Early on the morning of Jan. 3, the U.S. military conducted one of the most daring raids in recent memory, entering Caracas to seize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and remove them to New York, where they will be tried on federal drug-trafficking charges. No U.S. troops were killed in the operation, which used over 150 aircraft and involved airstrikes on multiple sites in Caracas and elsewhere in addition to capturing Maduro. Though the targets in Venezuela were hit with fairly precise accuracy, some civilians are among the more than 80 people reportedly killed in the attack. Cuba has announced that 32 of its intelligence and security personnel were killed by U.S. forces.
The ease with which the U.S. accomplished the mission is a testament to the skill of its special operations forces. But it also suggests there was significant help from inside the Venezuelan regime to depose Maduro, who took power in 2013 after the death of his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. While interim President Delcy Rodriguez—who was Maduro’s vice president—will never admit it, this increasingly looks to be as much of a palace coup assisted by the U.S. as it is a regime change operation. In any case, while Maduro is now out, the regime has not yet changed.
There are few certainties about Venezuela’s future. Among the wide range of potential scenarios, we may see a reconsolidation of the dictatorship under the Chavistas, a slow transition to a democratic opposition, an internal insurgency involving high levels of violence, or a chaotic power struggle in the coming years. U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to “run” Venezuela, but his administration does not have a plan to do so, and no U.S. forces are on the ground. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has instead said the administration will use coercion and the threat of military force—a very credible one given the successful rendition operation against Maduro and the ongoing presence of a U.S. armada off Venezuela’s shores—to influence events within the country. In recent interviews, Trump has threatened Rodriguez with a fate worse than Maduro if she does not cooperate.
The list of reasons why the Trump administration took such a radical step to remove Maduro is long, if at times unclear and contradictory. The immediate justification was to support a law enforcement operation to arrest Maduro, who was first indicted in the final weeks of Trump’s first term for alleged connections to drug trafficking; a new indictment that included Flores—a longtime powerbroker in the Chavista movement—and several others was unsealed after his removal from Venezuela.
Breaking the Venezuelan regime’s ties to China, Russia and Iran—none of which helped Maduro in his hour of need—also fits into the new “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine that the Trump administration is promoting, by which the U.S. will seek to roll back the influence of outside powers in the Western Hemisphere.
Then, there is the fact that the Maduro regime has long been undemocratic and abusive toward its citizens, though promoting democracy and rule of law does not appear to play a role in Washington’s policy at the moment. Instead, Trump is stressing the importance of getting Venezuela’s oil supplies back into the hands of U.S. companies as well as compensating U.S. companies that Trump believes had their property stolen from them when Venezuela nationalized its oil sector in the 1970s. And while it is perhaps the most trivial detail, the fact that Maduro danced and mocked Trump’s threats on his weekly TV program rather than cower in fear reportedly clinched the decision to resort to military force to remove him.
Hanging over this list are two key points. First, Trump and his team clearly want the U.S. to dominate and control Venezuela for a variety of reasons, whether to stop the outflow of drugs and migrants, remove other foreign actors from a position of influence or profit from Venezuela’s oil. Above all, they want the Venezuelan government to do what the U.S. tells it to.
Second, they want to demonstrate to other actors around the hemisphere that the threat of U.S. military action is credible.
Despite the events of the past year, the rest of the hemisphere—and indeed much of the world—has not yet adapted to Trump’s militaristic vision.
The real possibility of more military action has featured prominently in many of the administration’s talking points since the raid this past weekend. Trump personally threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro, accusing him of running factories making cocaine. He once again threatened to target Mexico’s cartels, criticizing President Claudia Sheinbaum for failing to control the country. He is back to talking about taking over Greenland. And several times in recent days, the administration has signaled that action against Cuba may be next, with Rubio telling reporters that the government in Havana should be worried.
This is a natural continuation of Trump’s policies since he returned to the White House a year ago. Last January, following his inaugural address, I wrote in these page that “Trump’s rhetoric has shifted from isolationist to expansionist,” citing his comments about the Panama Canal, Greenland and fighting Mexico’s cartels. The final paragraph of my column read:
Trump’s glib comments about his willingness to use the U.S. military in the Western Hemisphere should not be treated as too absurd or anachronistic to believe. To the contrary, Panama, its neighbors and the world should be taking Trump’s calls for a U.S. return to Manifest Destiny and territorial expansion very seriously. They signal a huge shift in the guiding principles of U.S. foreign policy, and other countries should not say they were not warned.
Trump’s military actions across 2025 include sinking at least 32 alleged drug-trafficking boats, killing more than 115 people in the process, and moving a large number of military and intelligence assets to the Western Hemisphere. While some believed that the military buildup was only about Venezuela, everything in Trump’s rhetoric suggests that this is about military dominance of the hemisphere, not just removing Maduro in a one-off operation that is now concluded.
Some left-wing academics may claim that this effort to influence the hemisphere is consistent with decadeslong U.S. policy. In reality, the U.S. has not deployed and used hard military power at this level in the Western Hemisphere in nearly 100 years. Events such as the use of military force to remove Panama’s dictator Manuel Noriega in 1989 were the exception. Trump wants to make them the rule. If that is the case, the boat-bombing campaign and Maduro’s removal are just the beginning of Trump’s military adventurism in the hemisphere. We should expect plenty more to come in the three remaining years of his term.
Despite the events of the past year, the rest of the hemisphere—and indeed much of the world—has not yet adapted to Trump’s militaristic vision of power politics and spheres of influence. And realistically, there is little that America’s neighbors can do to respond in the short term. If Trump wants to use the U.S. military to take out future Venezuelan leaders, topple the Cuban regime, detain Nicaragua’s president, retake the Panama Canal or strike drug cartels in Mexico, Honduras and Colombia—he can. There is no military force in the hemisphere capable of stopping those one-off operations at the tactical level. Despite the loud criticisms from some regional leaders about the U.S. detention of Maduro, no one is going to do anything about it other than complain. Sheinbaum will keep negotiating the scheduled renewal of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal. And Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will try to keep the peace as he prepares for his reelection campaign later this year.
In the longer term, three dynamics will generate the force that pushes back against Trump’s adventurism. First, the operational might of the U.S. military and the lack of effective opposition don’t guarantee strategic success. The U.S. can conduct numerous successful operations and still end up in a weaker position if it doesn’t have a clear vision of what it wants to accomplish. Administration officials may attempt to deflect the lessons of failed nation-building efforts in past decades by claiming they are irrelevant to the Venezuela mission, but those deflections will haunt them later.
Second, the world’s other great powers, particularly China, may use the U.S. model to justify military adventurism in their own neighborhoods. That may lead the Trump administration to regret setting precedents that it cannot control.
Third, U.S. voters may reject Trump’s military campaigns at the polls in the congressional midterm elections later this year and in the 2028 presidential election campaign.
Still, any consequences generated by those reactions are likely years away, and some of the worst ones may take decades to fully emerge. In the meantime, Trump will stay on the military offensive, continuing to find ways to demonstrate U.S. “toughness” and exercise control over Venezuela and its neighbors. While countries across the region may not have taken the threats seriously last January, the detention of Maduro and the stated desire to put Venezuela’s oil industry under the control of U.S. companies should be the wake-up call. Trump will continue to wield U.S. military power in the years to come. He won’t be easily deterred. And Trump will have normalized military intervention in the hemisphere long before any countervailing force emerges to stop him.
James Bosworth is the founder of Hxagon, a firm that does political risk analysis and bespoke research in emerging and frontier markets. He has two decades of experience analyzing politics, economics and security in Latin America and the Caribbean.