Operation Absolute Resolve against Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela was successful in the sense that the dictator and his complicit wife were captured alive in a stunning U.S. military operation, which needed months of preparation, but was flawlessly executed within hours.
Together with Stephen Miller, President Trump’s homeland security adviser, the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a key anti-Cuba and anti-Venezuela hawk. Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants. During his career, the former Florida senator has repeatedly advocated regime change in Cuba. In that context, he also stated that the fall of the Maduro regime in Venezuela would bring change in Cuba.
For decades, the ties between the two countries have been strong, notably through the “oil for doctors” program, under which Venezuela sends oil to Cuba in exchange for tens of thousands of Cuban doctors, dentists and nurses who work in Venezuela and provide training for medical staff.
On January 4, in a “Meet the Press” interview on NBC News, Marco Rubio was asked whether Venezuela’s ally Cuba would be targeted next. He did not rule out an intervention. He underlined that “the Cuban government is a huge problem”, that “they are in a lot of trouble, yes.”
As a Florida senator, Marco Rubio had signed a letter of support for María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, which she won in 2025. Donald Trump, who stylizes himself as the “peace president”, had hoped to win it himself. So far, Trump has shied away from war. But, since returning to the White House a year ago, he has authorized airstrikes and other interventions across Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, Iran and now Venezuela, upsetting some of his MAGA supporters, who are strongly isolationist. Let’s also not forget that Trump repeatedly talked about making Panama, Canada and Greenland part of the United States, and threatened to take action against Mexico, Columbia and other countries. In the case of Trump, we can resume the policy not as speak softly, but speak loudly and carry a big stick, in many cases against allies, U.S. friendly countries, keeping a soft spot for dictators such as Putin.
Crude oil and its derivatives account for roughly 90% of Venezuela’s export revenues. In a “Face the Nation” interview on CBS on Sunday, January 4, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the United States would keep a military “quarantine” in place on Venezuela’s oil exports to exert leverage on the regime’s new leadership. Regarding the sanctions, he explained: “That remains in place, and that’s a tremendous amount of leverage that will continue to be in place until we see changes, not just to further the national interest of the United States, which is No. 1, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela.” Regarding the oil industry, Marco Rubio said: “They need investment from private companies who are only going to invest under certain guarantees and conditions.”
Is the action against Venezuela illegal, a return to gunboat policy? Secretary of State Maro Rubio said that congressional authorization of the military operation to seize President Maduro was not necessary because it was “a law enforcement operation” rather than an “invasion”.
On January 3, President Trump had said during a Florida news conference that the United States would run Venezuela and that, if necessary, he would not shy away from boots on the ground. Marco Rubio said the following day: “it’s not running — it’s running policy, the policy with regards to this.”
In an interview with The New York Post, asked if U.S. troops would be deployed to help run Venezuela, Donald Trump replied: “No, if Maduro’s vice president — if the vice president does what we want, we won’t have to do that.”
Already during his first term, Trump had indicted Maduro in a narco-terrorism and cocaine-trafficking conspiracy. In 2025/2026, he added fentanyl production and trade charges. However, Venezuela is not known to produce fentanyl. What is true is that Venezuela has worked with shady regimes (China, Iran, Russia, etc.) and terror organizations (including Hamas and Hezbollah) around the world.
Regarding Donald Trump, let’s remember that even a broken clock is right twice a day. Is that the case here? It remains to be seen whether Operation Absolute Resolve, executed with the help of some 150 military aircraft, numerous Navy ships, special forces on the ground and the $50 million reward the U.S. government offered for information leading to Maduro’s arrest, will bring about the urgently needed regime change in Venezuela.
Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez have managed to ruin the once richest South American nation. The public debt is estimated at around $170 billion. Roughly one in five Venezuelians was forced to flee the country between 1999 and 2026, that is some eight million people, making it the largest recorded refugee crisis in the Americas. Corruption is omnipresent, the rate of inflation is estimated at around 500% per year, the devaluation of the national currency (bolívar) is in a comparable, stratospheric region. There is no rule of law, no democracy. The 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, according to observers most likely won by Edmundo González by a large margin, was rigged, as was the 2025 parliamentary election.
Nicolás Maduro (*1962), who studied in Cuba in his youth, started as a bus driver and later became a union leader. After a series of positions under the corrupt, socialist president Hugo Chávez, who ran the country much further into the ground, Maduro was handpicked by Chávez to succeed him as the new strongman after his death in 2013.
