Such an outcome would suggest that the Trump administration resisted the temptation of full-scale ideological regime change and remains pragmatic enough to avoid a prolonged ground invasion of Venezuela. The fallout — refugee crisis, internal unrest, and elite fragmentation — remains to be seen. Yet history offers little comfort that Maduro’s removal will lead to stability, let alone liberal democracy. If past US interventions are any guide, the long-term effect is more likely to be the further militarisation of Venezuelan politics, with nationalism and social order emerging as the primary glue of regime solidarity. 

Indeed, despite widespread discontent with Maduro’s rule, pro-government crowds have already gathered in Caracas to protest his overnight ouster by a foreign power. Chavismo, long sustained by anti-imperialist rhetoric, may now find renewed legitimacy precisely because Maduro was removed not by Venezuelans themselves, but by Washington and the CIA.

Beyond Venezuela itself, the broader message of the operation is unmistakable. The United States has forcefully communicated to the nations of the Western Hemisphere that it will justify its military interventions by claiming the right to enforce US law internationally — at least in the Americas — regardless of sovereignty, regional instability, or political blowback. Coming on the heels of the National Security Strategy’s call to reassert an updated, neo-mercantilist version of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the strike represents an ultimatum: Washington will act as the hemisphere’s police, enforcing its economic sphere of influence by force if necessary.

Washington’s actions in Venezuela reflect a Trump doctrine that views the world less as an ideological battlefield of liberals and autocrats than as an arena of zero-sum economic competition among great powers. In this framing, the Western Hemisphere is not merely a security perimeter, as in Roosevelt’s doctrine, but a commercial hinterland whose resources, markets, and supply chains must remain firmly under American control. Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, critical minerals, and strategic location for maritime trade therefore loom far larger in Washington’s calculus than any abstract concern with democracy, international law, or human rights.

Ideology, again, is secondary here. What matters is deal-making, playing ball, and cooperating with US commercial interests. This helps explain Washington’s readiness to work with figures drawn from the core of the Chavista state rather than the long-favoured exile opposition. Loyalty is transactional, not doctrinal; legitimacy flows not from ballots or values, but from compliance with the imperial centre.

By framing a cross-border military strike and the forcible abduction of a sitting head of state as an extension of domestic criminal process, Washington has effectively asserted a doctrine of extraterritorial police power backed by overwhelming force to use as cover for economic conquest. If national sovereignty can be nullified by indictment from a foreign, extra-judicial court, then no state outside the protective umbrella of US power can consider itself secure. Today it is Venezuela; tomorrow it could just as easily be Iran — or any other regime that can be rhetorically and legalistically reframed as “criminal” rather than simply a political, ideological, or strategic rival.

There is an uncomfortable irony at play here. In removing the head of a sovereign country through a swift “special military operation”, Donald Trump accomplished precisely what Vladimir Putin attempted — and failed — to achieve in Ukraine. He excised an intractable thorn on his side in hopes of reestablishing America’s sphere of influence over a country in its near-abroad. The difference lies not in principle, but in capability. The operation showcased the overwhelming superiority of US military power while signalling Washington’s renewed willingness to enforce its hemispheric dominance. After all, preventing Western encroachment in Ukraine is far more existential for Russia than Venezuela is for the US. 

Trump will undoubtedly tout this as a decisive victory. He outmanoeuvred Maduro, avoided US casualties — at least for now — and demonstrated American primacy and resolve to the region. Yet the more difficult task lies ahead. Whether Washington can compel Maduro’s successor — be it Vice President Rodríguez or Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López — to subordinate Venezuelan sovereignty to American economic and strategic interests remains far from certain. The assumption that, through US military coercion or its “Big Stick”, Venezuela will simply offer up its oil and mineral wealth to US companies reflects a deep imperial hubris that harkens to the 19th century and is at odds with the post-unipolar reality of our time.

In the end, US machismo may have bested Chavismo tactically. Strategically, however, it risks entrenching the very dynamics it claims to oppose: hardened nationalism, militarised politics, and a regional order defined less by stability and mutual recognition than by fear and intimidation. It also does little to address the fentanyl crisis in the United States, which has nothing to do with Venezuela being a cocaine transit hub. 

Still, the precedent has been set for new waves of US military interventions abroad — and in a multinodal world increasingly resistant to American primacy, the costs of enforcing an economic empire through global policing may yet exceed the benefits.