DEEP DIVE – As audacious and complex as it was for the U.S. to extract Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela – and to do so without a single U.S. casualty – the challenges ahead may be even harder. “We’re gonna run it,” President Donald Trump said Saturday, referring to a post-Maduro Venezuela. The president gave few details and no specific time frame, saying only that the U.S. would “run the country” until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could be arranged. U.S. oil companies would return to Venezuela, investing “billions and billions” of dollars to reboot the oil sector and the country’s economy. American “boots on the ground” might be deployed in the interim.
It was a remarkable series of statements from a president who has criticized past American nation-building projects, and it raised questions about how exactly the Trump Administration would “run” a country beset by profound challenges. Venezuela, a country twice the size of Iraq, has endured decades of authoritarian rule, corruption, drug-related violence, and economic pain. And for the moment at least, the country’s leader still pledges allegiance to Maduro.
Miguel Tinker Salas, a Venezuelan historian, Professor Emeritus at Pomona College and Fellow at the Quincy Institute, said that when Trump spoke those words – “we’re gonna run it” – he was stunned.
“Initially, my jaw dropped,” Salas told The Cipher Brief. “Even at the height of U.S. influence in Venezuela, in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, they never said they wanted to run the country. And I don't think the Trump administration comprehends the complexity that they're dealing with for a country as diverse and as big as Venezuela.”
Even those who cheered the U.S. military operation warned of the difficulties that lie ahead. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who pronounced himself “delighted” by Maduro’s ouster, told NewsNation the mission was “maybe step one of a much longer process. Maduro is gone but the regime is still in place.”
“Maduro’s fall is good for Venezuela and the United States,” Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security, posted on X. “It was a brilliant military operation and the world should be better off because of it. Whether it WILL in fact be better off depends on what happens next. One of the lessons of other regime-change operations is not to topple a government without a plan for what comes next. What comes next in Venezuela seems as vague as the plan for running postwar Gaza under a ‘Board of Peace’.”
The Venezuelans who might lead
At a news conference following Maduro’s capture, Trump said that Delcy Rodriguez, the regime’s vice president, would lead Venezuela as long as she “does what we want.” And he suggested the U.S. would enforce that arrangement at the barrel of a gun.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” Trump said, adding that the U.S. might deploy “a second wave” of forces if Venezuelan officials or troops don’t go along with Washington’s wishes. The U.S. naval presence near Venezuela remains in place – the largest such deployment in the region since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
A day later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio painted a slightly different picture of the U.S. role. “It’s not running — it’s running policy, the policy with regards to this,” he said.
But Rubio and Trump were clear about the overall approach: in essence, Do what we say, and things will be fine.
“We’re going to make decisions based on their actions and their deeds in the days and weeks to come,” Rubio told The New York Times. “We think they’re going to have some unique and historic opportunities to do a great service for the country, and we hope that they’ll accept that opportunity.”
It’s not clear that Rodriguez, the former Vice President, will be a pliant ally. She was sworn in Monday as interim president, after almost immediately accusing the U.S. of invading her country on Saturday. She called the operation “a barbarity,” and in an address to the nation said that Maduro was still Venezuela’s head of state.
“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros,” Rodriguez said, with other senior officials at her side. Venezuela, she said, would never agree to being a U.S. "colony."
A day later she struck a less defiant note, calling on the U.S. to work with her government on an “agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development.” She added that “we prioritize moving towards balanced and respectful international relations between the United States and Venezuela."
It’s not at all clear that’s what Trump has in mind; he insisted that Rodriguez would comply with his wishes – one way or another. "She had a long conversation with Marco [Rubio], and she said, 'We'll do whatever you need,'” Trump said. “I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn't have a choice.” On Sunday he upped the ante, telling The Atlantic that if Rodriguez “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
Experts said Rodriguez will have to navigate an almost impossible political tightrope.
“She claims to represent a socialist party opposed to U.S. intervention and to U.S. meddling in her internal affairs – so how does she rationalize this to her base?” Salas said. “This is a very difficult, challenging position for her to be in – to on the one hand promise social change reforms, a continuation of Maduro, and at the same time, now become compliant in providing oil to the United States.”
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Beyond Rodriguez, who serves as both Vice President and minister for oil, other Maduro regime leaders remain in place, including the military chief General Vladimir Padrino Lopez and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. They have denounced Maduro’s abduction as well – Padrino vowed to resist “the most criminal military aggression” and ordered a mobilization of Venezuelan forces on land, sea, and air.
