Published by The i Paper (5th January, 2026)
Nicholas Maduro ran one of the world’s most repulsive regimes for 13 years, building on the corrupt inheritance of his predecessor Hugo Chavez to send Venezuela hurtling down the road to ruin. He preached socialism while pillaging state coffers, intimidating foes, stealing elections, impoverishing his people, inflicting hunger and sparking the world’s worst displacement crisis. At least seven million citizens fled abroad as his country – seen as the envy of Latin America with oil-based prosperity and stability when I visited three decades ago – fell apart. He was propped up by ugly autocracies in Beijing, Havana, Moscow and Tehran engaged in a global fight against democracy and freedom. And he laundered cash for lethal terrorist groups.
Maduro was, in short, a monster. A stain on humanity. No decent person should shed tears at the demise of his gruesome dictatorship. Yet however abhorrent his behaviour, however pleasing to see this thieving thug in handcuffs, it does not excuse his abduction by the United States.
President Donald Trump’s decision to send his armed forces into a sovereign nation to oust its tyrannical leader smacks of performative populist politics. His assault lacks coherent explanation, flouts international law, violates his country’s constitution, threatens to send Venezuela spiralling into worse crisis, and gives a green light to other imperialistic regimes wanting to grab some land or resources.
Trump is, of course, the president who posed as a peacemaker to attain power, saying “I am not going to start wars”. Yet since returning to office last year, he has bombed Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. He has threatened to annex Greenland, a resource-rich island belonging to a Nato ally. Now he has instigated regime change in Caracas while menacing Colombia, Cuba and Mexico.
Yet as we know from painful recent history, especially in the Middle East, it is impossible to predict consequences of such disruptive interventions. Maduro is loathed by most people in his shattered nation – but so was Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, as I saw reporting his overthrow, and just look at that nation’s subsequent tragedy. The ripples could spread to places such as struggling Cuba, which needs Venezuelan oil to survive and has sent thousands of its security operatives to shore up the nation’s regime.
The US spent five months assembling its forces in the Caribbean, the largest naval armada seen in the region since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The pre-dawn raid to snatch the moustached strongman and his wife – a powerful political operator in her own right – was daring and impressive, militarily.
The nominal defence for this incursion, which follows dozens of illegal attacks on small boats accused of drug-running, was targeting of narco-terrorists. This feels implausible, however, given Venezuela’s comparatively minor role in drug trafficking to America. It is also utterly hypocritical when Trump has just pardoned a former Honduran president sentenced to 45 years in prison who boasted he would “stuff drugs up the gringos’ noses” while pocketing vast sums from cartels and crippling his country with violent gangsterism.
Even if true, this would merely be another misstep in the backfiring war on drugs, which has wreaked havoc over its catastrophic half-century history. Remember also how Tony Blair used similar excuses for that failed 20-year war on the Taliban in Afghanistan? Now this attack on Caracas is clouded in confusion and conjecture. There are hints the White House mounted a coup aided by regime insiders.
Trump has been both boastful and evasive, breezily saying the US will run the country. He claimed Maduro’s deputy Delcy Rodríguez, was “willing to do what we think is necessary” only for her to denounce US “barbarity” and condemn “an atrocity that violates international law”. And he was shamefully dismissive of the brave democratic opposition; perhaps this infantile US president is still piqued that María Corina Machado – whose movement rightfully won Venezuela’s last election – took the Nobel Peace Prize instead of him.
Trump’s regime decapitation was not really about drugs. And those special forces who seized an evil dictator were not serving the cause of freedom under this creepy US President who is so cavalier about democracy if the Chavistas (left-wing populists aligned with Chávez’s vision) stay in control of their country, and state TV still runs regime propaganda. Indeed, this abduction might spark fresh crackdowns on dissent on the grounds of collaboration with their enemies.
Yet note how Trump and his team recently began talking of reclaiming energy resources that Venezuela – sitting on one-fifth of the world’s oil reserves – nationalised decades ago. Now he says US companies will extract “a tremendous amount of wealth” in the name of enriching both Americans and Venezuelans.
This short-sighted assault – a display of unrestrained US power – is in keeping with Washington’s tradition of arrogant imperialism and bullying nations in its backyard. This began with an invasion of Mexico in 1846, which led to one of the most iniquitous treaties in history involving seizure of lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah in return for a token $15m payment.
It was followed by numerous armed interventions and coups in Latin America under the 1823 Monroe Doctrine that proclaimed Washington’s dubious right to exclude foreign powers from its proclaimed sphere of influence. Now this dodgy concept has been revived in line with the White House’s appalling recent national security strategy, which demands economic, military and political dominance over the Western hemisphere while attacking its supposed allies in Europe.
This revival of US imperialism – based on claims of regional hegemony, fears of alleged foreign threat and a desire to grab resources – offers alarming echoes of Vladimir Putin’s justification to invade Ukraine. Russian propagandists have made frequent comparisons between American influence over Latin America and their claims on Kyiv. Meanwhile China has been handed a fig leaf for its bogus territorial claims over Taiwan just as it claims “reunification” is “unstoppable”. Already its army of keyboard warriors hail the abduction as a template.
So just four days into this new year, Trump’s impetuosity and grasping, transactional approach to diplomacy has made our turbulent world even more dangerous.