America unbridled
Donald Trump asserts control over Venezuela—and all the Americas
But the president’s claim of dominance over the western hemisphere may backfire
The action, in the form of American forces’ lightning raid to capture Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s strongman president, was over days ago.
Yet Caracas, the capital, remains braced for upheaval.
Tanks and armoured vehicles guard the road from the main airport to the city.
Soldiers in ski masks sit atop them, waiting for further incursions that will probably never take place.
Gangs of colectivos, armed pro-regime vigilantes on motorbikes, roam the streets or set up roadblocks, searching cars and hassling drivers.
The rumour is that they were dispatched by Diosdado Cabello, the menacing interior minister, as a message to the population that there is no power vacuum, the regime’s decapitation notwithstanding.
There is no question that Mr Maduro’s henchmen are digging in.
Just two days after the raid, on January 5th, Delcy Rodríguez, the vice-president, was sworn in as acting president.
The next day she declared seven days of mourning for the 60-odd people American forces killed in the raid, during which many shops and offices will remain closed.
That, cynics assume, is to help her consolidate control and ward off potential unrest.
America’s government, meanwhile, is signalling that events are unfolding exactly as planned.
President Donald Trump has said he is now running Venezuela, in that Ms Rodríguez and her colleagues will do as they are told or suffer a worse fate than Mr Maduro.
He has declared himself ready to order more air strikes or even “boots on the ground” if necessary.
Marco Rubio, America’s secretary of state, says the current blockade of Venezuela’s oil exports will be maintained as an instrument of coercion.
This week America seized two tankers it accused of violating its embargo.
Ms Rodríguez still talks defiantly at times of resisting colonialism, but has also issued an emollient call for America and Venezuela to work together on “a co-operation agenda”.
Bolivarian ambiguity
What this peculiar stasis portends for Venezuela and the world, however, is far from clear.
Mr Trump says he has updated the Monroe Doctrine, the effort by the United States in the 19th century to exclude European powers from the Americas, into the “Donroe doctrine”, by which he appears to mean that America has a right to intervene in the countries of the western hemisphere however it sees fit.
He has put multiple countries in the region on notice that they can expect similar treatment to Venezuela if they do not mend their ways.
Yet it is not clear that Mr Trump will really be able to bend Venezuela to his will, much less the Americas as a whole.
Many in Caracas say they are still in shock after a night that felt like a war film.
In the early hours of January 3rd more than 150 American aircraft from 20 different bases swooped over the city, including low-flying helicopters carrying a raiding party of special forces.
These battled and killed dozens of Mr Maduro’s Cuban bodyguards before nabbing the man himself as he tried to enter an armoured safe room.
In less than three hours the president and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured and whisked to an American warship waiting offshore.
Mr Trump, who ordered the raid and watched it by video link from Mar-a-Lago, his country club in Florida, marvelled at “the speed, the violence”.
The abducted couple are now in New York, awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges.
Venezuelans have long dreamed of the moment when Mr Maduro, president since 2013, would finally leave the country he has done so much to impoverish.
He presided, after all, over a repressive kleptocracy held in place by arbitrary arrest, torture and extra-judicial killing.
Under his watch GDP contracted by a horrifying 70%.
Oil production, the mainstay of the economy, fell almost as far.
Fully a quarter of the population had left the country in despair, in search of a better life elsewhere.
Mocked-up images of Mr Maduro in handcuffs, bundled about by American agents, had circulated online for years.
That fantasy has become reality, yet without the expected jubilation.
“We have this burning urge to celebrate that Maduro’s gone, but now that’s been put on hold,” laments Arturo, a taxi-driver.
As if to underline the disappointment, shelves are empty in many supermarkets, the result in part of panic-buying.
The local currency, the bolívar, has lost 20% of its already minimal value since the raid.
Some locals hope that Mr Trump will finish the job and topple the remnants of the regime.
“Now there is not just a threat; there’s a precedent,” enthuses Carla, as she shops for essentials.
Others are resigned to a more dismal fate.
“There are some things we, as individuals, can control.
But the politics of this country, I’ve decided, is not one of them,” sighs Ernesto, who is queuing for bread.
Chavista chutzpah
On the face of things, Ms Rodríguez appears relatively secure.
Mr Trump seems happy with her ascension, at any rate, declaring her relationship with Mr Rubio “very strong”.
She also appears to have the support of both Mr Cabello and Vladimir Padrino, the powerful defence minister.
Despite rumours that she may have betrayed Mr Maduro in some way, even Mr Maduro’s son, a congressman, has proclaimed, “Delcy, you have my support…the nation is in good hands.”
Yet unity among factions is much easier to feign than to sustain.
A potentially violent power struggle could yet consume the regime.
Venezuela’s oil and other resources are a tempting prize for any would-be leader.
Mr Cabello, Mr Padrino or an ambitious general might try to persuade Mr Trump to change horses or might simply gamble on a coup.
