Donald Trump wants to run Venezuela, and dominate the western hemisphere

WHEN ASKED what he sought to achieve with his military campaign against Venezuela, Donald Trump used to offer only vague answers: stopping migrants and criminals from reaching the United States; halting the flow of drugs from Venezuela; and, latterly, reclaiming oil reserves that Venezuela, like many other countries, nationalised decades ago. Rarely, if ever, did he mention regime change, perhaps because he knew that his base was wary of another foreign entanglement after decades of “forever wars” in the Muslim world.

But after snatching Nicolás Maduro, the country’s strongman leader, in a stunning pre-dawn raid by American special forces on January 3rd, Mr Trump set out an extraordinary view of the use of American power in Latin America and what he now calls the “Donroe Doctrine”. The United States would “run” a country that boasts the world’s largest oil reserves, putting boots on the ground if necessary. Its companies would extract “a tremendous amount of wealth” in the name of enriching both Americans and Venezuelans.

Democracy would yield to power if necessary. The opposition leader and Nobel peace prizewinner, María Corina Machado, whose party was defrauded of victory in the presidential elections in 2024, would have no role for the foreseeable future. Instead, he claimed, Mr Maduro’s handpicked vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, would co-operate with the new American overlords—an assertion she denied. Other countries in the region—whether friends like Mexico or foes like Cuba—were put on notice to co-operate with America, or face the consequences. Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, whom Mr Trump accused of “making cocaine” and “sending it into the United States”, would have to “watch his ass”.

Mr Trump said that the United States had for too long forgotten to enforce the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which sought to exclude foreign powers from Latin America. Henceforth, he declared, “American dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again. Won’t happen.”

The operation that led to the capture of Mr Maduro took place 36 years to the day after the arrest of Manuel Noriega, the former dictator of Panama and the target of the last American regime-change intervention in Latin America. Mr Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured before they could flee to a fortified room, and whisked to the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima, pending trial in New York on charges of narco-trafficking and other offences.

The success of the airborne operation, and the focus on enforcing the law against the “fugitive” Mr Maduro, will probably assuage any doubts held by Republican congressmen worried that intervention in Venezuela contravenes the War Powers Act, which seeks to restrict the president’s ability to engage in foreign wars without congressional approval. Democrats said the intervention was illegal.

Left-leaning Latin American governments such as Brazil’s expressed particular alarm at the breach of the UN charter. Those on the right were more supportive. Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, hailed the raid as “excellent news for the free world”. Leaders in other parts of the world, notably in Europe, pleaded for stability.

For Marco Rubio, the first person of Latin American heritage to work as secretary of state, the removal of Mr Maduro has always been part of a grander geopolitical plan: to take out the richest of the leftist regimes in the Caribbean, weakening the likes of Nicaragua and Cuba, which have benefited from cheap Venezuelan oil, and pushing foes such as China and Russia out of the region. When asked whether America planned to cut Cuba off from Venezuelan supplies, Mr Trump answered: “Yes.”

Much of this has until now been only hinted at by officials, and in November’s national security strategy, which vowed to “restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere”. Now with “Operation Absolute Resolve”, it is explicit.

The Trump administration appears hopeful of running Venezuela indirectly, through Ms Rodríguez, rather than by direct occupation, on which it relied unhappily in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr Rubio has spoken to her and, according to Mr Trump, “She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again. Very simple.” The vice-president, however, struck a defiant tone, vowing that Venezuela “will not be anyone’s colony” and said, “What is being done to Venezuela is an atrocity that violates international law,” and demanded the release of Mr Maduro.

Meanwhile, Ms Machado said the elected opposition was “prepared to assert our mandate and take power”, but Mr Trump offered meagre support. “It would be very tough for her to be the leader,” he said, before claiming that she “doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country”, which is not true. Evan Ellis of the Army War College, a military-education institution, said such dismissal of the opposition had many American experts “flabbergasted”. Venezuelans at celebration parties in Miami could not believe it, insisting that Mr Trump had misspoken.

When asked whether it would require American troops to remain present in the country, Mr Trump said that “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to have [them].” But he suggested America’s presence might be limited to securing the oil industry. “We’ll run it properly, we’ll run it professionally, we’ll have the biggest oil companies in the world go in and invest billions and billions of dollars,” he said. Mr Trump placed no time limit on America’s administration of the country, other than saying he would like to have elections held “quickly”.

All this is a remarkable reversal of his administration’s wariness of foreign entanglement. In June Mr Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, but then stayed out of its internal politics—at least until this week, when he threatened further military intervention if the theocratic regime resorted to violence against anti-regime protesters. For Ryan Berg of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Washington, Mr Trump regards the western hemisphere differently: as an extension of “America First”.

It remains unclear, though, how Mr Trump would secure Venezuela if its army and militias choose to resist, as Ms Rodríguez and other surviving leaders have vowed publicly to do. Much depends on the balance of power within what remains of the regime. The swiftness with which American forces exfiltrated Mr Maduro strongly suggests co-operation from someone high up in the regime, presumably in return for some future deal or in pursuit of the $50m reward that the United States had offered for information leading to Mr Maduro’s arrest.

Mr Trump has now shown what his forces can do. Ms Rodríguez and others vying for power in Caracas now know that even if they can beat their rivals and seize control, the threat of overwhelming American force hangs over them. As Mr Trump put it: “All political and military figures in Venezuela should understand that what happened to Maduro can happen to them, and it will happen to them if they aren’t just, fair, even to their people.”

To Venezuelans, he said: “The dictator and terrorist Maduro is finally gone in Venezuela; people are free, they’re free again.” That is open to question, given that his plan appears to be for Venezuela to remain under the day-to-day rule of a senior chavista, with its democratically elected leaders excluded and its wealth controlled by American corporations. ■