Trump promise to “Make Venezuela Great Again” defies repeated failures of US-led regime change

Amongst the charges, as signed off by the United States Attorney Jay Clayton, the 25-page indictment asserts: “NICOLAS MADURO MOROS, the defendant, now sits atop a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking. That drug trafficking has enriched and entrenched Venezuela’s political and military elite…”

The indictment asserts that Maduro has links to six different gangs and drug trafficking groups, including two Colombian rebel factions – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, and the National Liberation Army (ELN), Tren de Aragua and two Mexican crime factions, the Sinaloa and the Zetas.

The indictment lists six individuals as defendants: Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, his son Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, and Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, the leader of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Drugs, oil, democracy: What is the justification and intention?

Though critics have been swift to claim the US operation is a breach of international law, specifically owing to the “use of force”, the US President and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, have denied accusations. Instead, they claim that US forces are carrying out a law enforcement operation to hold Maduro responsible for breaches of US laws (“narcoterrorism”, particularly). Sarah Heathcote, honorary associate professor in international law at the Australian National University, unpacked the spurious nature of these law enforcement claims for The Conversation. The military intervention in Caracas constituted, Heathcote claims, a “use of force” within the meaning of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Indeed, Trump called it “a spectacular assault”.

Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter says:

“All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

As reported by ABC News, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, explained that the operation involved more than 150 aircraft launched from 20 bases around the Western Hemisphere, including F-35 and F-22 fighter jets, and B-1 bombers. The target was military bases, including the location where Maduro’s safe house was located, Fuerte Tiuna.

Trump’s operation had neither Congressional approval, nor UN Security Council permission. As Heathcote opined, the US has not “been the victim of an ongoing or imminent act of aggression by Venezuela”.

Democrats have taken to media to denounce the lack of legal justification and the questionable intentions of the US administration, which seemingly focus on taking Venezuelan oil resources into private US companies’ ownership at least temporarily.

On 2 November 2025, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that boots-on-the-ground strikes on Venezuela would require the approval of Congress. She said that such an activity would be war and would therefore require Congressional approval.

Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee took to X on 3 January, where he suggested that – as Rubio claimed – the military force on the ground was required to protect those carrying out arrest orders against Maduro and his forces. Lee posted: “He [Rubio] informed me that Nicolás Maduro has been arrested by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States, and that the kinetic action we saw tonight was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant. This action likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack.”

Vice President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Rubio have adhered to this justification.

“This was not an attack on Venezuela,” Rubio informed US news program Meet the Press on 5 January. “This was a law enforcement function to capture an indicted drug trafficker.”

US Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, told Fox News that Venezuela was “coordinating with the likes of China, Russia, Iran, terrorist groups like Hezbollah … Pumping drugs, thugs, and weapons into the United States of America, threatening to invade its neighbours.”

A strategic invasion, at least months in the making

It was an operation that the US had prepared for since at least August. A team of CIA professionals were tracing and determining patterns of movement for Maduro to ensure the subsequent capture and arrest would happen swiftly and with as little resistance as possible, as reported by ABC News.

In August, Trump initiated a $US50 million ($75 million) bounty on Mr Maduro’s capture. Soon after, Secretary Hegseth’s so-called “Department of War” launched a series of deadly strikes on Venezuelan fishing boats (allegedly engaged in drug smuggling) in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean.

US Democratic Senator from Connecticut, Chris Murphy, countered the claims of narcoterrorism, telling media: “Fentanyl is the drug that’s killing Americans — that’s not coming from Venezuela. Venezuela produces cocaine, 90 per cent of it is not coming to the United States.”

He added, “You saw within hours of the invasion the announcement of a group of Wall Street investors [and] energy industry investors planning a trip to Venezuela to make money off of this invasion, off of this ouster.”

Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay issued a joint statement condemning “the unilateral military operations in Venezuela”.

Threats to region

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on 5 January that the US would readily engage in further military interventions in Latin America, pointing to Cuba as a potential target. In an interview with US news show, Meet The Press, on 5 January, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio – himself a Cuban American from Florida – denied that the US was at war with Venezuela, indicated that Cuba may also face a military intervention to force regime change, and said Congressional approval for the Venezuelan operation was not a requisite, therefore not sought.

Trump told the media that the US would “run the country” of Venezuela indefinitely, until a “safe, proper and judicial” transition could be arranged. The country’s Supreme Court has appointed Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as interim leader.

The stated aim of regime change aligns with Trump’s desire for US “domination over the Western Hemisphere”, a goal that Trump referred to as ‘the Donroe Doctrine’, harking to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.

