Donald Trump’s overnight coup de main in bombing Carcas and seizing the Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro looks set to be the beginning of a long military operation, whose real objective is still opaque.
If this campaign involves extended operations on the ground in Venezuela and neighbouring countries – it is likely to take months, and probably years.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose dabs are all over this operation, says no further action is likely immediately following the arrest of Nicolas Maduro, who is being charged with narcotics trafficking and terrorism in a New York court.
Chance would be a fine thing. Rubio is echoing the operation to arrest the leader of Panama Manuel Noriega in 1989, who was then charged and convicted in America in 1990. It came with a military invasion of Panorama. The Venezuela operation and crisis is of a much greater scale, and of much greater consequence.
It will define the rest of the Trump presidency and leave a long and messy legacy to any successor president. Much depends now on the reaction of Venezuela’s mosaic of armed forces, militias, and foreign guerilla groups taking refuge in Venezuela.
There are echoes of the American led incursion into Iraq in 2003, aided by allies like Britain, which led to civil war, and Islamist insurgency. As General Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, remarked, ‘if you break something, you own it.’
Pedestrians run after explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)The problem this time is that the action is on the doorstep. Unlike the opening months of the Iraq operation in 2003, opposition and criticism at home is already building, and from Congress – which will have to pay the bills for an extended military campaign.
The pressure on Maduro has been building from the first days of the Trump second term. His second re-election as Venezuela’s president was denounced as fraudulent, though the acknowledged leader of the Venezuelan opposition, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, has been keeping out Trump’s way.
The CIA has been shaping some kind of operation against Venezuela since early summer. At the beginning of September, US Southern Command launched Operation Southern Spear – though the codename had been adopted by the US Navy since January. The aim is “detecting, disrupting, and degrading transnational criminal and illicit maritime networks”. The stated target was – initially – the drug cartels – though Venezuela is thought to be directly responsible for shipping quite a low percentage of the US’s cocaine habit.
Vessels of various shapes and sizes have been attacked, their crew shot up by helicopters, and some captured. The legitimacy of such attacks, and the evidence that many of the victims were smugglers have been questioned. The Trump administration has also taken action against tankers, shipping oil from Venezuela, some as part of the unregistered ‘ghost’ fleet of tankers and freighters.
To date two tankers have been seized, and another is being pursued as it flees eastward into the Atlantic.
Smoke rises from Port of La Guaira after explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard on January 03, 2026 in Caracas, Venezuela. (Photo by Jesus Vargas/Getty Images)Oil is the heart of the Trump policy – and despite the noise, seems far more important than the beef about drug trafficking. Venezuela has the largest known oil reserves of any country in the world – currently estimated at 303 to 304 billion barrels, mostly in the Orinoco Oil Belt. Saudi Arabia has roughly 267 billion barrels of reserves. Trump and his predecessors believe that much of the oil facilities has been seized illegally from the US by the Marxist regimes of Nicolas Maduro, and his predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez.
This looks like the real casus belli – the oil should be America’s and it is part of the project to make the US the lead hydrocarbon global superpower. Added to this is the input of Secretary State Marco Rubio. A loyal Cuban exile, he seems to believe that the illegitimate Venezuelan regime is using cheap Venezuelan oil to keep their fellow Marxists in power in Havanna.
The build up of the forces for Southern Spear under the US Southern Command is formidable. They include the world’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, six destroyers, an amphibious landing group, and a nuclear submarine. Currently 10,000 troops are deployed forward, roughly half in Puerto Rico and half afloat in the navy assault ships. The Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has overseen the ramping up of the operation since October. The main architect of the plan is reported by the New York Times to be the head of the armed services, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine.
So, this is no side show in American foreign policy. It fits with Donald Trump’s invocation of President William McKinley, assassinated in 1901, as a role model in his inauguration speech. He cited his prowess in using tariffs to make America great – and later praised him for expanding American territory. The claim to regional dominance in the Americas is repeated in the National Security Strategy – more of a MAGA manifesto than anything like a strategic plan – of last November.
However, fact collides with fantasy when it comes to assessing the practical problems of a US intervention in Venezuela today. A force of 10,000 troops can do very little – and would have to be reinforced or withdrawn within weeks. So far only a few main bases, including the principal military headquarters in Caracas, Fuerte Tiuna, have been struck. Much will depend on the loyalty and effectiveness of the armed forces and militia – and how loyal they are to the Maduro family and regime.
The army is quite small, about 63,000. More important are the paramilitary police and the men and women of the Bolivarian Militia – thought to be about half a million strong and with a potential of one million. They have been deliberately cultivated by Maduro, and are likely to remain loyal.
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In addition insurgent groups from Colombia, the FARC and ENC, are in exile in Venezuela. The unrest by gangs, mafias across the region especially from Guyana and Ecuador, is already spreading. Here the lessons from Iraq in 2003, when the US-led occupation shot themselves in the foot by disbanding the Iraqi army and the Baath Party organisation – which was responsible for most public officialdom from traffic cops to primary school teachers.
As in Iraq, the Trump administration is coating its operation with a thin veneer of legality. It has announced that Nicolas Maduro is to stand trial for narco-trafficking in the United States, for example.
The Trump recipe for stabilising Venezuela and its neighbours is far from coherent – and is likely to involve a long military entanglement – whose consequences are sure to be felt in the US itself. It will be an enormous distraction – very welcome to Xi in Beijing and Putin in Moscow, but in the capitals of Europe, Kyiv and London included, there can only be dismay.
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