The capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro left many questioning whether the U.S. intervention represents a liberation or an imperialistic military act. Hopes about a democratic transition, however, are fading as the political strategy in Washington appears to neglect the prospects of regime change.
Tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela have been rising for months before Maduro’s capture, which officials have named “Operation Absolute Resolve.” The U.S. military had attacked dozens of vessels off the coast of Venezuela, killing at least 120 people since early September. Just a week before the raid in Caracas, the CIA carried out a drone strike on a port facility. President Donald Trump called the ongoing military action as a strike against Venezuela’s drug trafficking infrastructure.
In the culmination of political escalations, Maduro and his wife were captured by U.S. forces on Jan. 3 and were brought to trial on a cocaine-trafficking conspiracy charge in New York. Maduro pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan federal court, claiming that he was “kidnapped” and still remained the president of Venezuela, which is now run by his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez.
Some Venezuelans celebrated the operation as an end to Maduro’s illegitimate power grab, which plunged the country into a political crisis in 2013. For many, the abrupt ending of Maduro’s rule only created a new phase of uncertainty about future governance.
“Intervention through extortion or through pressure…that very dramatically shifts the landscape of political opportunities, risks and constraints of political actors, and the force of the daily lives of Venezuelans themselves,” said Alejandro Velasco, associate professor in the Gallatin School and Department of History at New York University and Executive Editor of the NACLA Report on the Americas, at a briefing held by American Community Media.
A source of tension for many Venezuelans is their support for ousting Maduro but opposing the manner in which it was done, which was an armed assault on Venezuelan territory, Velasco said. The operation resulted in the death of 100 individuals, many of them security guards and intelligence officials, Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said after the attack.
Some Venezuelans also expressed disappointment that the U.S. intervention only led to the fall of Maduro, but not the Maduro government, especially with the entire state apparatus left intact. Others worry that the intervention can parlay into other attacks, Velasco said.
“Anxiety is a pretty broad, general, pervasive feeling. The other one is confusion,” he said. “As dramatic as the events on Saturday were, functionally nothing really has changed in terms of the players who are in power, with of course the major and significant exception being Maduro.”
Operation Absolute Resolve was widely criticized by foreign policy experts as a clear violation of international law. The Trump Administration failed to seek authorization from Congress for its use of offensive force, leading Democratic lawmakers to call the action unconstitutional.
“It’s quite clear that there’s no legal way to justify this operation,” said geopolitical lawyer Mariano de Alba. “There is a set of rules that were agreed after the Second World War in 1945, established very clearly in the U.N. Charter. They establish not only a provision on the use of force but also a prohibition on the threat of the use of force, which is something that we have seen.”
Exceptions to the prohibition on force include an authorization from the U.N. Security Council or an exercise of a legitimate right of self-defense. Failing to meet these criteria of international law makes the operation obviously illegal, he said.
“I think it’s not a surprise to anyone that the U.S. has, historically after World War II, taken more or less, depending on who is in charge in the U.S. government, a sort of cherry-picking approach to compliance with international law,” de Alba said. “It has tried to comply with international law, but in some instances that has been a limit that the U.S. doesn’t want to respect.”
The violation of state sovereignty through a unilateral use of force may have set a dangerous precedent for future military action. The possibility of a renewed opportunity for Venezuelan democracy appears limited, as self-interest in the country’s oil is more likely a driving factor of the intervention. Velasco said Trump doesn’t want a democratic Venezuela, he wants a useful Venezuela.
“It seems on the part of the U.S. Administration that, for them, democracy is not a secondary, not a tertiary, who knows how far down the list, concern, aim or an aspiration for this particular moment in Venezuela,” Velasco said. “The center really does seem to be oil, but more broadly, there is a larger geopolitical dimension to this, which is not just hegemony but really domination of the region vis-à-vis its resources.”
The Trump Administration has displayed an overwhelmingly U.S-centric foreign policy to advance its “America First” agenda, with a series of unprecedented global threats to state sovereignty around the world, including in Greenland and Canada.
“We’re not just seeing Venezuela and what’s happening in Venezuela, but really Venezuela as an instrumental piece in what seems to be emerging as a much larger geopolitical move on the part of the United States,” Velasco said. “The prospect for a democratic transition seems not to be very much part of the agenda.”
Venezuela produces 900,000 barrels of oil per day, which is less than 1% of the global share. Trump said the oil industry will invest at least $100 billion to rebuild Venezuela’s energy sector, but executives have raised doubts. ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods called it “uninvestable” and said legal and commercial frameworks are needed to even understand possible returns.
“In order to achieve President Trump’s objective of rebuilding Venezuela’s oil sector…you need new laws and a new economic framework, essentially institutional and structural changes that can only be done by a democratically elected government,” said Roxanna Vigil, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Trump has shown little interest in reforming the Venezuelan government and has even pushed down calls for María Corina Machado to be the country’s next leader, claiming she does not have the respect of her country. Trump instead announced that he expected the United States to run Venezuela and that “only time will tell” when it comes to how long U.S. oversight will last.
Broad U.S. influence over a sovereign country, however, raises concerns about a resurgence in American hegemony, which can have rippling consequences for global order. U.S. control is also unlikely to create the change that so many Venezuelans hope for, essentially eroding their capacity of self-government.
“I think the most important thing that the U.S. government should do to support that outcome [democratic transition] is to stop speaking as though it owns Venezuela,” Vigil said. “…The very first thing that the U.S. has to do is stop suggesting that it runs Venezuela, that it’s going to seize all of Venezuela’s oil, that it’s going to essentially oversee Venezuela, either directly or indirectly through threat of force.”
Trump’s domestic policy actions themselves have been argued to bear little resemblance to democratic principles. Undermining the United States’ own role as a democratic stronghold does not signal an administration committed to pursuing democratic renewal abroad.
“Is it surprising that Donald Trump doesn’t care about democracy? I’m not surprised by that,” Velasco said. “…Am I surprised that his primary interest is material? Am I surprised that it’s public interest? No, I think what is surprising is the explicitness and the kind of brazenness with which this is being articulated.”