Experts have warned of splits within the army – between hardliners who may refuse to support anyone who bows to Trump’s demands, and others who will stand with Rodriguez no matter what. Such divides could lead to violence and – if Trump is true to his word – a deployment of U.S. “boots on the ground.”
Michael Shifter, a former president of the Inter-American Dialogue, said that while Rodriguez might be able to deliver on Trump’s demands to open up the oil sector, other critical tasks will prove more challenging.
“It will be exceedingly difficult if not impossible for her to tame the entrenched corruption and widespread criminality in the country while leaving the machinery of Chavista governance intact,” Shifter told The Cipher Brief, using a term for policies begun by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez. “The risks that chaos, violence and instability will ensue are high, and under that scenario the U.S. would have no choice but to send in troops to stabilize the situation.”
“Control of the military is essential for control of Venezuela, particularly in this unstable moment,” Salas said. “And so far, the commanding general of the military, Padrino, has shown no disposition to break with the PSUV [Maduro’s party].”
Absent in the Trump plans for now is any role for the Venezuelan opposition. The main opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month, issued a statement urging that her political ally, Edmundo Gonzalez, be recognized as Venezuela’s president. Gonzalez was widely seen as the rightful winner of the 2024 presidential vote. “Today we are prepared to enforce our mandate and take power,” Machado said.
But in his news conference after Maduro’s capture, Trump never mentioned Gonzalez, and threw cold water on the prospects of a role for Machado.
"I think it'd be very tough for her to be the leader," Trump said. "She doesn't have the support or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect."
Those remarks left Machado in the odd position of having won her goal of Maduro’s exit, while failing to win the backing of Washington. Salas said Venezuelans he had spoken with “were disillusioned about the fact that Trump essentially threw her under the bus.”
Asked Saturday which American officials would “run” Venezuela, Trump nodded to Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who flanked the president during his news conference. “The people that are standing right behind me, we’re going to be running it,” Trump said.
That drew a rebuke from Elliott Abrams, a Senior Fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations and longtime hawk in terms of U.S. policy in Latin America.
“Venezuelans wanted Maduro out and voted against him,” Abrams wrote on the organization’s website. “They did not vote for U.S. rule, and pursuing that path will create instability—exactly what Trump does not want.”
The oil factor
In the months-long runup to Maduro’s capture, as the U.S. deployed naval forces to the Caribbean and attacked alleged drug traffickers from the air, the Trump administration justified its actions by invoking the drug trade and the illegitimacy of Maduro’s rule. Oil was rarely mentioned.
Now, as U.S. officials explain their post-Maduro plans, oil is front and center.
Over the weekend, Trump accused Venezuela of seizing U.S. oil assets in the country, and said U.S. companies would return to operate Venezuela’s state-controlled oil reserves, “spend billions of dollars” and “start making money for the country.”
U.S. oil companies have a long history in Venezuela, dating to the early 20th century, when they came at the government’s invitation to explore and develop oil reserves. Gulf, Shell, and Standard Oil were among the early arrivals, in what proved to be a symbiotic relationship: the companies earned billions of dollars, and Venezuela grew rich; by the mid-1970s, oil revenues had helped make it the wealthiest nation, per capita, in Latin America.
In 1976, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry, creating a state-owned company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), that continued to partner with foreign companies. More than two decades later, President Hugo Chavez renegotiated contracts with foreign oil companies to boost Venezuela’s share of the profits, a move that prompted ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to leave the country.
Ultimately, Venezuela’s oil sector and its broader economy suffered the consequences – a deteriorating oil infrastructure, and U.S. sanctions on Venezuela and the PDVSA. Today, Venezuela produces fewer than one million barrels of oil a day, down from roughly 3.5 million in 1997, and more than 90 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty.
“Venezuela has been a problem both for the United States and for the Venezuelan people for over 20 years,” Paul Kolbe, a former Director of The Intelligence Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, told The Cipher Brief. “For the Chavez years and then the Maduro years, they've driven a country that was once one of the wealthiest in the world, and certainly the wealthiest in South America…into the ground through corruption, poor leadership, poor decisions, and oppression of the people.”
Only one U.S. oil company – Chevron – has remained in Venezuela, operating under joint ventures with the PDVSA. Rubio’s and Trump’s remarks suggest that the U.S. intends to force Rodriguez, the interim leader, to offer favorable conditions to other American companies.
But experts aren’t sure the others will return.
Ali Moshiri, who oversaw Chevron’s operations in Venezuela until 2017, said the big oil firms won’t go back until they clear signs of change.
