Can Trump really turn Venezuela into a pro-American surrogate?

The US military operation to track down, capture and fly Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro back to the United States for prosecution on drug trafficking charges went flawlessly. It was well-coordinated, meticulously planned and executed to a tee. Nearly two days after Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken into U.S. custody, details of the snatch-and-grab mission are beginning to percolate into the US media. It involved a cyberattack against Caracas’s electricity system, precision bombing against several Venezuelan airfields and ports, a low-flying helicopter assault on Maduro’s hideout and a CIA deployment that was operating in the country since August. By the time Americans woke up on Saturday morning, Maduro, a man the Trump administration slapped with a multi-count indictment back in 2020, was on a US warship headed to New York.

Yet if the attempt to arrest Maduro was clean, short and sharp, the Trump administration’s day-after plans for Venezuela are bumbling, confusing and hard to explain. Despite President Trump’s bombastic proclamation that the United States will now run Venezuela’s affairs until a viable, US-accepted political transition is in place, US leverage to implement such a lofty ambition will remain limited in part because the Maduro government is still very much alive. Unlike Iraq during the George W. Bush administration, there aren’t 150,000 U.S. troops occupying Venezuela right now – nor would the American public support such an extensive deployment of ground troops. When CBS News’ Margaret Brennan asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio how Washington planned to enact Trump’s occupation-from-a-distance strategy, he didn’t offer many specifics outside of reiterating what the United States hoped to see at the end of the process: a Venezuela that is a US partner rather than an adversary.

Indeed, it’s abundantly obvious what the Trump administration wants – and what it doesn’t. “You can’t flood this country [the United States] with gang members,” Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press. “You can’t flood this country with drugs that are coming out of Colombia through Venezuela, with the cooperation of elements of your security forces. You can’t turn Venezuela into the operating hub for Iran, for Russia, for Hezbollah, for China, for the Cuban intelligence agents that control that country.” The fundamental question is how the White House intends to accomplish those dreams. One gets the sense that Trump and his senior advisers are still trying to determine what their plan is going to be.

Even so, we’re not flying totally blind. In the two days since Maduro was plucked out of the country, there are a few things we do know.

First, to the disappointment of many Venezuelan exiles in Miami who thought Washington would bestow its full support to opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, the Trump administration has thus far chosen to take a more pragmatic approach. Trump’s assertion that Machado didn’t have the respect of the Venezuelan population to rule successfully was undoubtedly a harsh thing to say in public, but it had the benefit of being true to a certain extent. The Venezuelan political opposition that Machado leads doesn’t possess a firm foothold in the country. Machado herself never articulated how she would govern Venezuela in a post-Maduro scenario beyond vague generalities such as tearing down the regime’s repressive apparatus, instituting a market economy and inviting American oil companies into Venezuela’s most lucrative sector. It’s highly unlikely the Venezuelan army and security services would have accepted her anyway. And she could never really offer a convincing explanation about how her ally, Edmundo Gonzales, who won last year’s presidential election and is currently residing in Spain, would be able to take his seat without buy-in from the old regime.

Take all these concerns into consideration and it becomes a bit clearer why the Trump administration is giving Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro’s former vice president, a chance to steer the post-Maduro ship. Trump has come to the conclusion that it’s better to work with someone within the system, however flawed, than give its chips to an alternative that is untested and may have the power to perform the job adequately. This is not necessarily a bad play: handing power over to Machado and Gonzalez would mean imploding the entire Chavismo political system that has ruled Venezuela for a quarter-century, a pie-in-the-sky ambition that would, in turn, require an extreme monetary commitment on the part of the United States and perhaps even an occupation of unlimited duration – one that could potentially spark a violent insurgency from those in the Venezuelan army who view a Machado-led Venezuela as existential for the institution’s power and prerogatives.

Whether or not this play works, none of us can say at this early stage. But the odds are stacked against the Trump administration. Delcy Rodriguez is commonly described as more moderate, gifted and technocratic than Maduro, but she is also a firm believer in Chavismo politics and has been a central player in that system since the days of Hugo Chavez. Her public comments to date, in which she blasted Washington for its aggression and demanded Maduro’s immediate release, don’t bode well for the vision Trump has in mind. The United States is in effect trying to transform Venezuela into a pro-American surrogate through officials who not only vomit at such a thought but have also spent their professional lives operating the very leftist authoritarian regime the United States seeks to destroy. It’s the equivalent of banging a square peg into a round hole and hoping enough pressure and fortitude will eventually mold the wood into a new shape.

At bottom, Trump doesn’t care about democracy in Venezuela. This entire campaign is about power, leverage and geopolitics, not ideology, moralism and governing philosophy. He would be perfectly fine with a friendly authoritarian who took Washington’s orders. But does such a person even exist? Is Delcy Rodriguez that person? And if she isn’t, is Trump prepared to plunge the US foreign policy establishment into even deeper involvement in Venezuela’s internal affairs? His threats to do so are emblematic of the Trump Corollary for Latin American: do what I want, or else.