America Crosses the Line in Venezuela

For months, the Trump administration has been threatening military action against Venezuela and against the Maduro regime in Caracas. Last night (2 – 3 January 2026), the United States made good on those threats and executed military strikes and captured the Venezuelan president.

I wrote about recent US policy towards Venezuela here (Shooting at Shadows: America’s Manufactured War in the Caribbean). At the time, and I’ve seen nothing that changes my opinion, I believed that Trump’s justifications for aggression against Caracas were invented out of whole cloth and illegal under international (and indeed criminal) law. That the Maduro regime was corrupt and dictatorial is almost beyond debate, as is Venezuela’s relationship with such global luminaries as Russia and Iran. However, I believed then, as I believe now, that there was no evidence that supported a case for regime change. Worse, I maintain that Trump and his enablers operate in a universe where style and a narrative mean more than actual substance.

Nothing in the last 24 hours has proven this view to be incorrect. The US Armed Forces attacked Venezuela and seized its president, ostensively to face criminal charges in the United States. The charges cited — including possession and conspiracy to possess a machine gun — underscore the absurdity of asserting US criminal jurisdiction over a sitting foreign head of state.

So now, the US is the dog who has caught the car. If Trump is to be believed, the United States will assume control of the Venezuelan government and will “run” Venezuela until a suitable transition to a mythical local authority can be maintained. Further, Venezuela’s oil industry is to be run by American oil companies. It’s a page right out of Putin’s playbook and an egregious example of naked aggression and an obvious violation of all international norms.

More ominously, Trump “hasn’t ruled out” placing US troops on the ground. We’ve seen this exact scenario before: the US runs roughshod over a developing country’s decrepit military, topples its authoritarian government in the name of “freedom”, finds it needs to control events on the ground so it moves troops in, and quickly loses that control because the population doesn’t want the Americans there and is very well armed. Thus, while it was easy for the US to operate in Venezuelan airspace with impunity due to the nearly non-existent capability of the Venezuelan armed forces, the situation longer term may not be as easy. In common with other dictatorships, the Maduro regime created a large “popular” militia, one armed with small arms and the like. The conditions are ideal for an insurgency should even small numbers of Venezuelans oppose a US presence.

All of this is before tackling the larger issues. Trump appears to have gone into Venezuela under his (hilariously named) “Donroe Doctrine”, whereby the US claims to have a free hand to defend its interests anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Never mind that the “threat” from Venezuela was virtually non-existent, might makes right as far as Trump is concerned. That Maduro was head of state of a sovereign country was of absolutely no consequence; extraterritoriality of US law was what mattered. The US not only withdrew from the ICC, but has criminalized cooperation with it and sanctioned its officials — making its sudden embrace of universal jurisdiction deeply cynical. By US logic, Canadian helicopters can land on the White House lawn, seize Trump and his wife, fly them to Canada, and haul them in front of a Canadian court to face some invented criminal changes. But of course, this “right” only applies to the United States.

So what next? Well, it is obvious that there was no plan for what was to happen after Maduro was deposed. The shape and form of whatever US control Trump will assert over Venezuela has yet to be seen. Are US oil companies really going to go in, seize production assets and simply take over? What will be the US military’s role? Will Trump and the US face any consequences for this profoundly illegal act? Somehow, I doubt it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Western Hemisphere looks on nervously, wondering who will be next. Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, has made it quite clear that his long-time ambition of toppling the Cuban government means Cuba is next on the list. Or will it be Greenland, to which Trump recently appointed a special representative to manage a US takeover? Or will the US attempt to destabilize Canada by offering support to separatists in Alberta?

Regardless, Trump and his administration have shown that they have literally no regard for international norms or for the international community. Appeals to multilateral organizations like the UN or the Organization of American States will amount to nothing. Sanctions are impossible and the US military remains – by far – the most capable and technologically advanced on the planet. Since I started this page, I’ve been calling for Canada – and the rest of the world – to take the threat from Trump and his cronies seriously. This is why.