A tactical success by the White House in abducting Maduro may turn into a strategic defeat.
Plans to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro were discussed at the White House as early as Donald Trump’s first presidential term, former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton told CNN in an interview. Bolton, who is currently under investigation over leaks of classified documents, said that the scheme to oust Maduro was being developed in 2018–2019. “I think this time Trump was persuaded by the persistence [of Secretary of State Marco] Rubio and by the political benefits,” Bolton suggested, that the relevant plan had been under consideration at the White House since 2018, when Trump was serving his first term. According to the former adviser — well known for his open contempt for international law — Trump’s interest in Venezuela was driven primarily by the country’s resources: the White House occupant “was very interested in Venezuelan oil,” which made it possible to promote the idea of regime change in Caracas.
Bolton’s revelations are far from the only evidence of long-standing plans to change power in Venezuela in line with the well-known “Monroe Doctrine.” Among the series of coups d’état and armed interventions, one may recall the aggression against Guatemala in 1954, carried out with the support of Nicaragua and Honduras, which at that time served as obedient puppets of the White House. Today, Trump is not only abducting Maduro but also making unambiguous hints toward the presidents of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum.
For many years, Colombia was Washington’s reliable ally in its attempts to destabilize Venezuela. However, more recently this dubious role has shifted to the small island state of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). In November, its armed forces conducted another round of exercises together with the 22-nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) of the U.S. Marine Corps, ostensibly aimed at combating drug trafficking and armed criminal gangs involved in migration. According to a statement by T&T’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the drills involved, among other assets, helicopters from the U.S. Marine Corps expeditionary unit.
According to a number of reports, these helicopters and their crews remained in southern Trinidad on the eve of the aggression against Venezuela, and in Caracas the naval maneuvers were reasonably interpreted as evidence of an impending attack, described as “an openly hostile provocation and a serious threat to peace in the Caribbean.” Trinidad and Tobago’s accommodating stance toward U.S. actions is also reflected in a statement by the country’s Attorney General John Jeremie to the Financial Times, in which he said that “U.S. armed forces will intensify exercises in Trinidad and Tobago, located near the coast of Venezuela. The 22-nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) will step up the intensity of drills in the coming days.”
It should be recalled that the 270-kilometer maritime border between T&T and Venezuela runs largely close to the Venezuelan coastline, including its eastern oil-and-gas-bearing zone, at a distance of only 11–13 kilometers from Trinidad. As a result, a significant portion of the country’s maritime economic zone and its resource-rich coastline was effectively preemptively blocked.
At the end of October, on the eve of the aforementioned exercises, the Venezuelan government terminated the 2015 agreement with T&T on the joint development of the large offshore oil and gas field “Dragon,” located between northeastern Venezuela and the island of Trinidad. Caracas’s position was ignored in Port of Spain, while now, according to available information, five U.S. companies are laying claim to the Venezuelan part of this field, planning to establish a joint consortium to develop its reserves. With the start of the intervention, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Kamla Persad-Bissessar hastened to distance herself from the events: “Earlier this morning, Saturday, January 3, 2026, the United States began military operations on Venezuelan territory. Trinidad and Tobago is NOT involved in any of these ongoing military operations. Trinidad and Tobago continues to support peaceful relations with the people of Venezuela.” A similar statement was issued by the country’s foreign ministry, which hardly inspires confidence given the island state’s deep involvement in U.S. military and political activities in the Caribbean.
A particularly serious irritant for the White House was the signing on September 28, 2025, of an agreement between Rosneft and a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil and gas company PDVSA — the Corporación Venezolana del Petróleo (CVP) — on the joint development of the Carabobo-2 block in the Orinoco oil belt. The resources of this block amount to 6.5 billion tons of oil. A day earlier, a ceremony was held to mark the production of first oil at the neighboring, resource-rich Junín-6 block, jointly developed by Venezuela’s PDVSA and the National Oil Consortium (NOC), which includes Rosneft, Gazprom Neft, LUKOIL, TNK-BP, and Surgutneftegaz. As early as March 2010, NOC and PDVSA registered a joint venture, PetroMiranda, to develop the Junín-6 block, with stakes of 60 percent for the Venezuelan side and 40 percent for the Russian side.
In addition, 20–25 percent of the oil produced in these blocks is sent to refineries on the neighboring Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba (Oranjestad) and Curaçao (Willemstad), which are also controlled by PDVSA. As we have written previously, the United States has repeatedly demanded that the Netherlands, under various pretexts, terminate the long-standing cooperation of these territories with the company controlled by the “Maduro regime” and redirect Venezuelan oil delivered to the aforementioned refineries to the United States.
Undoubtedly, the U.S. armed intervention in Venezuela has posed a serious challenge first and foremost to Beijing, which has been actively investing in the Latin American country’s energy sector and beyond. In the immediate aftermath of the events, China criticized the United States for “hegemonic actions” and the “flagrant use of force” against Venezuela and its president, calling on the White House to adhere to the United Nations Charter. According to sources cited by Al Jazeera, a high-ranking Chinese delegation met with Venezuelan officials just hours before the U.S. attack, and Beijing was not surprised by Washington’s actions, given the scale of U.S. strategic and economic interests in the region.
China is the largest buyer of Venezuelan oil, although it accounts for only 4–5 percent of China’s total oil imports. Venezuela repays loans provided to it with oil transported on three supertankers that were previously jointly owned by Venezuela and China. Two of them were heading toward Venezuela in December, when Trump announced a blockade of all tankers entering and leaving the country. According to PDVSA documents and shipping data, the vessels are currently awaiting instructions, as exports from Venezuela have largely been suspended. It is hardly likely that Beijing will dispatch naval special forces to unblock the coastline, while diplomatic statements have little impact on Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.
Beyond energy, Beijing is showing growing interest in trade and investment in Latin America, which entails close attention to political changes in the region — above all, to persistent U.S. expansion in all its overt and covert forms. According to military expert Wang Yunfei, the relative success of the operation may have been partially due to initial airstrikes and possible electronic warfare attacks that disabled and jammed Venezuela’s air defense systems, allowing U.S. helicopters carrying elite Delta Force units to conduct an airborne assault and penetrate Maduro’s residence. Another analyst, Zhang Junshe, recalled the extensive experience of U.S. intelligence services in repeatedly using special operations to overthrow undesirable regimes worldwide, actions that have “deep political and strategic consequences.”
According to the London-based Energy Institute, Venezuela possesses approximately 17 percent of the world’s oil reserves — about 303 billion barrels — thus surpassing OPEC’s leader, Saudi Arabia. Extracting “heavy oil” from the Orinoco basin in the central part of the country is costly but technically relatively straightforward. On the eve of the events, in an interview with Fox News, Trump spoke of his country’s intention to actively participate in the “restoration” of Venezuela’s oil industry. As Politico reports, in recent weeks the White House has been sending signals to oil companies that previously lost property in Venezuela, indicating that compensation would be possible only on the condition that they return to Venezuela and invest substantial funds in modernizing the oil sector.
“We are going to bring in our biggest oil companies, the largest in the world, which will spend billions of dollars to fix the severely damaged infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making the country profitable,” Donald Trump confirmed, celebrating the capture of Maduro. However, how this will work in practice remains unclear. Moreover, amid growing chaos and a further deepening of the crisis, it cannot be ruled out that the White House’s undeniable tactical victory in Venezuela may ultimately turn into a strategic defeat.
Dmitry Nefyodov