Few people in Venezuela will rue the fall of Nicolás Maduro, the brutal and kleptocratic dictator who drove the world’s most oil-rich nation into deep poverty and hyperinflation.
The answer to what comes next for Venezuelans – direct American rule, a return to democracy, or more Chavismo – a form of left-wing populism advocated by Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez – is only to be found somewhere in the thicket of mood swings, knee-jerks and grudges that populate Donald Trump’s brain.
Across the West, there’s a search for the meaning and implications of this radical departure from what was previously Maga’s declared opposition to foreign adventurism.
While the consequences for South America, Greenland and Denmark are uppermost, the impact on Russia has been under-discussed. Like Trump’s tactics or loathe them, one positive development is that Vladimir Putin has just lost yet another friend in his alliance of dictatorships.
Putin and Maduro were close partners. When Maduro stole elections, Russia provided him with political cover. When Russia mounted its second invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Maduro reciprocated by publicly backing the war.
Nor was their alliance only political. Over the last 20 years, Russia has supplied billions of dollars to the Venezuelan state, and is the leading provider of its weapons (including, amusingly, the air defences that failed to trouble US aircraft a few days ago).
The two dictatorships also co-operate on the development of Venezuelan oil fields and sanctions-jumping – the latter evidenced by the rush to re-designate dark-fleet tankers from Venezuelan to Russian national flags in the last couple of days.
Maduro’s ejection is just the latest sorry episode for the Putin fanclub, which is in a parlous state.
The Wagner Group is a shattered fragment of what it once was, after its attempted rebellion against the Kremlin and its leader’s death in a plane “accident”. Bashar al-Assad’s bloodstained tyranny in Syria, propped up at vast financial and military cost by Russia, collapsed just over a year ago, with the dictator himself fleeing to Moscow.
Hezbollah, which served as a key ally of Assad and Putin in the Syrian war, is in tatters after a battering by Israel, and under pressure from the Lebanese government to disarm.
Iran, a key supplier of drones and a longstanding ally of the Kremlin, is riven by mass street protests, now into their ninth day. The Revolutionary Guard is reportedly using live fire to murder civilian protesters, while in some cities security apparatus has been attacked and overrun by crowds chanting for the downfall of the Ayatollah.
There is great anxiety in Moscow at a perceived loss of control over the Caucasus, amid protests in Georgia against Russian political interference, disillusionment in Armenia after the failure of the Kremlin’s security guarantees in the war with Azerbaijan, and a deterioration of the relationship with Azeri dictator Ilham Aliyev after the Russians shot down a civilian airliner.
After years of building up alliances, Putin is left with only Iran, Belarus and North Korea round the table. Meanwhile, failure in Ukraine has reduced his status with China from a peer power to something verging on a client state, reliant on Beijing for money and technological know-how.
The nations of Central Asia, as former components of the Soviet Union, have traditionally viewed themselves as part of Russia’s orbit, but in recent years have visibly begun to distance themselves or at least pursue multipolar relationships with China and the West. Russia’s capacity to threaten or to offer protection has diminished, just as the price of serving its interests has risen dangerously high.
So Maduro’s overnight transition from wealthy tough guy to New York prison inmate will sting. The question now is what Trump does next.
Trump is open about viewing the effective seizure of Venezuela’s oil reserves as a benefit of the military strike. He has boasted that the Americans will use this to recoup their costs.
He could go further, opting to bolster his coffers and boost the economy by flooding the market with oil. If he does so, this would further erode one of the last assets available in the Russian and Iranian locker – cutting their energy revenues, weakening their economies, and diminishing their influence.
The alternative – troublingly hinted at by all this talk of a “Donroe Doctrine” – is that he seeks a return to the flawed concept of carving the world up into spheres of influence. In that view, while the US would be proactively dominant in its own backyard, destabilising Russia would be negative rather than positive.
There are obvious flaws to this, of course. For starters, Trump evidently doesn’t see, say, Taiwan as beyond his realm of interest, and he has already carried out direct military strikes against Iran.
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Even more importantly, Russia is no longer a great power, or any sort of near-peer power when compared with the US and China. We’re talking about a rust-bucket nation that has struggled in Ukraine for almost four years to make meaningful progress in a war with a much smaller neighbour. What sphere of influence is Russian even capable of overseeing?
In the absence of any deeper plan or guiding philosophy, the world’s best hope is that Trump can be persuaded that opening the taps on Venezuelan oil as an economic weapon would make him a bigger, more successful winner than not doing so. He’s already pleased as punch with the capture of Maduro.
If it now presents him with an opportunity to create wealth at home and disruption to enemies abroad, in one swoop – that could prove to be an irresistible deal to end all deals.
Mark Wallace is chief executive of Total Politics Group
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