The air of fragility around the government was underscored late on January 5th when shots rang out around Miraflores, the presidential palace in Caracas, prompting speculation that a putsch was under way.
In fact the shooting seems to have come from a jumpy security unit firing at one of its own drones.
For now, at least, one faction that seems to present Ms Rodríguez little threat is the democratic opposition.
Mr Trump has dismissed an enormously popular critic of the regime, María Corina Machado, who won the Nobel peace prize last year, as “a very nice woman” who does not command sufficient respect within Venezuela to run the country.
He has not even bothered to mention Edmundo González, a surrogate of hers who is widely believed to have been the true victor of the most recent presidential election, in 2024, which Mr Maduro brazenly stole.
The decision to sideline the opposition and embrace the old regime may stem from a desire to avoid the sort of chaos that engulfed Iraq after America toppled its government in 2003, disbanding the army and the ruling Baath Party.
It may also reflect the failure of a previous Venezuelan opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, to capitalise on Mr Trump’s support during his first administration.
(Another theory holds that Mr Trump is motivated by pique that Ms Machado beat him to the Nobel prize.)
A recent CIA briefing is said to have concluded that Ms Rodríguez or other figures from the regime were best placed to run an interim government.
Ms Rodríguez’s hold on power will presumably depend in part on how difficult Mr Trump makes life for her.
His chief focus appears to be Venezuela’s oil industry.
On January 7th he announced a deal with the Venezuelan authorities whereby America would market all Venezuelan oil “indefinitely”.
The proceeds “will be disbursed for the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people at the discretion of the US government”, the White House stated.
Mr Trump added that all the goods purchased for Venezuela in this way would be American.
PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil firm, confirmed that it was in talks with America on oil sales.
Mr Trump says he wants Venezuela’s oil production to expand dramatically.
He has promised big investments by American oil companies to unlock more of Venezuela’s reserves, which are the world’s biggest if vast, viscous and largely untapped tarry deposits are taken into account.
Yet persuading American firms to invest lavishly in so unstable a country will be difficult, and Venezuela’s rickety infrastructure will not be easy to repair.
Elliott Abrams, Mr Trump’s former envoy to Venezuela, argues that only a transition to democracy can provide the stability required to attract the necessary investment.
At any rate, Ms Rodríguez will be upsetting powerful factions within the regime and running roughshod over nationalist sentiment if she does indeed put Venezuela’s oil industry in Mr Trump’s hands.
Meanwhile, devoting too much time and attention to faraway Venezuela could be politically perilous for Mr Trump.
Republicans have applauded the raid but many seem nervous.
The president famously campaigned against “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan—the origin of his “America First” slogan.
Yet Republicans must now defend Mr Trump’s neo-imperial adventures.
Democrats are gleefully warning of the danger of foreign quagmires and asking whether running a second country might distract Mr Trump from his day job.
Mr Trump brushes off such criticism: “MAGA loves what I’m doing.
MAGA loves everything I do.”
Yet public opinion is divided.
Roughly equal proportions—between 30% and 40% of respondents, depending on the poll—say they support or oppose the raid on Caracas, depending on partisan affiliation.
A majority is worried that America could get drawn in too deeply, according to a survey for Reuters/IPSOS.
That suggests that voters could turn hostile if America begins to look bogged down or if troops are deployed.
The dauntless Mr Trump is nonetheless itching to embark on more foreign escapades, not fewer (see map).
When asked about whether the United States should carry out a military operation in Colombia, he responded, “Sounds good to me.”
He asserted that “the cartels are running Mexico” and “we’re going to have to do something”.
Cuba appears “ready to fall” and “We do need Greenland, absolutely.”
In the aftermath of the raid, Latin America is divided.
America’s allies in Argentina, Bolivia, El Salvador, Panama and Paraguay celebrated news of Mr Maduro’s ousting.
Yet the three biggest countries in the region, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, all run by left-wing leaders, condemned Mr Trump’s actions.
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, said the events “cross an unacceptable line”.
“Unilateral action and invasion”, said Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, “don’t lead to peace or development.”
Many of these governments must be wondering if they could be next.
“The vision now is that Latin America is a shooting-gallery and the United States can target whomever it pleases,” says Benjamin Gedan, formerly the director for South America in the Obama administration’s National Security Council.
Colombia has long been in Mr Trump’s sights.
Although it has been the United States’s closest ally in the region for decades, Mr Trump and its president, Gustavo Petro, frequently clash.
The two men have sparred on social media over Israel’s war in Gaza, Mr Trump’s migration policy and attacks on allegedly drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean, which have killed Colombians.
After Mr Maduro’s removal Mr Petro reacted with indignation.
He compared the raid in Caracas to the Nazi bombing of Guernica during the Spanish civil war, warned that the United States had “pissed blood on the sacred sovereignty” of Latin America and called on the Venezuelan people to “take to the streets”.
Mr Trump shot back that Mr Petro better “watch his ass”.
