The arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro on Saturday by the Delta Force will profoundly reshape the image of the United States in Latin America, whether or not the stunning intervention leads to chaos, an orderly democratic transition, or a cosmetic change to a long-ruling dictatorship.
By justifying the invasion under the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, and in pursuit of natural resources rather than democracy, President Trump leaned into a caricature of the United States as an impulsive imperialist bully whose spies and soldiers determine the region’s political outcomes.
That was not the inevitable result of an armed assault on Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.
It goes without saying that any use of force in the hemisphere would trigger America’s ideological critics. But the principled case for regime change had gained currency over the quarter-century that Hugo Chávez and his successor dismantled Venezuela’s democracy and impoverished its people.
After all, not since the grim era of military dictatorships had Latin America witnessed such gruesome human rights abuses. Maduro’s suspected murder of exiled opponents called to mind Operation Condor – a partnership between Chile’s Augusto Pinochet and fellow authoritarians to hunt dissidents abroad. Maduro’s goons, who kidnap critics from their homes in Operation Tun-Tun, might as well drive Ford Falcons, the favored vehicle of the Argentine military junta that disappeared 30,000 civilians.
In that bloody era, the United States was usually on the wrong side of history. Its loyalty lay with anticommunist caudillos, not their political prisoners or torture victims. By contrast, the defense of democracy and protection of human rights had animated U.S. policy toward Venezuela for decades, and under presidents of both parties.
In 2001, every country except Cuba signed the Inter-American Democratic Charter, declaring democracy the only permissible political system. As Venezuela slid into dictatorship, the United States, including during Trump’s first term, typically led the regional effort to bring that charter to life.
Latin Americans were also predisposed to tolerate a U.S. intervention in Venezuela out of exhaustion with the unprecedented migration crisis set off by Venezuela’s democratic and economic twin apocalypses. Over the last decade, over 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country, and the vast majority are not in the United States, but rather in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and elsewhere in the region. Surveys showed majorities in the region’s largest countries favored a U.S. military intervention.
But early on, Trump forfeited the high ground in the US-Venezuela feud. In May, in a speech in Saudi Arabia, he promised dictatorships no more “lectures on how to live.” His National Security Strategy, released in November, codified that momentous change in U.S. foreign policy, promising to be “respectful” of the world’s diverse political systems.
Maduro’s refusal to acknowledge his overwhelming defeat in Venezuela’s 2024 election had been a centerpiece of the U.S. campaign to isolate the regime and promote a political transition. Then in July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered U.S. diplomats worldwide to “avoid opining on the fairness or integrity of an electoral process, its legitimacy, or the democratic values of the country in question.”
Rubio, a longtime champion of regime change in Venezuela, did not give up the cause, though the fight for freedom had been his cri de cœur. Instead, the administration settled on a rotating list of alternative grievances. The new arguments wildly exaggerated Venezuela’s role in the cocaine business, the lethality of the Tren de Aragua prison gang, and the existence of the Cartel de los Soles, a possibly mythical drug syndicate supposedly helmed by Maduro.
Worse still was Trump’s latest answer to the insistently pesky questions of “Why?” and “Why now?” He suggested that recovering “stolen oil” was his north star, a narrative repeated by the president and vice president following the military raid. Trump might see that as the prerogative of the hemisphere’s preeminent power, fringe benefits in a sphere of influence. But it is a deeply unsatisfying explanation for governments in the region, echoing earlier U.S. interventions at the behest of banana companies, including an infamous coup d’etat in Guatemala in 1954.
In its National Security Strategy, the White House said Latin American governments faced the choice of “whether they want to live in an American-led world.” Even before this invasion, only a smattering of far-right figures would have nodded their heads. Last year – before Trump’s second-term tariffs and deportations, and before his threats to bomb Colombia and Mexico, and to seize the Panama Canal – Latin Americans ranked the U.S. president 4.2 out of 10 in the Latinobarómetro survey. A Pew poll in Mexico found that favorable views of the United States had fallen from 61% to 29%. Most of the region’s leaders have long favored nonalignment over U.S. hemispheric domination, eager as they are to sell oil, minerals, and food to China and for Beijing to build the region’s railways, ports, and mines.
Now, a generation that has no memory of U.S. Cold War interventions – let alone early 20th century Monroe Doctrine adventurism, including occupations of Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic – has its own experience with raw U.S. military might.
Had that military might been wielded for the good of the Venezuelan people, the implications for the U.S. image and its diplomatic relationships might be different. After all, the International Criminal Court was investigating Maduro for crimes against humanity. Now, however, it is the United States under scrutiny for violating international law. Many Latin Americans who had complained in recent decades of U.S. inattention might suddenly be nostalgic for the quiet era of benign neglect.
What Will ‘Operation Absolute Resolve’ Mean for Venezuela and Latin America?
