The Dictatorship is Dead, Long Live the Dictatorship

Jan. 5, 2025

The facts, likely well known to readers of the Latin America Daily Briefing, bear repeating: on Saturday morning the United States bombed several military locations around Caracas and captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his partner, Cilia Flores. They are currently in New York where they were indicted in a federal court on charges that include narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of machine guns.

The latest information is that 80 people were killed in “‘Operation Absolute Resolve,” none of them U.S. forces. Cuban state media reported that 32 Cubans, among them members of the armed forces on a mission at the request of Venezuela, were also killed in the attacks. Venezuela’s military accused U.S. forces of killing members of Maduro’s security detail “in cold blood,” reports the Miami Herald.

The New York Times characterizes it as “the riskiest U.S. military operation of its kind” since the Navy killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

After initial confusion, it appears that the Chavista cupula, led by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, remain in power and in control of Venezuela’s armed forces. U.S. President Donald Trump insisted on Saturday that the U.S. will run Venezuela — “we will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. (Guardian)

But this appears to be aimed at coercing the remaining leadership, rather than a direct invasion, now. Trump said Rodriguez might pay a bigger price than Maduro “if she doesn’t do what’s right.” U.S. Defense Department officials said there were no U.S. military personnel in the country, but that there are 15,000 troops in the area. (New York Times)

The US will keep a “quarantine” around Venezuela to block the entry and exit of oil tankers under American sanctions to sustain “leverage” over Maduro’s successor, said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “We are going to make our assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly.” (Guardian)

Rodríguez’s initially defiant messaging gave way to a more conciliatory statement on Sunday night, promising to seek a “balanced and respectful” relationship with the United States.

There has not been talk of a democratic transition in a country where last year’s presidential elections were widely believed to have been stolen, and which has been governed by a repressive regime Rodríguez formed part of. “We’re going to run it, fix it, we’ll have elections at the right time, but the main thing you have to fix is it’s a broken country,” Trump told reporters yesterday. (Guardian)

Though she is a regime hardliner, the New York Times reports that Rodríguez “had impressed Trump officials with her management of Venezuela’s crucial oil industry” and portrays her as a pragmatic “economic troubleshooter.”

“In grabbing just Maduro and his wife and allowing most of the Venezuelan government to remain in place, the U.S. appears to be choosing a path, at least for the time being, that avoids the need for a sustained military presence in the country and the associated legal ramifications,” reports the Washington Post.

Though counterintuitive, the apparent partnership between Rodríguez and the Trump administration is “an experiment that could succeed because it has the potential to satisfy the core interests of both sides — and, under certain conditions, may be one of the few scenarios capable of governing Venezuela without triggering large-scale violence, institutional collapse or mass migration,” according to the Miami Herald.

Rodríguez and the remaining Chavista leadership must maintain calm in the country and simultaneously placate Trump, a complicated balancing act, reports the New York Times separately. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday the United States would maintain its blockade on sanctioned oil tankers going in and out of Venezuela until Rodríguez shows progress in responding to the Trump administration’s demands. He also said the U.S. would keep striking boats suspected of carrying drugs, reports the New York Times.

“People in Washington tend to think there’s no other political motivation, no ideological motivation, or that there’s nothing left of the Chávez project,” Phil Gunson, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group told NYT. “I don’t think that’s true. They still see themselves as leading a revolution. They can’t afford to be seen to be turning Venezuela into a simple satellite of the U.S.”

Chavista Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello spoke of monolithic unity within Venezuela’s military and promised to liberate Maduro, who is currently being held in custody in New York. (Efecto Cocuyo)

The rapid capture of Maduro and Rodríguez’s accession have led to speculation that the Chavista leader was betrayed. But analysts currently believe that Rodríguez is part of a transition pact with the United States, which will likely lead to a short-term period of stability, but with a high likelihood of longer-term political instability, reports Efecto Cocuyo.

What has been given a prominent place at the table is oil: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said on Saturday. (New York Times)

Oil has been at the heart of Venezuela-U.S. conflicts for decades, reports El País.