According to the 2019 edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, with 303.3 billion barrels, Venezuela had the world’s largest oil reserves (17% of global reserves), slightly ahead of Saudi Arabia with 297.7 billion barrels.
Although the country had been known for years to have huge reserves, the Venezuelian oil industry was only built after 1910; previously, the poor country had specialized in the export of cocoa and coffee (Nikolaus Werz). By 1940, Venezuela had already become the world’s third largest oil producer.
Typical Venezuelan crude is heavy oil with a high sulfur content, making it expensive to produce, but technically, it’s a relatively simple procedure. The United States offer special refineries exactly for this type of heavy crude.
For years, Chevron was in a unique position because it was the only U.S. oil company with a U.S. government authorization to extract oil in Venezuela, refine and export it. According to The New York Times, in May 2025, Donald Trump did not renew the license when it expired. But in July, the U.S. president reversed his position when Maduro freed ten American prisoners in exchange for over 250 Venezuelans that the Trump administration had sent to CECOT, the Salvadoran prison. In addition, Trump had been swayed by the argument of the Chevron CEO Mike Wirth that his company was a bulwark against China. Still according to the NYT, behind the scenes, Trump set a course for confrontation. On July 25, he signed a secret order telling the Pentagon to take action against drug-trafficking groups, putting in motion the targeting of Venezuelans. In August of 2025, he sent a C.I.A. team to Caracas. Delta Force commandos rehearsed the extraction of the Venezuelian dictator inside a full-scale model of Maduro’s compound that the Joint Special Operations Command had built in Kentucky.
Back to the history of Venezuelian oil production: Maduro, Chávez and their “Bolivarian Revolution” initiated in 1999 cannot be blamed for everything that went wrong in their country. Already in 1971, during his first term in office, then president Rafael Caldera passed a law that nationalized the Venezuelian natural gas industry, he raised the oil profit tax to 70%, passed the law of reversion which stipulated that all oil company assets would revert to the nation without compensation upon the expiration of the concessions accorded to oil companies. In short, president Rafael Caldera and the Venezuelian lawmakers of his time prepared the nationalization of the oil industry, which followed under his watch and under the watch of the following presidents.
President Trump stated: “Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars.” He added: “The socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations, and they stole it through force.” Now Trump wants it all back. For instance ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company, has been expropriated by Hugo Chavez in 2007.
During both the Bush and Obama administrations, even when relations were at their worst, the United States were Venezuela’s top oil customer, Deutsche Welle reported in 2013. In other words, the United States policy towards Venezuela has never been coherent and/or was naive.
Back to the earlier Venezuelian history: From 1958 until 1998, Venezuela was an increasingly corrupt democracy with a nationalized oil industry which, towards the end, generated less and less revenue. After an attempted coup by younger officers led by Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez in 1992, a fragmented multi-party system emerged. After two years in jail, the charismatic Chávez tried to gain power legally through elections. In 1998, he won the presidential election. Subsequently, he transformed the political system, eroding the rule of law, the separation of power and, after a failed coup against his regime in 2002, he took control or closed important parts of the once free media. Hugo Chávez and, after him, Nicolás Maduro increasingly modeled Venezuela on Fidel and Raúl Castro’s Cuba, while the opposition looked and is looking to the United States for guidance.
Chronic corruption, mismanagement, underinvestment and sanctions crippled the Venezuelian oil industry and ruined the once prosperous country, which needs a fresh start.
If regime change should follow in Venezuela, Cuba, relying on oil from its regional neighbor, as well as Iran, Russia and China, which had become the largest importer of Venezuelian oil in the last decade, will be weakened, whereas the position of the United States will be strengthened.
Last, but not least, let’s not forget that decades of sanctions have not changed the regime’s in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran, to mention just a few famous ones. The West watched and protested half-heartedly when the majority of people in Hong Kong, Iran, Belarus and elsewhere tried to get rid of dictators, authoritarian regimes, protesting peacefully for all kinds of freedoms and for democracy, just to be beaten up, shot, imprisoned or forced into exile. These regimes have a monopoly on the use of force (Gewaltmonopol), and are ready to use it brutally. In those countries, without help from the West, change is almost impossible through peaceful protests.
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Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro during a meeting on May 29, 2023. Photograph: Palácio do Planalto, Brazil, via Wikipedia/Wikimedia.
Article added on January 5, 2026 at 13:00 German time.
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