As reported by Al Jazeera, Trump told media on 5 January that Colombia and Venezuela were “very sick” and that the government in Bogota was run by “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States … And he’s not going to be doing it very long. Let me tell you”.

A reporter asked if Trump was referencing a future operation by the US on Colombia, to which Trump responded, “Sounds good to me.”

Despite its own illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry labelled the US attacks “an act of armed aggression against Venezuela. This is deeply concerning and condemnable. The pretexts used to justify such actions are unfounded.”

Surely Denmark and Greenland are watching this with enormous trepidation.

“The Donroe Doctrine” tops a century of US intervention in the Caribbean basin

Just over two centuries ago, then US President James Monroe gave an address to Congress on 2 December, 1823, that detailed a new approach by the US to warn Europe off intervention and colonisation in the rest of the Americas. The “Monroe Doctrine”, as it was later called, emphasised trade and diplomatic relations between the US and Latin America, and a reduced role for Europe in the “Western hemisphere”.

This direction was pursued further by President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, who notably fought against Spain in Cuba in 1898. Roosevelt espoused the US right to engage in military force to advance its economic interests. In 1904, he established the Roosevelt Corollary as an extension of the Monroe Doctrine. Rather than just preventing European intervention in Latin America the Roosevelt Corollary stated that the US would act as a policeman in the region, intervening in Latin America to prevent European influence. This policy led to decades of direct military and economic intervention in Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua with ramifications that have echoed to the present day. In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt recognised the limitations of Roosevelt’s corollary, and instead introduced the Good Neighbor Policy as a means of healing damaged relations with Latin American nations.

Eduardo Gamarra, a professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University, told NPR that the strategic deterrence approach asserted by the Monroe Doctrine targeted different non-US actors over time: “In the 1800s, that meant Europeans; in the 20th century, especially after World War II, it meant the Soviet Union,” he said.

Communism was equally disdained by both the US and right-leaning Latin American governments, and post-World War II, military intervention was justified as “a foreign ideology that needed to be extirpated from the Americas,” as Edward Murphy, a professor of history at Michigan State University, told NPR.

Cuban Bay of Pigs, Grenada invasion, Panama …

If the US were to stage a military invasion of Cuba at Trump’s discretion, it would have a sorry precedent. In 1961, then President John F. Kennedy pursued a plan initially developed under President Eisenhower’s leadership. The intention was to forcibly oust Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who had been head of Cuba for the previous two years and was increasingly aligned with Russian interests and influence. Close to 1400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles were instructed to seize the Bay of Pigs with the goal of inciting a public uprising against Castro. Castro faced fire with fire, and sent 20,000 troops to the beach, eventually resulting in the surrender of most of the US force, nearly 100 of whom were killed. Convinced the US would return and try again, Fidel and the Soviets discussed arming Cuba with nuclear weapons, leading to the US-Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

On 25 October, 1983, Reagan oversaw Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada. On the basis of regional security concerns and apparently because US medical students attending St. George’s University School of Medicine required protection, a military intervention went ahead in Grenada to overthrow the socialist government.

Though forces in Grenada did attempt to fend off the US troops, a few days later the US installed a provincial government and organised elections. Notably, Marco Rubio has not committed to a date, let alone an approximate date, for elections to be held in Venezuela.

Detailing every time the US has intervened in Latin America is impossible here, but interested readers might recall the CIA overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954, the US backed coup that installed Augusto Pinochet as leader of Chile in 1973, and the funding, training, and support for military regimes in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay that have allegedly engaged in torture and killing of dissidents. Brazilian journalist Raphael Tsavkko Garcia detailed this history for Al Jazeera.

As for quiet submission and handing over oil resources and governance to the US, indications from Venezuela don’t bode for smooth sailing. Venezuelan Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino gave a televised address stating that armed forces had been activated across the country to protect the country’s sovereignty.

Interior minister Diosdado Cabello provided a statement to Reuters that Venezuela’s government would stay unified behind Mr Maduro. “The unity of the revolutionary force is more than guaranteed.”

Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to Barack Obama, posted to X on 5 January:

“What happens in Venezuela won’t stay in Venezuela. It ain’t Vegas. Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan taught us a hard uncomfortable truth: regime change is the easy part — managing the regional/international fallout is the real challenge. 2026 is starting to look a lot like 1896. Welcome to Trump’s brave new world. This is only day two of a wild, unpredictable ride – so hold on.”