Venezuela in US Crosshair,
Maduro on Hit List
In this first edition of The World newsletter,
we explore why a president who campaigned against “foreign wars” is sending warships
to Venezuela.
Venezuela,
the U.S., and the Specter of Regime Change
What’s happening?
·
The Trump administration has deployed warships, planes,
and a submarine off Venezuela’s coast.
·
U.S. forces have attacked Venezuelan boats, claiming
they were drug smugglers (killing 17).
·
Officials label President Nicolás Maduro a cartel
leader and “fugitive of American justice.”
·
Many U.S. officials believe the unstated goal is
regime change.
Why Venezuela
matters to Washington
·
Venezuela is a major oil, gold, and mineral power.
·
The country lies in America’s hemisphere of influence,
close to U.S. borders.
·
The administration frames the crisis as homeland
security + anti-cartel policy, not as a “foreign war.”
·
Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “We’re not going to have a cartel masquerading
as a government in our hemisphere.”
Local and
regional reactions
·
Opposition leader María Corina Machado welcomes
U.S. intervention to oust Maduro.
·
But many Venezuelans distrust U.S. involvement, citing
Washington’s history of interventions and support for dictatorships in Latin
America.
·
Diplomats and business leaders warn U.S. military action
could:
o
Trigger bloodshed and chaos,
o
Unleash rival armed groups (military factions, Colombian
guerrillas, paramilitary gangs),
o
Spark a battle over Venezuela’s resources.
·
One businessman: “You kill Maduro, you turn Venezuela into Haiti.”
Domestic U.S.
politics
·
Trump campaigned against “foreign wars,” but also:
o
Promised to deport migrants,
o
Crack down on drug smuggling,
o
Oppose socialist governments in Latin America.
·
His Hispanic voter support partly comes from
opposition to regimes in Venezuela and Cuba.
·
A new National Defense
Strategy (from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth) reportedly
emphasizes “protecting the homeland and the Western Hemisphere.”
Wider Latin
American strategy
The Venezuela
buildup fits a broader Trump-era interventionist posture:
·
Threats to take over the Panama Canal and bomb
Mexican drug labs.
·
Intervening in Brazilian politics in support
of Jair Bolsonaro.
·
Offering a $20B loan to Argentina’s President Milei.
Big picture
·
Regime change rhetoric echoes Iraq
and Afghanistan, raising alarm inside and outside the U.S.
·
But Trump officials argue Venezuela is different
— part of America’s sphere of influence, not a distant conflict.
·
The stakes: whether U.S. military action accelerates
Maduro’s fall or sparks a regional crisis of instability.
Bottom line: Washington
is framing Venezuela not as a “foreign war” but as a hemispheric security issue.
For Maduro, the risk is that this becomes the defining regime-change test of
Trump’s second term — with high danger of spiraling
instability across Latin America.
President
Trump’s plans for Venezuela have been a slow-building mystery, but the country’s
president, Nicolás Maduro, is feeling the heat.
The
U.S. military has deployed warships, surveillance planes and an attack submarine
to the Caribbean. It has attacked boats from Venezuela that it has claimed, without
evidence, were smuggling drugs, killing 17 people. The administration calls Maduro
a cartel leader and a “fugitive of American justice.” Some current and former U.S.
officials contend that the unstated goal is to force him from power.
In
other words, regime change.
It
sounds like the kind of foreign conflict Trump once campaigned against. But my colleague
Julie Turkewitz, who just spent a week in Venezuela and has years of experience
reporting on the region, told me that Trump might not be thinking about the country
in those terms. (You can watch our full conversation here.)
The
question that could determine Maduro’s fate is whether the Trump administration
sees a regime change effort in Venezuela as the kind of “foreign war” the president
has pledged to avoid, or as an operation to protect America’s interests in its own
backyard.
‘You turn Venezuela into Haiti’
There
are plenty of Venezuelans who would be happy to see Maduro go. He has been accused
of major human rights violations, including torture and forced disappearances. He
lost the 2024 election, according to independent vote monitors, and held onto power
anyway. In recent weeks, one of Venezuela’s opposition leaders, María Corina Machado,
has said she would welcome the U.S. military’s help to remove him from office.
But
during Julie’s time in Venezuela, she spoke to many people who didn’t feel the same
way. In a part of the world where the U.S. has a long history of military intervention
and support for dictatorships, there is a visceral rejection of the idea of American-imposed
change.
Local
diplomats and business leaders warn that military action could unleash bloodshed
and chaos. If the government collapsed, armed actors in the region — including the
military, Colombian guerrilla groups and paramilitary gangs — could join a battle
for the spoils. And in Venezuela, with its oil, gold and other minerals, there are
many spoils, Julie points out.
“You
kill Maduro,” one businessman told her, “you turn Venezuela into Haiti.”
After
long-running wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the combination of the words America
and regime change raises alarm bells, both inside and outside the U.S. Venezuela’s
government may be trying to leverage that. The country’s vice president told Julie
that the American people “do not want war in the Caribbean.”
Sphere
of influence?
As
a presidential candidate, Trump promised not to involve the U.S. in foreign wars.
But
he also campaigned on deporting undocumented immigrants back to Latin America and
on fighting drug smuggling. And he made inroads among Hispanic voters who strongly
opposed socialist governments like those in Venezuela and its ally, Cuba.
Secretary
of State Marco Rubio has been pushing for regime change in Venezuela. “We’re not
going to have a cartel, operating or masquerading as a government, operating in
our own hemisphere,” he told Fox News.
This
focus on America’s “own hemisphere” suggests that administration officials think
of Venezuela differently than, say, Ukraine or Iraq, Julie told me. They might see
it as a country that plays a direct role in the issues they care most about, in
a location that’s close to home — a country in America’s sphere of influence.
The
military buildup off the coast of Venezuela, while striking, is just one example
of the Trump administration’s interventionist approach to Latin America. It has
threatened to take over the Panama Canal and to bomb Mexican drug labs. It has thrown
itself into Brazilian domestic politics on behalf of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Last week, it offered a $20 billion loan to prop up the political fortunes of President
Javier Milei of Argentina.
Some
of this seems to be driven by ideological affinities: Trump sees Bolsonaro and Milei
as allies, and Maduro as an enemy. But an aggressive focus on America’s backyard
may soon be official U.S. doctrine. Defense Secretary
Pete Hegseth is reportedly preparing to release a new national defense strategy. It prioritizes “protecting the homeland and
the Western Hemisphere.”