“Not many companies are going to rush to go into an environment where there’s not stability,” Moshiri told The New York Times. He also said that while Chevron and smaller operators could boost the country’s oil output slightly in the short term, a more robust expansion would take years, given the political situation, the state of the country’s oil infrastructure, and the time needed to reestablish operations in the country.
Salas echoed the point. “Exporting oil from Venezuela is a challenge,” he told The Cipher Brief. “The infrastructure has collapsed. The oil itself that has to be pumped out of the ground is heavy crude, which requires a lot of technology, and billions of dollars of investment. So I'm not convinced that American companies are going to be running in.”
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A long history of regime change
The Maduro mission came exactly 36 years after the surrender of another Latin American dictator – Panama’s Manuel Noriega – to face drug charges in the U.S. That operation had its detractors, but in the history of U.S. regime-change missions, it probably counts as a relative success story. The list of other cases is long – and while each episode had its own specific history, there have been few good outcomes.
To take three very different examples: The 2003 decapitation of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq – which involved a huge force of “boots on the ground” – was celebrated initially by President George W. Bush in a “Mission Accomplished” speech, only to unravel in a fierce domestic insurgency that lasted for years, cost more than 4,000 American lives, and led – indirectly – to the rise of the Islamic State. The Kennedy administration backed a coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963; Diem was later murdered, unrest followed, and in his memoirs, President Lyndon Johnson blamed the coup for the escalation of the Vietnam War. In Iran, the nationalization of the oil industry was at the heart of a coup orchestrated by the U.S. and Britain in 1953 to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. That led to the return to power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – and ultimately to the revolution that brought an Islamic theocracy to power in Tehran in 1979.
“I immediately am reminded of Iraq, where the military operation was well done and we removed Saddam Hussein pretty quickly in 2003, but then what came after was not great,” Glenn Corn, a former CIA Senior Executive, told The Cipher Brief. “So I hope we've learned that lesson and we're not going to repeat the mistakes we made there.”
Salas noted that one lesson of the Iraq War involved the perils of driving out the remnants of an ousted regime. “The lesson learned in Iraq was when they attempted to expunge the Ba’ath Party, they realized that they had utter chaos because there was no one there to run the government, no one with experience,” he said. “You had the nation fracture into particular sections, regions, strongmen, military individuals, and others. If that happened in Venezuela, it would be chaotic. The country's very big, very diverse. It has oil regions, it has urban areas, it has an industrial base. So you could imagine that happening on a national scale.”
To some, the Maduro operation was reminiscent of an earlier era of American “gunboat diplomacy,” when the U.S. military was deployed regularly to seize territory and resources. The New York Times’ David Sanger noted that Trump installed a portrait of William McKinley in the White House – and it was President McKinley who presided over the U.S. seizures of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.
“The U.S. operation, in seeking to assert control over a vast Latin American nation, has little precedent in recent decades,” Sanger wrote, “recalling the imperial U.S. military efforts of the 19th and early 20th centuries in Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.”
What comes next
Given the uncertainties of the moment, experts said the next phase in Venezuela will hinge on answers to several core questions:
Does the Trump administration have an arrangement with Rodriguez and other Maduro regime officials to do the White House’s bidding? If not, how will the U.S. respond if they fail to oblige? Does the U.S. have a plan to remove those leaders? What might trigger that “second wave” Trump referred to, and the deployment of U.S. forces to the country?
What milestones must be met for the end of the interim period? Would elections follow – and would the U.S. organize or oversee those? What will the major U.S. oil companies do?
“Uncertainties abound in Venezuela about what comes next,” Shifter said. “For now, a framework of coerced cooperation between the Venezuelan regime, now led by Delcy Rodriguez, and the Trump administration, seems to be in effect. But it is far from clear whether that model is viable, much less sustainable.”
Fontaine said that “the default could well be to work with a compliant President Delcy and most of the existing government. It would be a head of state change more than regime change.” But he added that such an arrangement would do little to satisfy the opposition – the same people who have cheered the news of Maduro’s capture. “Many would-be supporters of this move hoped for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela, not just a different approach on drugs and oil.”
He also noted that Trump was hardly the first president to decry nation-building projects, only to wind up taking them on.
“For 25 years, every U.S. president has opposed nation-building abroad and then gotten involved in it,” Fontaine said. “Trump, with the commitment to run Venezuela, appears to be the latest. The welcome fall of Maduro is not the end, or the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.”
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