means legitimizing an international order based on the law of the strongest. “Neither the United States, nor the de facto government, nor the pro-imperialist opposition represent the interests or rights of the Venezuelan people”, the organization explained, proposing a 90-day interim government. This time should be used to conclude a broad agreement with the participation of all political forces and numerous organizations to restore democracy, national sovereignty, and human rights. The existing parliament should appoint a new, credible electoral council and pass an amnesty law for political prisoners. New elections would then take place in which all political forces are allowed to take part with political guarantees.
It’s Not Just About Venezuela
According to its new National Security Strategy published at the beginning of December, the US is striving for nothing less than the restoration of political dominance in its immediate neighbourhood (“hemisphere”) — secured not least by military means. The security strategy also emphasizes the goal of developing Latin America’s “strategic raw materials” together with regional allies, meaning it is also vital for the US to keep international competitors out of the hemisphere.
The new security strategy formulates what the Trump administration has been doing for months: the US wants to push the entire region back into its traditional role as the United States’ “backyard” in accordance with the old Monroe Doctrine. In 1823, then US President James Monroe told Congress that European powers should not interfere in the affairs of the newly emerging Latin American states. Over the years, the corresponding doctrine developed into a central pillar of US foreign policy to control the region and dispose of unwanted governments. Since the end of the Cold War, open interference in Latin America seemed to become less central to US strategy. But in the current document, this new direction is openly referred to as the “Trump addition” to the Monroe Doctrine.
These actions are largely directed against China, which has been able to expand its influence in Latin America significantly through trade relations and infrastructure projects over the past 25 years. But Trump is obviously also concerned with preventing any attempts at sovereign national policies in Latin America and asserting his interests through local allies such as Presidents Nayib Bukele in El Salvador or Javier Milei in Argentina. To achieve this, Trump relies on a mixture of threats and incentives and actively interferes in election campaigns through loans and promises of support. Following the recent defeats of the left-wing government in Bolivia, Honduras, and Chile, presidential elections are coming up this year in Colombia and Brazil, among others. It is not certain that the US will restrict itself to threats against the other countries governed by the Left. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who comes from a Cuban exile family, is also aiming for a change of government in Cuba as one of his main goals.
In Trump’s second term, the US is once again openly imperialist in Latin America and threatening to make Venezuela a protectorate. This “right of the strongest” is extremely dangerous for the future of Latin America.
Translated by Loren Balhorn.
