In the early hours of January 3, US forces stormed a military compound in Caracas, capturing Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro. Hours later, from his Mar-a-Lago estate, US President Donald Trump dismissed Venezuela’s democratic opposition, asserting the US would “run the country until transition.”

Thus began what US forces dubbed “Operation Absolute Resolve.” The name implies finality; the strategy is a century-old relic. The initial pretext — a “law enforcement operation” — evaporated by the press conference’s end, when Trump’s closing remark laid bare the true motive: “we are going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.” The administration has since clarified that a primary objective of this protectorate is to extract Venezuelan oil as “reimbursement” for US investments predating former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s rise in the late 1990s.

This intervention unfolds at a critical moment when US global power is in decline, and China has become the largest trading partner for most of South America. While diminished, the US retains overwhelming military supremacy in the Western Hemisphere, enough to intervene unilaterally in countries to pursue its narrow interests. Venezuela, home to the world’s largest oil reserves, presents a strategic target.

The unilateral intervention sends a clear message to Beijing: this hemisphere remains a US sphere of influence, where Washington can still intervene unilaterally to secure resources and block rival access. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson condemned the US attack, referring to it as “hegemonic acts” that compromise peace in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In less than 24 hours, the world witnessed what might be called the “Trump Corollary” in full view: the use of military force abroad to secure resources under the banner of “America First.” This is not a new doctrine but an old one reheated — a reassertion of a century-old imperial recipe that treats Latin America, as Trump calls it, “our home region,” as a backyard for extraction.

In essence, Trump is reactivating the Monroe Doctrine, which shaped 19th- and 20th-century US policy toward Latin America. This doctrine envisioned that US interests in the region would be pursued at any cost, including control of the region’s natural resources.

The intended political settlement follows an equally cynical colonial script. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has expressed willingness to collaborate with Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez — a committed Chavista who served as Foreign Minister during the Chávez era — to ensure a “stable transition.” This reveals the envisioned endgame: a managed arrangement where key figures of the old regime are retained to facilitate control and resource extraction, while Venezuela’s genuine democratic forces remain sidelined. This is regime manipulation, not democratic restoration.

The parallels to past interventions are striking. The last US unilateral intervention in the region occurred in Panama in 1989, when US troops captured de facto president General Manuel Noriega and transferred him to the US to stand trial on drug-trafficking charges — a script now repeated with Maduro.

The consequences of this action ripple far beyond Venezuela’s borders, threatening stability across multiple dimensions.

The intervention resurrects the specter of gunboat diplomacy in Latin America. The message to Cuba and Nicaragua — left-wing governments long dependent on Venezuelan oil — is unmistakable: you could be next. This reignites fear and instability throughout the region, ensuring it remains on edge, dominated by the ghost of past US interventions. The rhetoric echoes the traditional US justification for the embargo on Cuba: recovering assets after the expropriation of American property.

Perhaps most significantly, this action irreparably shreds the fragile veneer of a rules-based international order. By unilaterally toppling a government and seizing its resources in its declared “home region,” the US does not just violate a norm — it annihilates the principle of sovereign equality. On what conceivable ground can it now object to a Russian “peacekeeping” mission in Moldova or a Chinese blockade of Taiwan? Moral authority, once voluntarily surrendered, cannot be reclaimed. Washington instantly forfeits its voice to condemn aggression in Ukraine or instability in the Taiwan Strait

This aggression arrives at a moment of profound global fragmentation, when collective action is desperately needed yet increasingly impossible. Trump claims to break from his predecessors, but his “boots on the ground” in Venezuela follow a well-worn path — the same path that led to protracted quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, creating failed states rather than democracies.

The eerie calm in Caracas suggests key regime figures are prepared to negotiate a transition — on US terms. Based on Trump’s declarations, the US-led transition in Venezuela will not hesitate to coopt these figures in service of extracting Venezuelan oil. Meanwhile, Corina Machado — the main opposition leader to Maduro, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025 — and Edmundo González — the elected president in the 2024 election — will likely be sidelined.

The recipe is tragically familiar: a noble slogan, a swift invasion, a lucrative resource and a pliable local elite. The ingredients for a long-term disaster are all present. The only thing “absolute” about this operation is the certainty that it will leave Venezuela more shattered and the world more perilously divided.

This is not statecraft; it is tired and brutal imperialism, repackaged for a new era.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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