\n The emerging White House strategy instead looks more like a regime decapitation that is evolving into coercion of Maduro\u2019s left-behind lieutenants<\/a>. The administration is demanding acquiescence to Trump\u2019s dream of an obedient, MAGAfied Western Hemisphere.\n <\/p>\n \n The focal point of the effort is Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez<\/a>, the interim leader in Caracas since a spectacular US special forces operation spirited Maduro out of his bed and to New York, where he\u2019ll appear in court<\/a> Monday.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump declared Sunday evening that the US was running Venezuela through its pressure on Rodr\u00edguez, now the acting president. \u201cDon\u2019t ask me who\u2019s in charge, because I\u2019ll give you an answer, and it\u2019ll be very controversial,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cIt means we\u2019re in charge. We\u2019re in charge.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The spectacle of an American president claiming to be \u201cin charge\u201d of a sovereign nation around 1,000 miles from the US mainland \u2014 even if it is not strictly true \u2014 shows just how fundamentally Trump has hardened the country\u2019s posture to the rest of the world and reveals his ambition to wield expansive power. And Trump apparently feels emboldened by the Venezuela raid, telling reporters Sunday<\/a> that Colombia is \u201cvery sick\u201d and that \u201cMexico has to get their act together.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Co-opting Maduro\u2019s remnant regime would require less US blood and treasure than failed nation-building efforts in the post-9\/11 wars. But that route brings its own complications and has uncertain odds given the volatile political landscape. And it could create an unexpected and immediate consequence of Maduro\u2019s fall: a counterintuitive US turn away from Venezuela\u2019s democracy movement.\n <\/p>\n \n Hurried efforts in Washington to piece together a viable path forward in Venezuela coincided Sunday with rising fury among Democrats over Trump\u2019s failure to seek congressional authorization for what looked like an act of war. Early signs indicate that Republicans are standing firm<\/a> behind a president they\u2019ve rarely challenged. But it will take time to gauge whether yet another foreign policy adventure will widen splits in Trump\u2019s MAGA movement.\n <\/p>\n \n The Trump administration is now wrestling with the complex aftermath of their boss\u2019s headline-grabbing order of a daring military raid<\/a>. It is walking a fine line in seeking to secure a stable source of authority in Caracas. And it\u2019s looking to avoid the kind of purges of top officials that could bring the government crashing down and lead to civil strife, which could turn Trump\u2019s latest triumph into a political disaster in a midterm election year in the United States.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump created a storm Saturday when he said the US would \u201crun\u201d Venezuela<\/a> ahead of a political transition. He also fueled fears of 21st century imperialism by fixating on getting the US a piece of Venezuela\u2019s vast oil reserves<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared on Sunday news shows to dispel comparisons to Iraq from what he called \u201cclown-hour\u201d analysts.\n <\/p>\n \n He said the US would maintain its \u201cquarantine\u201d oil embargo to force Venezuela\u2019s remaining leaders to obey Trump\u2019s orders. The freshly demonstrated might of the US military is also supposed to concentrate minds in the Venezuelan capital.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe want drug trafficking to stop. We want no more gang members to come our way. We don\u2019t want to see the Iranian and, by the way, Cuban presence in the past,\u201d Rubio said on CBS\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe want the oil industry in that country not to go to the benefit of pirates and adversaries of the United States, but for the benefit of the people. \u2026 We insist on seeing that happen,\u201d Rubio said.\n <\/p>\n \n Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, a key Trump ally, summed up the thrust of the strategy on CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union.\u201d He told Dana Bash, \u201cWhen the president said that the United States is going to be running Venezuela, it means that the new leaders of Venezuela need to meet our demands.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In short, Trump\u2019s plan for Venezuela is to coerce its acting president to become a vessel for his power inside her own country. As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told CBS News on Saturday, \u201cPresident Trump sets the terms. \u2026 (He) has shown American leadership and he will be able to dictate where we go next.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The spectacular special forces smash-and-grab raid that captured Maduro and his wife looks in the immediate aftermath like one of the more successful CIA and US military attempts to shape the geopolitics of America\u2019s backyard \u2014 a preoccupation of presidents for more than 200 years.\n <\/p>\n \n If Trump succeeds after years of Washington neglecting Latin America, he may turn an enemy into a pliant state and advance his effort to shape the Western Hemisphere into a region of pro-US powers. He might ease deprivation in the Venezuelan economy by getting oil revenues flowing; disrupt drug cartels; and drive out Russian and Chinese influences that threaten US national security.\n <\/p>\n \n Washington wants a partner in Caracas to do the deals at which Maduro balked. \u201cWe just could not work with him. He is not a person that had ever kept any of the deals he made,\u201d Rubio told CBS.\n <\/p>\n \n The assumption that Rodr\u00edguez or another regime survivor will help the US is fine in theory. Outsiders are not privy to conversations and behind-the-scenes work from American diplomats and intelligence agencies with regime figures. Sources told CNN that Rodr\u00edguez had been identified as potentially providing more stable governance than Maduro.\n <\/p>\n \n Yet the vice president has been publicly scathing about Maduro\u2019s ouster, and other key figures have vowed to stand behind the regime. Rodr\u00edguez may need to avoid any public show of betrayal to keep herself safe in Venezuela. But after portraying her as cooperative on Saturday, Trump issued a dark threat on Sunday. \u201cIf she doesn\u2019t do what\u2019s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,\u201d he told The Atlantic.