By Benjamin N. Gedan
Latin America & the Caribbean
The arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro on Saturday by the Delta Force will profoundly reshape the image of the United States in Latin America, whether or not the stunning intervention leads to chaos, an orderly democratic transition, or a cosmetic change to a long-ruling dictatorship.
By justifying the invasion under the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, and in pursuit of natural resources rather than democracy, President Trump leaned into a caricature of the United States as an impulsive imperialist bully whose spies and soldiers determine the region’s political outcomes.
That was not the inevitable result of an armed assault on Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.
It goes without saying that any use of force in the hemisphere would trigger America’s ideological critics. But the principled case for regime change had gained currency over the quarter-century that Hugo Chávez and his successor dismantled Venezuela’s democracy and impoverished its people.
After all, not since the grim era of military dictatorships had Latin America witnessed such gruesome human rights abuses. Maduro’s suspected murder of exiled opponents called to mind Operation Condor – a partnership between Chile’s Augusto Pinochet and fellow authoritarians to hunt dissidents abroad. Maduro’s goons, who kidnap critics from their homes in Operation Tun-Tun, might as well drive Ford Falcons, the favored vehicle of the Argentine military junta that disappeared 30,000 civilians.
In that bloody era, the United States was usually on the wrong side of history. Its loyalty lay with anticommunist caudillos, not their political prisoners or torture victims. By contrast, the defense of democracy and protection of human rights had animated U.S. policy toward Venezuela for decades, and under presidents of both parties.
In 2001, every country except Cuba signed the Inter-American Democratic Charter, declaring democracy the only permissible political system. As Venezuela slid into dictatorship, the United States, including during Trump’s first term, typically led the regional effort to bring that charter to life.
Latin Americans were also predisposed to tolerate a U.S. intervention in Venezuela out of exhaustion with the unprecedented migration crisis set off by Venezuela’s democratic and economic twin apocalypses. Over the last decade, over 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country, and the vast majority are not in the United States, but rather in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and elsewhere in the region. Surveys showed majorities in the region’s largest countries favored a U.S. military intervention.
But early on, Trump forfeited the high ground in the US-Venezuela feud. In May, in a speech in Saudi Arabia, he promised dictatorships no more “lectures on how to live.” His National Security Strategy, released in November, codified that momentous change in U.S. foreign policy, promising to be “respectful” of the world’s diverse political systems.
Maduro’s refusal to acknowledge his overwhelming defeat in Venezuela’s 2024 election had been a centerpiece of the U.S. campaign to isolate the regime and promote a political transition. Then in July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered U.S. diplomats worldwide to “avoid opining on the fairness or integrity of an electoral process, its legitimacy, or the democratic values of the country in question.”
Rubio, a longtime champion of regime change in Venezuela, did not give up the cause, though the fight for freedom had been his cri de cœur. Instead, the administration settled on a rotating list of alternative grievances. The new arguments wildly exaggerated Venezuela’s role in the cocaine business, the lethality of the Tren de Aragua prison gang, and the existence of the Cartel de los Soles, a possibly mythical drug syndicate supposedly helmed by Maduro.
Worse still was Trump’s latest answer to the insistently pesky questions of “Why?” and “Why now?” He suggested that recovering “stolen oil” was his north star, a narrative repeated by the president and vice president following the military raid. Trump might see that as the prerogative of the hemisphere’s preeminent power, fringe benefits in a sphere of influence. But it is a deeply unsatisfying explanation for governments in the region, echoing earlier U.S. interventions at the behest of banana companies, including an infamous coup d’etat in Guatemala in 1954.
In its National Security Strategy, the White House said Latin American governments faced the choice of “whether they want to live in an American-led world.” Even before this invasion, only a smattering of far-right figures would have nodded their heads. Last year – before Trump’s second-term tariffs and deportations, and before his threats to bomb Colombia and Mexico, and to seize the Panama Canal – Latin Americans ranked the U.S. president 4.2 out of 10 in the Latinobarómetro survey. A Pew poll in Mexico found that favorable views of the United States had fallen from 61% to 29%. Most of the region’s leaders have long favored nonalignment over U.S. hemispheric domination, eager as they are to sell oil, minerals, and food to China and for Beijing to build the region’s railways, ports, and mines.
Now, a generation that has no memory of U.S. Cold War interventions – let alone early 20th century Monroe Doctrine adventurism, including occupations of Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic – has its own experience with raw U.S. military might.
Had that military might been wielded for the good of the Venezuelan people, the implications for the U.S. image and its diplomatic relationships might be different. After all, the International Criminal Court was investigating Maduro for crimes against humanity. Now, however, it is the United States under scrutiny for violating international law. Many Latin Americans who had complained in recent decades of U.S. inattention might suddenly be nostalgic for the quiet era of benign neglect.
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