The capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro has unleashed a familiar ritual in Washington. Call it the Great Precedent Panic. Pundits are warning that President Donald Trump has handed Xi Jinping a template for the Chinese takeover of Taiwan. Democratic Senator Mark Warner, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asks: “If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership?”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The concern spans party lines. Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and Air Force veteran, warns that China could “justify an invasion of Taiwan” by pointing to the Maduro snatch.
But this is the wrong debate. It fundamentally misunderstands what has—and hasn’t—constrained China’s ambitions toward Taiwan. And it simultaneously ignores why prolonged American involvement in Venezuela should scare Taiwan.
China’s true constraints
Beijing has not refrained from action against Taiwan out of deference to international law and norms. Its restraint has always been driven by harder variables: military readiness, economic consequences, uncertainty about American intervention, and the sheer operational complexity of conquering a well-armed island of 24 million people across 100 miles of open water.
None of these factors changed when Delta Force helicopters descended on Caracas.
Moreover, Beijing has always regarded Taiwan as an “internal affair,” a renegade province, not a sovereign state. From China’s perspective, any action against Taipei would be a domestic matter. The analogy to Venezuela—an unambiguously foreign country—simply doesn’t apply. China doesn’t need international precedent to assert control over what it considers its own territory.
So if the precedent argument is overblown, does Venezuela matter for Taiwan at all?
Yes, but not in the way most analysts are suggesting. The real question isn’t whether Trump has emboldened Xi. It’s whether Taiwan should rethink its own assumptions about great-power protection.
Taiwan’s shifting calculus
Consider what Venezuela reveals about the reliability of powerful patrons.
Maduro had cultivated deep ties with both China and Russia. Beijing was buying Venezuelan oil—about 80% of exports—investing in infrastructure, and providing diplomatic cover at the United Nations. A Chinese envoy met with Maduro to discuss rising tensions with the U.S. just hours before American forces seized him. Maduro’s last social media message before being captured celebrated “the strong bonds of brotherhood and friendship between China and Venezuela.” None of it mattered.
Chong Ja Ian, a professor at the National University of Singapore, draws the uncomfortable parallel. Maduro “had moved closer to Beijing and Moscow in the apparent expectation that this would provide some buffer—in a similar way that Taiwan believes informal U.S. ties can stave off Beijing’s ambitions,” he tells TIME.
If Beijing’s patronage couldn’t protect Maduro, why should Taipei assume Washington’s can protect them?
This isn’t an abstract concern. Trump has repeatedly signaled that American security commitments are transactional, not principled. He has suggested Taiwan should “pay for protection” and dramatically increase defense spending—to as much as 10% of GDP—or risk losing American support. Trump’s enthusiasm for deals with Xi has often seemed to exceed his commitment to Taiwan’s security. Before taking office, he mused that Taiwan should pay more for its “insurance policy.”
Venezuela shows what happens when Trump perceives a threat to American interests in America’s backyard: overwhelming force, no consultation with Congress, and regime change in a matter of hours. But Taiwan isn’t in America’s backyard—it’s in China’s. And there’s little evidence Trump regards Taiwan’s security as a core American interest the way he regards hemispheric dominance.
Taiwanese officials have publicly celebrated the Maduro operation, calling it “a powerful deterrent to Beijing’s aggression” and “a timely reminder of the US ability to defeat militaries equipped with Chinese-made weapons.” This is wishful thinking—and it reveals the very dependence that should concern them. They’re cheering that their patron is strong and willing to act. But patrons act on their own interests, not their clients’. Trump didn’t seize Maduro to demonstrate commitment to allies; he did it to control Venezuelan oil and assert dominance over the Western Hemisphere.
New concerns for Taiwan
What should truly worry Taiwan is American attention being consumed by this region.
Trump has committed to “running” Venezuela until a “safe, proper, and judicious transition” can occur—a timeline he declined to specify, though he didn’t deny it could take years. He said he’s “not afraid of boots on the ground.” The echoes of past American misadventures are unmistakable. It’s hard not to recall George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” moment in 2003, shortly before Iraq descended into insurgency.
Venezuela is a country of 28 million people, riven by armed militias, criminal organizations, and Chavista loyalists who haven’t simply vanished because Maduro was helicoptered to New York. If the transition goes badly—and the history of American regime change suggests it often does—the United States could find itself mired in exactly the kind of open-ended commitment Trump vowed on the campaign trail to avoid.
For Taiwan, this is a concrete strategic risk. A prolonged Venezuelan entanglement could consume American attention, resources, and political bandwidth. The carrier strike groups, bombers, and amphibious assault ships deployed to Operation Southern Spear are precisely the assets that would be needed in a Taiwan contingency. They cannot be in the Caribbean and the Taiwan Strait simultaneously.
Some Chinese analysts are already drawing this conclusion. Mei Yang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen argues that the U.S. “is unlikely to interfere excessively in East Asian affairs such as the Taiwan issue” as it focuses on reasserting hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. Others see a “temporary strategic retrenchment” by Washington—not permanent disengagement, but enough of a distraction to create opportunities.
China doesn’t need rhetorical “precedent” to move against Taiwan. What it needs is a window—a moment when American attention is elsewhere, resources are stretched, and political will is exhausted by commitments closer to home. A Venezuelan quagmire could provide exactly that.
Taiwan’s next steps
None of this means Taiwan should abandon its American partnership. It remains essential—there is no substitute for U.S. military power in the region. But Taipei needs to act on the assumption that American help, if it comes, may come late, or in limited form, or not at all.
Concretely, this means stockpiling. Taiwan should deepen its reserves of ammunition, energy, and food to withstand a prolonged blockade—measured in months, not weeks. It means accelerating domestic production of the asymmetric weapons that could make an invasion prohibitively costly: anti-ship missiles, sea mines, and drones, lots of drones. It means building redundant command structures hardened against the kind of decapitation strike China has been rehearsing.
It also means diplomatic diversification. Taiwan’s security cannot rest on a single patron. Taipei should deepen ties with Japan, Australia, and European partners who have their own strategic and economic interests in the island’s survival. The goal is to make Taiwan’s defense a multilateral concern—harder for any one partner to abandon.
Finally, Taiwan should keep reminding the world what’s at stake. TSMC’s dominance in advanced semiconductors makes the island’s security a global economic imperative. Partnering with Taiwan isn’t charity; it’s self-interest. Taiwan’s friends should understand that clearly—and so should Taiwan.
The lesson from Venezuela isn’t that China will now feel emboldened to act. It’s that small states which bet their survival on great-power protection can find themselves abandoned when their patron’s interests diverge from their own.
Maduro thought he had powerful friends. He did—until they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help.
Taiwan should take note.
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