Previous to Maduro’s ouster, analysts were concerned that regime change would entail chaos if armed groups allied with the government sought to defend it. This weekend “experts said it was notable that the thousands of armed men dispersed throughout the country seemed to be keeping a relatively low profile,” likely a sign that Venezuelan officials are anxious to show they retain control over the country.

But the quiet also reflects the fact that the colectivos are often used to repress protests, which have not been a feature in the wake of the airstrikes, reports the New York Times. Caracas remained quiet yesterday: “Dozens of stores, restaurants and churches remained closed. Those on the streets looked shell-shocked, staring at their phones or into the distance,” reports the Associated Press.

Trump’s sidelining of opposition leader and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado, who has gone out of her way to curry favor with him, has sparked concern among the anti-Maduro movement in Caracas, reports El País.

Edmundo González, widely believed to have won last year’s presidential election, called for Venezuelan authorities to release political prisoners as a necessary starting point for a transition. (El Pitazo)

More

• “Few will be saddened to see Maduro behind bars. But this relief does not erase an undeniable fact: what has happened is also an act of aggression against a sovereign nation,” wrote Boris Muñoz in El País. “A logic of realpolitik has been imposed, putting an end to the old modus operandi of Chavismo and establishing new rules of power. The question is whether this attack will pave the way for a democratic transition or, on the contrary, inaugurate a protectorate over Venezuela.”

• “Maduro was captured Saturday, 36 years to the day after Noriega was removed by American forces. And as was the case with the Panamanian leader, lawyers for Maduro are expected to contest the legality of his arrest, arguing that he is immune from prosecution as a sovereign head of foreign state, which is a bedrock principle of international and U.S. law,” reports the Associated Press.

• New York Times and the Guardian on the legalities of a U.S. tutelage of Venezuela and forced rendition of a foreign leader, albeit a de facto one.

• France, Spain, Brazil, Russia, China and the European Commission were among those who said Trump had broken international rules. In Latin America Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay were among those who objected to the violation of national sovereignty. Trump’s allies in the region, including Argentine President Javier Milei and Ecuador’s leader Daniel Noboa, celebrated. (Guardian)

Donroe Doctrine

• The U.S. incursion into Venezuela and forced rendition of Maduro is a paradigm shift for Latin American international relations — but the line in the sand had already shifted in recent months with the summary execution of alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean sea and Pacific ocean. “The so-called Donroe doctrine operates openly as a disciplinary regime – transactional, punitive, unadorned – which is perfectly aligned with the hemisphere’s political shifts,” I wrote in a recent Guardian op-ed.

• “One of the administration’s most powerful tools has been the expansion of exceptions, zones where ordinary rules no longer apply. Migrants were the first category, stripped of legal protections. … Every exception carves a new normal.” Guardian

• Indeed, yesterday Trump told journalists that Colombia was being “run by a sick man” and accused President Gustavo Petro of producing and selling cocaine to the US, adding: “He’s not going to be doing it very long.” In response to a media query on whether there will be a US operation in Colombia, Trump says: “It sounds good to me.” (Guardian)

• He also suggested that Cuba could be a target: “I think Cuba is going to be something we’ll end up talking about, because Cuba is a failing nation,” he told reporters. (New York Times)

• “Thinking as a region, this is scary in a way I haven’t seen for a long time,” Celso Amorim, the top foreign policy adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, told the New York Times. “The most serious thing to me is that this return to interventionism isn’t even disguised,” he said in an interview. “There isn’t even a, let’s say, ‘No, we went there to defend democracy.’ There is an objective that is obviously economic.”

• “George W Bush invaded Iraq on a lie. But this illegal attack came without UN resolutions of any kind or congressional approval; Democrats were not even informed and say they were actively misled in briefings. Mr Trump doesn’t seek to bend international norms, but to destroy them,” argues a Guardian editorial.

• “Trump’s move into Venezuela is another nail in the coffin of the old postwar status quo. The White House reneged on commitments to receive authorization from Congress before deploying the U.S. military in Venezuela,” writes Ishaan Tharoor in the Washington Post.

• “Maduro’s disrepute is so great that it has paralyzed actions everywhere against the most serious, and unpunished, imperialist intervention of recent times,” writes Pablo Stefanoni in El País, arguing that the moment for the region’s leftists is akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall.