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Donald Trump had set his sights on Venezuela during his first term itself. Then, his administration formally charged President Nicolas Maduro and his top aides with alleged involvement in drug trafficking. Juan Guaido, an opposition politician, was recognised by the U.S. and its Western allies as the acting President of Venezuela.
After Mr. Trump returned to power in early 2025, his immediate foreign policy priority was Venezuela and South America more broadly. The administration declared a ‘war on drugs’ and accused Mr. Maduro of being ‘one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world’. The U.S. began bombing civilian boats off Venezuela, claiming they were carrying drugs and deployed jets, warships and thousands of troops to the Caribbean. Mr. Trump said he had authorised the CIA to carry out a clandestine operation inside Venezuela and warned that Mr. Maduro’s “time is up”. He also imposed a naval quarantine on oil tankers to and from Venezuela.
Follow the LIVE Updates on the Venezuela bombing on January 3, 2025, here
Regime change
On January 3, a day after Mr. Maduro offered “serious talks” with Washington, the U.S. carried out large scale air strikes in the Latin American country. The Venezuelan government “denounced” the military aggression and declared a state of emergency. Mr. Trump acknowledged the strikes in a social media post and claimed that Mr. Maduro and his wife “were captured and flown out of the country”.
While it is not immediately clear whether the abduction of Venezuela’s sitting president would mark an end to the socialist regime, Mr. Trump seems to be moving fast with his plan of aggression. What he wants is clear: regime change. María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition leader who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, ‘absolutely supports’ Mr. Trump’s policies on Venezuela.
Why does Mr. Trump want regime change? Three broad reasons can be identified.
One, Mr. Trump wants to reimpose American primacy in the Western Hemisphere. President James Monroe declared in 1823 that the Americas were off-limits to future European interference and colonisation. What later came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine, the policy established U.S. hegemony in its backyard, carving out a sphere of influence. The recently released National Security Doctrine of the Trump administration identifies Latin America and the Caribbean as a strategic priority. Reviving the Monroe Doctrine, the document asserts that the U.S. must deny influence or control by outside powers [read China] in Latin America and ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains under American political, economic and military influence.
The China factor
Two, while reinforcing American primacy, the U.S. would also want to keep the Chinese and Russian influence in the region under check. China has already made huge investments in Latin America through its Belt and Road Initiative, which Beijing claims have 24 signatories in the region. China is also the largest or second largest trading partner of most countries in the region. In his second term, Mr. Trump has supported far-right figures in the continent, from Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Javier Milei in Argentina. In Honduras, Nasry Asfura, a Trump-endorsed right-wing candidate, won the presidency last month. With the return of the right-wing, the U.S. and its allies are rolling back South America’s pink tide. While there are still a few left-wing governments in Latin America, two of them publicly defy American dominance and seek stronger strategic and economic ties with China and Russia —Venezuela and Cuba. Of the two, Venezuela holds a prime spot because of its vast reserves of liquid gold.
China accounts for nearly 80% of Venezuela’s oil purchases. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is also the largest foreign company with investments and operations in Venezuela’s oil sector. Even though China has scaled back its investments in Venezuela due to American sanctions, in 2024, China Concord Resources Corporation, a private Chinese company, signed a $1 billion agreement with PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company, to develop two oilfields in Lake Maracaibo. Earlier in 2025, the Trump administration forced Panama to pull back from the China-led BRI. If the Maduro regime is forcefully brought down, the U.S. could send a strong message to other weaker powers in the region against economic and security cooperation with China and Russia.
It’s oil
The third reason could be oil. Venezuela has about 17% of the world’s known oil reserves, or more than 300 billion barrels, nearly four times the reserves of the U.S. American companies such as Exxon, Mobil and Gulf Oil were active players in Venezuela’s oil sector until the 1976 nationalisation (foreign companies accounted for 70% of production). When left-wing leader Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999, he tightened the state control over oil resources through another wave of nationalisation and used oil profits to launch ambitious poverty eradication projects. (In 2002, there was a coup against Mr. Chavez, which was backed by the U.S. But Mr. Chavez was brought back to power within 48 hours in the face of mass protests against the coup plotters).
Last month, Mr. Trump demanded Venezuela return all the “stolen American oil, land and assets”, in a direct reference to Venezuela’s nationalisation of its oil resources. He also made it clear that he wanted Venezuelan oil for American companies—which would help the U.S. reduce its dependence on Persian Gulf oil and force China out of Venezuela and to look for other alternatives.
Mr. Trump had said this earlier as well. In 2019, after the first Trump administration recognised Juan Guaido as the acting President of Venezuela, Mr. Trump had ordered his aides to demand Mr. Guaido to commit to giving the U.S. access to his country’s oil and ousting China and Russia if he wrested power from Mr. Maduro, John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former National Security Adviser, wrote in his memoir. In a 2023 speech (when he was out of power), Mr. Trump said: “When I left [in 2021, after the first term], Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over. We would have gotten all that oil”.
Now, with the strike on Venezuela and the claimed capture of Mr. Maduro, Mr. Trump appears close to achieving his objective. Ms. Machado, the West’s favourite Venezuelan politician who could succeed Mr. Maduro should the regime collapse, has already promised to open up Venezuela’s oil sector. “We will open all, upstream, midstream, downstream, to all companies,” she said on a podcast hosted by Donald Trump Jr., the President’s eldest son. She added that the minerals and power sectors would also be opened up for foreign [read American] companies.
Published – January 03, 2026 06:21 pm IST
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