What I Know And What I Do Not Know About the U.S. Incursion Into Venezuela

More of the latter than the former, probably.

Photo by Jorge Brito on Unsplash

Ordinarily, the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World would devote considerable effort to drafting a pithy, inviting introduction to a column about breaking international relations news like Operation Absolute Resolve.¹ But in the year 2026 we have the White House tweeting profane shit out on the regular, so let’s dispense with the artifice. WTF just happened and what is now going to happen?!

The United States snatched Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro and his wife from Caracas and brought them to the United States in a military operation with no U.S. loss of life — but also allegedly killed more than 40 Venezuelans and left a lot of unanswered questions about what comes next.

No doubt, discerning readers of Drezner’s World want some takes! So here’s what I know and don’t know:

1. I told you so. I wrote in 2024 that a second Trump administration would be likely to increase, not decrease U.S. military adventurism: “Even though the term is directed at him a lot, Trump is not an isolationist — he is a mercantilist who prefers using force in this hemisphere.” Last month I wrote that, “all the foreign policy observers looking in on the Trump administration from the outside are looking at Trump’s actions in Latin America — and finding it very hard to distinguish them from the neoconservative actions that Trump had decried from a decade ago.” The hard-working spouse here at Drezner’s World doesn’t like this side of me, but I just wanted it on the record that Trump’s smash-and-grab in Caracas was shocking but not surprising.

2. This operation might have the widest variance of policy competency I have ever seen. The foreign policy professional in me is impressed that, tactically, the operation went as well as it did. Given the past intelligence failings of Trump’s policy principals, it’s amazing that a months-long intelligence operation did not leak.² The odds seem pretty good that the U.S. secured quiescence, if not help, from Maduro insiders. The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols wrote, “so far, Trump seems to have executed a bad idea well,” which ain’t exactly wrong. On the other hand, listening to the Mar a Lago press conference, the buffoonery on display was breathtaking. Trump looked older and more out of it than Joe Biden as he was reading from his prepared text; Pete Hegseth sounded like he had sampled some of the product that Maduro and his spouse were accused of trafficking. The idea that these schnooks will now “run” Venezuela seems wildly implausible.

3. So much for U.S. adherence to international law. Oona Hathaway and Jack Goldsmith are both experts in international law. They hold wildly divergent opinions on most matters. So it was striking to hear similar statements of resignation from both of them about how the Trump administration would justify its actions — and what this means for U.S. foreign policy. Hathaway told the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner: “The dangerous thing here is the idea that a President can just decide that a leader is not legitimate and then invade the country and presumably put someone in power who is favored by the Administration. If that were the case, that’s the end of international law, that’s the end of the U.N. charter, that’s the end of any kind of legal limits on the use of force…. Look, the U.S. has not got a perfect record. There’s no doubt about that, and it has betrayed its values many times, but this is of a different order. This is just a blatant throwing-the-whole-thing-out and making a claim to be able to use force whenever it wants.” Goldsmith, meanwhile, wrote, “here is the reality. Congress has given the president a gargantuan global military force with few constraints and is AWOL in overseeing what the president does with it. Courts won’t get involved in reviewing unilateral presidential uses of force. And no country plausibly could stop the U.S. action in Venezuela…. This is not the system the framers had in mind, and it is a dangerous system for all the reasons the framers worried about. But that is where we are—and indeed, it is where we have been for a while.” So… yeah.

4. Venezuelans likely feel very conflicted about all of this. Venezuelans died during this operation. Some Venezuelans supported Maduro. Like other residents of Latin America, a lot of Venezuelans resent the United States bullying the region. All that said… Maduro was a thug who had run Venezuela’s economy into the ground long before U.S. sanctions were ratcheted up. For many Venezuelans, it seemed like Maduro would never depart the political stage. Hence the mixed feelings.

5. Every Trump administration official— especially Trump — will try to leverage this action to pressure other leaders. Here’s what I told Politico on Saturday about this: “A constant of Trump’s foreign policy has been to focus on pressuring or flattering the individual leaders of other countries. Some of my colleagues have labeled this a “neo-royalist” worldview, focusing on individual elites rather than laws or institutions. The obvious implication of this action is that the Trump administration is unconcerned with international laws or norms when it comes to attacking foreign leaders. I strongly suspect that the Trump administration will use this Maduro action to threaten the leaders of recalcitrant allies and weak adversaries that they might be next on the chopping block — and such threats might actually work. Just as U.S. members of Congress have expressed fears of personal attacks during the Trump years due to his violent rhetoric, countries that lack great power patronage might prove to be more pliable to continued U.S. pressure.” And today? well…

Now, here is what I don’t know:

1. What exactly is the post-Maduro plan? On Saturday, Trump declared that the U.S. would now “run” Venezuela. On Sunday declaration that “we’re in charge.” And in between, Secretary of State Marco Rubio kinda sorta walked that back just a bit.

   These kind of statements make the Bush administration’s postwar plans for Iraq seem like a paragon of profundity. As I warned back in 2024, “the U.S. would likely be its own worst enemy in Latin America. If the past is any prologue for the future, any U.S. intervention would experience initial successes, followed by migrant massacres and counterattacks by drug mercenaries.”

2. How do other military great powers respond? As Nichols wrote, “The United States has now given Russia, China, and anyone else who wants to give it a try a road map for invading countries and capturing leaders who displease them, with a lawlessness that by comparison makes the 2003 invasion of Iraq seem as lawyered up as a bank merger.” In a weird way, even though Operation Absolute Resolve was targeted at Venezuela, the bigger security ramifications will be felt in Ukraine and Taiwan. The question is whether Russia and China will choose to exploit their opportunity now or wait until January 20, 2029 to make their moves.

3. How much does Donald Trump understand global energy markets? Trump clearly wants to “take the oil” from Venezuela, and no doubt, someone told him about Venezuela’s vast reserved. The thing is, as the Economist notes, “To pump more, Venezuela would need to overcome three problems: a dire need for funds, a shortage of labour and a saturated global market…. So far American majors have remained silent on the president’s call to arms. Nor are global commodity traders “in the starting blocks”, says Jean-François Lambert, a consultant. Banks and insurers, which would be needed to finance and secure shipments, would be even slower to return.” So maybe Trump liked this move because of the oil, but if so he is laboring under some serious misperceptions. Of course, Trump might know this but think he can sell the idea of Venezuelan oil to the MAGA rubes. Which leads to the last question…

4. How will the American public react? Invading Venezuela has not been a popular policy idea, so it is interesting to see administration officials telling the Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire that the operation was, “a win” and former officials telling him that, “Trump needed a victory amid tough headlines and slumping poll numbers.” The tactical success of the Maduro snatch-and grab could cause support to spike once polling starts happening— but I wonder how durable it will be. There are incipient signs of a MAGA fissure but there is also a lot of rationalization going on. In an Atlantic interview, Trump said about Venezuela, “rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse.” That kind of language is not likely to be compelling to Americans who will not see any improvements in affordability from this use of military force. But the American public can be unpredictable — so we will have to see how this plays out.

1. Can’t believe they didn’t go with “Operation Just the Tip of the Southern Spear.”

2. It helped that the press followed the same rules on operational secrecy that they have in the past.