\n <\/p>\n \n On Sunday evening, Rodr\u00edguez issued a more conciliatory statement offering an \u201cagenda of cooperation\u201d with the US.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump and several key members of his administration have warned that if Venezuelan officials don\u2019t play ball, they could court another, bigger US attack. But their threats raise a key question: Can Washington really force Venezuelan leaders to comply through the leverage of an offshore naval armada, special forces raids, intelligence operations or the threat of air attacks?\n <\/p>\n \n Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to NATO, told CNN on Sunday that it was impossible for the Trump administration to \u201crun\u201d Venezuela without committing the resources needed to properly govern it.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThis disconnect between the means that we have deployed and the goals that we have set is going to come and bite us in the back,\u201d Daalder said.\n <\/p>\n \n It already looks like the US risks falling yet again into one of the recurring traps of its modern foreign policy \u2014 creating plans that seem sound in Washington but that dissolve on contact with the reality of a foreign nation.\n <\/p>\n \n Rodr\u00edguez might seem like a stabilizing force to US officials. As a former diplomat, she has good contacts abroad and in the oil industry.\n <\/p>\n \n But she\u2019s long been a key face of the Maduro regime and that of his predecessor Hugo Ch\u00e1vez. There\u2019s been no sign that she\u2019s renounced the far-left ideology of the revolution. And Rodr\u00edguez herself may have limited room for maneuver\u200b or cooperation with the US in the snake pit of competing currents and strongmen that characterize the inner sanctums of the regime in Caracas.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cShe doesn\u2019t have the support among the various armed actors,\u201d Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, a geopolitical risk consultant, told CNN\u2019s Boris Sanchez on Sunday. \u201cShe\u2019s going to have to straddle keeping the people who do have good contacts there, keeping them balanced with whatever instructions she is supposedly getting from DC.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The acting president\u2019s emerging importance to the administration means she risks becoming a fragile platform for Trump\u2019s entire gamble in Venezuela.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cDelcy Rodr\u00edguez is a very powerful figure in her own right, handpicked by Maduro,\u201d Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said on \u201cState of the Union.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThere\u2019s really no explanation for how American interests are changed at all with a Rodr\u00edguez administration that right now seems to be intent on carrying through and carrying forward the policies of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro,\u201d Murphy said.\n <\/p>\n \n Even Cotton will wait and see. \u201cI don\u2019t think that we can count on Delcy Rodr\u00edguez to be friendly to the United States until she proves it,\u201d he told CNN\u2019s Bash.\n <\/p>\n \n Perhaps the most shocking moment in Trump\u2019s Saturday news conference at Mar-a-Lago was the president\u2019s dismissal of Mar\u00eda Corina Machado. The Nobel Peace laureate is credited with masterminding the campaign of opposition candidate Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez, who is regarded as the winner of last year\u2019s election \u2014 a result Maduro refused to recognize.\n <\/p>\n \n The US government has consistently said that Gonz\u00e1lez is the rightful president of Venezuela. Many people assumed that any US ouster of Maduro would swiftly lead to Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s installation as president.\n <\/p>\n \n But Trump said Machado \u201cdoesn\u2019t have the support within or the respect within the country. She\u2019s a very nice woman, but she doesn\u2019t have the respect.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The administration\u2019s shift away from the democratic movement and engagement with regime remnants is a blow to Venezuelans hoping their long political torment would end.\n <\/p>\n \n Rubio, who has long supported Machado and democratic movements across Latin America, tried to square a politically uncomfortable circle. \u201cThere has to be a little realism here,\u201d he told CBS.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThey\u2019ve had this regime \u2026 in place for 15 or 16 years and everyone\u2019s asking why 24 hours after Nicol\u00e1s Maduro was arrested there isn\u2019t an election scheduled for tomorrow. That\u2019s absurd,\u201d Rubio said.\n <\/p>\n \n Rubio argued that \u201cthese things take time\u201d and that while he hoped to see Venezuela transition to a democracy, US national interests were the immediate concern.\n <\/p>\n \n This Trump administration pragmatism is fueling anger on Capitol Hill.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMy God, we\u2019re the United States of America, right?\u201d Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on \u201cState of the Union.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe care \u2014 or at least we used to care \u2014 about democratic norms. We used to care about the idea that the people ought to have a little something to say about who governs them,\u201d Himes said.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump is clearly rushing for Venezuelan oil \u2014 and he wants to dominate the Western Hemisphere. But in courting Maduro\u2019s regime remnants, the US risks becoming complicit in the repression imposed by a government it has long reviled.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump\u2019s defenders had it half right. The US overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro isn\u2019t an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-674840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115841052489629586","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/gettyimages-2254649092-20260105023144757.jpg\")
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