Trump’s move to topple Maduro is fraught with risk

The US may want many of its foes gone from power. It doesn’t usually send in the military and physically remove them.

Venezuela’s abrupt awakening took two forms.

Its residents were woken abruptly to the sound of deafening booms: the sound of its capital Caracas under attack from US strikes targeting military infrastructure.

Its government has now woken up from any illusion that US military intervention or regime change was just a distant threat.

US President Donald Trump has announced its leader, Nicolás Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country. He now faces a US trial over weapons and drugs charges.

The US has not carried out direct military intervention in Latin America like this since its 1989 invasion of Panama to depose the then-military ruler, Manuel Noriega.

Back then, like now, Washington framed this as part of wider crackdown on drug trafficking and criminality.

The US has long accused Maduro, too, of leading a criminal trafficking organisation, something he strongly denies. It designated as a foreign terrorist group the ‘Cartel de los Soles’ – a name the US uses to describe a group of elites in Venezuela who it alleges orchestrate illegal activities like drug trafficking and illegal mining.

For years, Maduro’s government has been accused of human rights abuses.

In 2020, United Nations investigators said its government had committed “egregious violations” amounting to crimes against humanity such as extrajudicial killings, torture, violence and disappearances – and that Maduro and other top officials were implicated.

Human rights organisations have recorded hundreds of political prisoners in the country, including some detained after anti-government protests.

This latest operation, striking inside a sovereign capital directly, marks a dramatic escalation in US engagement in the region.

The forcible removal of Maduro will be hailed a major victory by some of the more hawkish figures within the US administration, many of whom have argued that only direct intervention could force Maduro from power.

Washington has not recognised him as the country’s president since the 2024 elections. The opposition published electronic voting tallies after the vote which it said proved it, not Maduro, won the election.

The result was deemed neither free nor fair by international election observers. The opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was barred from running in it.

But for Venezuela’s government, this intervention confirms what it has long claimed – that Washington’s ultimate goal is regime change.

Venezuela has also accused the US of wanting to “steal” its oil reserves, the largest in the world, and other resources – an allegation it felt was vindicated after the US seized at least two oil tankers off the coast.

The strikes and capture come after months of US military escalation in the region.

The US has sent its biggest military deployment in decades to the region, comprising warplanes, thousands of troops, helicopters and the world’s largest warship. It has carried out dozens of strikes on alleged small drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing at least 110 people.

Any doubts that remained that those operations were at least in part about regime change too have now been dashed by today’s actions.

What remains deeply unclear is what comes next inside Venezuela itself.

The US would clearly like the Venezuelan opposition, who it is allied with, to take power – potentially either led by opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, or the opposition candidate from the 2024 elections Edmundo Gonzalez.

However, even some strong critics of Maduro warn this would not be simple given the government’s grip on power in the country.

It controls the judiciary, the Supreme Court, the military – and is aligned with powerfully armed paramilitaries known as “colectivos”.

Some fear US intervention could trigger violent fragmentation and a prolonged power struggle. Even some who dislike Maduro and want to see him gone are wary of US intervention being the means – remembering decades of US-backed coups and regime change in Latin America in the 20th century.

The opposition itself is also divided in parts – not all back a transition to Machado or her support for Trump.

It’s not clear what the US’s next move is.

Will it try to push for fresh elections? Will it try to depose further senior members of the government or the military and force them to face justice in the US?

As for Trump, his administration has become increasingly muscular in the region what with a financial bailout for Argentina, tariffs whacked on Brazil to try to influence the coup trial of Trump’s ally and former right-wing Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, and now the military intervention in Venezuela.

He benefits from having more allies in the region now – with the continent shifting Right in recent elections such as in Ecuador, Argentina and Chile. But while Maduro has few allies in the region, there are still big powers like Brazil and Colombia who do not support US military intervention.

And some of Trump’s own MAGA base in the US are also not happy at his growing interventionism after promising to put “America First”.

For Maduro’s closest allies, Saturday’s events raise urgent questions and fears about their own futures.

Many may not want to give up the fight or allow a transition unless they feel they could receive some kind of protection or reassurance from persecution themselves.