After Maduro’s Capture: What the U.S. Offensive in Venezuela Means for Latin America

Originally published by WIRED en Español, adapted for English

Following the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela will remain under United States control, former U.S. President Donald Trump announced during a press briefing at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The announcement came after U.S. military forces launched an offensive against multiple Venezuelan military targets early Saturday, an operation that culminated in Maduro being taken into custody.

During the briefing, Trump emphasized his administration would not permit any individual “who does not have the best interests of the Venezuelan people at heart” to seize control of the nation. “We’ve put up with that for decades. We are not going to let it continue,” he stated, adding that the U.S. will administer Venezuela until “a safe, proper, and fair transition can be carried out.” Trump also confirmed that interim oversight of the country will fall to senior U.S. administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Parallel to the U.S. announcement, María Corina Machado — the leading opposition figure to both Maduro and former president Hugo Chávez, and a recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate — released her own statement calling for opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia to immediately assume the Venezuelan presidency.

Her statement read: “This moment belongs to the Venezuelan people. To all of us who risked everything for democracy on July 28, 2024, the date of our last presidential election. To all of us who elected Edmundo González Urrutia as Venezuela’s legitimate president, who must immediately step into his constitutional mandate and be recognized as Commander-in-Chief of the National Armed Forces by every officer and soldier serving in its ranks. Today, we are ready to uphold our mandate and take power.”

González Urrutia later shared Machado’s statement publicly, and issued a direct appeal to the Venezuelan people: “Venezuelans, these are decisive hours. Rest assured that we are fully prepared to launch the great work of rebuilding our nation.”

Trump’s vision for Venezuela’s future differs sharply from the opposition’s. During Saturday’s briefing, he outlined plans for the U.S. to rebuild Venezuela’s crippled oil infrastructure and reclaim what he called oil “stolen” from the United States decades ago.

“Venezuela seized American oil, American assets, and American energy platforms unilaterally and sold them off, costing our country billions and billions of dollars,” Trump asserted. “We will bring in our large, world-leading U.S. oil companies, they will invest billions of dollars, repair the badly broken infrastructure, and then we will start generating revenue for the United States.”

Trump’s comments reference the mass expropriation campaign carried out by the Venezuelan government under Hugo Chávez in 2007, when dozens of foreign firms across multiple sectors — particularly energy, oil, and gas — were nationalized by the state. For years, this nationalization policy has stifled growth in Venezuela’s oil industry, even though the country holds unparalleled oil potential. Venezuela is home to the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves, with more than 300 billion barrels still untapped. But much of this reserve is made up of heavy and extra-heavy crude, located in offshore or deep geological deposits, making extraction technically challenging and prohibitively expensive for Venezuela’s state-owned energy firms.

Today, Venezuela produces roughly 1 million barrels of oil per day — a steep drop from the nearly 3.5 million barrels it produced per day in the late 1990s, when it ranked among the world’s top oil producers.

Maduro’s Capture and the “Donroe Doctrine”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine confirmed during Saturday’s briefing that the mission to capture Maduro was codenamed Operation Absolute Resolve. More than 150 aircraft, deployed from 20 land and naval bases, took part in the operation. Caine described the strike as “discreet, precise, carried out in the early dark hours of January 2, and the result of months of careful planning and rehearsal.”

For his part, Trump said the U.S. military stands ready to launch a second, larger-scale offensive if needed, though he noted “the first attack was so successful, we probably won’t need a second — but we are fully prepared for a second wave.”

The president also confirmed that Maduro and his wife will face trial in the U.S., claiming the ousted leader was “the kingpin of a criminal network responsible for smuggling massive amounts of deadly illicit drugs into the United States.” He added that Maduro’s actions “grossly violated the core principles of U.S. foreign policy that stretch back more than two centuries, all the way to the Monroe Doctrine … They call it the Donroe Doctrine now, I don’t know.”

Implications for Latin America’s New Security Order

Late last year, the Trump administration released its updated National Security Strategy, which lays the groundwork for expanding U.S. military presence and political influence across Latin America, with the stated goal of “restoring U.S. preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”

The original Monroe Doctrine, first introduced in 1823 with the core slogan “America for the Americans,” has long served as the foundation for U.S. political and military intervention across Latin America, in response to any situation Washington deems a threat to its national security. The doctrine’s original goal was to block European powers from attempting new colonization or interference in the Americas.

The Trump administration has revived this core idea under an updated framework, branded the “Donroe Doctrine,” which aims to reassert U.S. dominance across the region to protect U.S. national security. The new National Security Strategy states that U.S. “preeminence in the Western Hemisphere is a condition of our security and prosperity — it allows us to assert ourselves confidently wherever and whenever we need to across the region.”

The strategy prioritizes blocking extra-hemispheric rivals including China and Russia from gaining the ability to “position military forces or other threatening capabilities, or own or control strategically critical assets within our hemisphere.”

To meet these goals, the U.S. will deepen diplomatic ties with regional allies to crack down on irregular migration, disrupt drug trafficking, and strengthen land and maritime security — all challenges the Trump administration says originate largely in Latin America. “These nations will help us stop illegal, destabilizing migration, neutralize cartels, expand nearshore manufacturing, and develop local private economies, among other priorities,” the strategy document notes.

The framework also sets clear goals for U.S. military presence across the region. Key priorities include reshaping U.S. military deployments to address pressing threats in the Western Hemisphere; increasing Coast Guard and Navy patrols to secure key maritime routes; deploying military forces to secure borders and confront cartels, including authorizing the use of lethal force; and expanding access to strategically key locations across the region.

The White House calls the new framework “the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” and its goals are explicit: create a more stable hemisphere that discourages mass migration to the U.S., secure regional cooperation to fight transnational criminal groups, block influence from hostile foreign powers, and guarantee U.S. access to strategic assets and locations.

“Venezuela has become the laboratory for this new U.S. security strategy,” explained Luz Mely Reyes, a Venezuelan journalist and general director of digital outlet Efecto Cocuyo. “It is an experiment built on the economic control the United States exerts over the region.”

Are Mexico and Colombia Next in Washington’s Crosshairs?

For now, Venezuela is the primary target of the new strategy. But analysts warn that repeated threats of trade sanctions, hints of potential military action, and mounting political pressure on countries including Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil mean it may only be a matter of time before the framework expands to other nations across Latin America and the Caribbean.

These concerns grew sharper immediately after Maduro’s arrest. In a phone interview with Fox News, Trump claimed the Venezuelan offensive was not intended to send a direct message to other governments such as Mexico’s. But he added that despite his good relationship with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, action is needed to curb cartel influence in Mexico.

“She’s not running Mexico, the cartels are running Mexico,” Trump said. “We have to do something, because we’ve lost 300,000 people, in my opinion, to drugs. Most of them come in through the southern border … Something’s going to have to be done with Mexico.”

The U.S. president issued an equally blunt warning to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has publicly criticized Washington’s latest military action in Venezuela. “He’s making cocaine and they’re sending it into the United States, so he does have to watch his ass,” Trump said during his Mar-a-Lago press conference.