Early in his first term, Donald Trump mooted a “military option” for Venezuela to dislodge its president, Nicolás Maduro. Reports suggest that he eagerly discussed the prospect of an invasion behind closed doors. Advisers eventually talked him down. Instead, the US pursued a “maximum pressure” strategy of sanctions and threats.
But Mr Maduro is still in place. And Mr Trump’s attempts to remove him are ramping up again. The US has amassed its largest military presence in the Caribbean since the 1989 invasion of Panama. It has carried out more than 20 shocking strikes on alleged drug boats. Mr Trump reportedly delivered an ultimatum late last month, telling the Venezuelan leader that he could have safe passage from his country if he left immediately. There was already a $50m bounty on his head. This week came expanded sanctions and the seizure of a tanker.
Mr Maduro, who took over from Hugo Chávez in 2013, swore himself into office for a third term in January despite compelling evidence that the opposition candidate Edmundo González had easily beaten him in last summer’s election. But Mr Trump is not concerned about his dubious electoral credentials and authoritarianism. Nor do the administration’s claims to be tackling drugs cartels convince – though images of boat bombings may be viscerally pleasing to Mr Trump’s base. Venezuela is neither a significant producer of nor major conduit for drugs consumed in the US. And Mr Trump has just pardoned the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández for major drugs-related convictions.
But Mr Maduro’s failures have given Venezuelans good reason to flee. Around 700,000 of the 8 million who have left the country because of its economic collapse have ended up in the US. Mr Trump is determined to cut migration – though destabilising Venezuela, by turning the economic screws further or ousting Mr Maduro, is more likely to increase refugee flows.
Mr Trump’s declaration that the US would probably hold on to the tanker shipment will play to Mr Maduro’s claims that the US is solely motivated by oil. Those seem overblown. The country has a fifth of the world’s known reserves, but accounts for less than 1% of production.
María Corina Machado, the country’s best-known opposition leader and the winner of this year’s Nobel peace prize, described the US seizure as “very necessary”. She has previously proposed a $1.7tn privatisation programme, promising massive opportunities to foreign investors. Mr Trump is also clearly concerned about China’s growing role in Latin America, and Venezuela has signed energy and mining deals with Beijing – though it reportedly offered the US access to its mineral wealth in the vain hope that it would back off.
But one might also surmise that Mr Trump is piqued at failing to remove Mr Maduro the first time around. Though his envoy Richard Grenell has promoted talks with Caracas, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is a longstanding hawk on leftist authoritarians in Latin America. His secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, appears far out of his depth. While a full-scale invasion remains unlikely, land strikes cannot be ruled out if Mr Maduro clings on. Democrats warn that the administration is “sleepwalking us into a war” that would further punish Venezuelans. Yet there is little reason to believe that escalated coercion would succeed where years of sanctions, isolation and economic collapse have failed.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
