Shortly after US special forces captured and extracted Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on November 3, Donald Trump said that the US would now “run” Venezuela.

Whatever Washington’s plans for the future of Venezuelan governance, this show of US force in Latin America looks like the first manifestation of a more assertive American foreign policy outlined in the national security strategy published in November 2025. This plainly asserted the Trump administration’s intention to “reassert and enforce the Monroe doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere”.

Rather than force regime change at this point, Trump has indicated that he is willing to work with Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodriguez, who has been sworn in as president. Rodríguez has adopted a conciliatory tone, inviting the US government to “work together on a cooperative agenda”. For the US president, “cooperation” will involve giving US oil companies unfettered access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.

Announcing the raid at a press conference held hours after American forces snatched Maduro, Trump appeared to issue threats of similar interventions in Colombia, which he said was run by a “sick man who likes to make cocaine and sell it to the US”. His secretary of state, Marco Rubio – the child of Cuban exiles – also hinted at US intentions towards Cuba, saying: “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit.”

The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was perhaps most revealing of........

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