Trump thump
One possibility is that Mr Trump may launch air strikes on gang-run drug laboratories inside Colombia.
Last year he revoked Mr Petro’s visa for the United States and slapped sanctions on him on drug-related grounds.
On January 4th he said that Colombia was run by “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States”.
In Mr Petro’s circle “there is a lot of paranoia” about what Mr Trump might do, says a Colombian official.
Perhaps for this reason on January 7th Mr Petro called him “to explain the situation of drugs and other disagreements that we have had”, as Mr Trump put it in a post on social media.
“ I appreciated his call and tone,” he declared.
Mr Trump’s conciliatory shift may reflect a concern that, if he were to conduct air strikes on Colombian drug gangs, he might increase the chance that a leftist wins the presidential election in May (the constitution limits Mr Petro to a single term, which ends in August).
Yet the relationship between the two leaders could easily veer into hostility once more.
And even if there is no military intervention in Colombia, the country will be hit by the fallout from its neighbour.
It already hosts almost 3m Venezuelan migrants, far more than anywhere else.
If Venezuela spirals into chaos, hundreds of thousands more people, and possibly violence, could spill over the border.
In Mexico City officials appear relaxed about the extent to which Mr Trump’s new posture changes the risks of a strike on their own territory.
Ms Sheinbaum has fostered close relations with Mr Trump and has granted just about his every wish.
She has ramped up action against drug gangs, tightened border enforcement, extradited kingpins to the United States and slapped tariffs on China.
The cost of unilaterally striking Mexico, America’s largest trading partner, would be much higher than that of attacking Colombia.
The two countries share a gigantic land border and co-operate across multiple areas besides security.
This year they are due to co-host the football World Cup, along with Canada; the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), their free-trade pact, is also up for review.
As long as Ms Sheinbaum continues to do almost everything Mr Trump asks of her, thinks Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister, unilateral action remains unlikely.
The big question is whether that might include allowing the Americans to operate more freely within Mexico.
It is already allowing surveillance drones to fly over its territory.
Mr Trump may push Ms Sheinbaum harder to go after Mexican politicians suspected of colluding with drug traffickers, especially those within her own party, Morena.
“Sheinbaum is between a rock and a hard place,” says Martha Bárcena, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States.
“If she goes after corrupt politicians, she can increase her legitimacy and bargaining power with the US.
But it would probably mean the end of Morena.” Ms Sheinbaum must also pacify the hard core of party cadres who are diehard leftists and admired Mr Maduro.
A rare foray back into public life by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Ms Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor, to condemn the operation, shows how delicate that task will be.
America may also beset Mexico about its relationship with Cuba.
In recent years it has helped to prop up the Cuban regime by sending it subsidised petrol (as Venezuela has also done).
Between May and August 2025, reckons MCCI, an NGO, Mexico sent more than $3bn-worth of cheap fuel to Cuba, triple the amount sent under the administration of Mr López Obrador, despite the deteriorating finances of Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned oil firm.
In 2024 Mexico’s government also hired more than 3,000 Cuban doctors.
Cuba is the most fragile of the states Mr Trump has threatened since the attack on Caracas.
If the United States induces both Mexico and Venezuela to cut off aid, Cuba will be in a truly dire predicament.
Its economy is already struggling, partly owing to a gradual reduction in oil shipments from Venezuela that began long before Mr Maduro’s ousting.
Fuel shortages and power cuts have undermined all manner of industries, from agriculture to tourism.
Mr Trump and Mr Rubio (who is a second-generation Cuban immigrant) have implied that the regime is so weak it is likely to collapse without any intervention from America.
If so, Mr Trump could claim a huge foreign-policy success stemming from his actions in Venezuela.
It is possible that the attack on Caracas sets off a cascade of positive developments throughout the Americas.
A stable, democratic, prosperous Venezuela (or Cuba, for that matter) would be a great boon, improving the lives of ordinary Venezuelans, curbing destabilising flows of migrants or perhaps even luring some home and spurring regional economic growth.
A botched intervention, in contrast, could have negative reverberations.
Mr Trump’s overt turn towards a coercive and violent foreign policy could push more of his neighbours towards China (even if China itself now feels more cautious about engaging in Latin America).
America’s close allies, meanwhile, are reeling from Mr Trump’s sudden renewal of his talk about annexing Greenland, a partially autonomous territory of a fellow NATO member, Denmark, where America already has a military base.
Mr Trump’s cheerleaders consider the raid on Caracas, and the subsequent hectoring of other countries in the region, as a welcome moment when America finally gained the courage to stand up for its own interests.
“We’re a superpower.
And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower,” Stephen Miller, Mr Trump’s deputy chief of staff, told CNN, a news network, this week.
Yet the raid may equally be remembered as an attempt to assert American authority in the region and the world that soon lost momentum, undermining America’s credibility.
America’s best interests, in other words, may be subtler than Mr Trump thinks.
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