As the world knows, on 3 January 2026, in an operation involving over 150 aircraft, US Special Forces raided Caracas, seized President Maduro and his wife, and took them to New York to be charged and tried as criminals, and the US President announced that the USA would now run Venezuela for a time. This use of force breached the United Nations Charter and rightly set off alarm bells and alert sirens all round the world. A future seems to loom before us in which the strong do what they can, and the weak do what they must. Why did it happen and what comes next?

What comes next in Venezuela?

Some good might come out of this. That, at least, is what many Venezuelans may feel if the odious Chavez-Maduro regime is truly being removed. The mood in Caracas as news of the raid and presidential ouster was digested was reportedly rather wary, however, partly, perhaps, because it is uncertain what comes next.

In the press conference announcing and celebrating the raid on Caracas, Trump was studiously vague about how America would run Venezuela and for how long. Asked about a timeline on new elections, he replied, “I’d like to do it quickly, but it takes a period of time.”

In substance, that is as unexceptionable as it is uninformative but, as one reporter pointed out, “The US has something of a mixed track record of ousting dictators without necessarily a plan for what comes afterwards.”

Trump responded reassuringly, “Not with me then.” And to clarify the point, he went on to say, “Uh, with me, we’ve had a perfect track record of, uh, winning. We win a lot, and we win.” As an example, he mentioned Midnight Hammer – the bombing of Iran in June last year – and, again reassuringly, pointed out, “We have, essentially, peace in the Middle East because of that.”

That typically slanted view of what constitutes peace seems to indicate that there is not much of a plan for what comes next. Given the lack of planning beyond the headlines in the Trump plan for peace in Gaza, that is not surprising.

It looks like much will depend on deals that will be made in the next few days, especially about who takes over executive power. It could be someone who is part of the regime, such as Vice President Delcy Rodriguez (who Trump mistakenly said has already been inaugurated). Or it could be an opposition leader, such as Edmundo González, the presidential candidate in the last election, when victory was almost certainly stolen by Maduro. Acting as stand-in president, Rodriguez has said she will work with Trump, who has threatened a second strike if she does not.

What comes next internationally?

There is considerable comment both inside and outside the USA about what message the Caracas raid sends. There is a perhaps surprising amount of common ground between those who welcome the action and those who criticise it. Both agree that it is a message about the strong using force because they are strong. Reduced to its essentials, it is encapsulated in the words of an Athenian diplomat as recounted by Thucydides, the 5th century BCE Athenian historian and general, which I used in the opening paragraph:

“The strong do what they can, and the weak do what they must.”

Sovereignty

To make an obvious point, the US raid on Caracas is an act that defies the founding assumptions of the United Nations, international law and international order. As the UN Charter makes clear,

• “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.” (Article 2.1 )
• “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” (Article 2.4)

There was a moment in Trump’s press conference when his familiar oral clumsiness made it sound like he understood some of this, saying, “I watched last night one of the most precise, uh, attacks on sovereignty.”

Seen in the cold light of Caracas after the raid, comments Trump has made about taking over Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal take on a new sharpness, as Denmark’s prime minister has noted and protested.

Narcotics and natural resources

Supporters of the Caracas raid can either say Venezuelas’s sovereignty does not matter, which is what a lot of them probably think, or they can justify it as permitting a necessary exception to the rule of peaceful relations and respect for sovereignty. After all, it is permitted to use force in defence of a country.

The central charge in the indictment against Maduro and others is drug trafficking. The heat in this debate is intense, with Trump formally designating fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction and threat to US national security. But the illicit narcotics trade, which is indeed disastrous for the USA, is a two-way process; like all commerce, it involves buyers and sellers. American demand for narcotics has enriched and empowered the criminals in Colombia, Mexico and other countries who produce and sell opioids and cocaine. In that sense, American demand is as much a threat to those countries as the supply is a threat to the USA. How far Venezuela is involved in this equation, however, is not clear.

In September, US forces started a campaign against small Venezuelan boats. Commenting on the second attack, Trump said that bags of fentanyl and cocaine were spattered all over the ocean. No video evidence was produced that supported the claim. In fact, it has always seemed strange to blame Venezuela for the fentanyl influx into the USA, which is horribly destructive as well as criminal, since most of that drug appears to come in from Mexico where the cartels manufacture it. Nor does Venezuela generally seem to be regarded as a major source of cocaine consumed in the USA. It is consequently not surprising that the emphasis in discussion of US policy on Venezuela seems to have shifted from narcotics to oil. Nonetheless, at least 115 people have been killed in 35 boats that were destroyed by US forces between 2 September and 31 December 2025 in attacks justified on the basis that they were smuggling narcotics.

In his press conference on the seizure of Maduro and his wife, Trump emphasised oil, saying, “Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms costing us billions and billions of dollars.” He added, “We’re gonna rebuild the oil infrastructure, which will cost billions of dollars. It’ll be paid for by the oil companies directly.” But though Venezuela has the world’s largest untapped oil reserves, exploiting them may be more complex than first appears. Necessary investment after years of mismanagement amounts to an estimated $110 billion and we will wait to hear whether oil companies will be attracted to provide it, when the world oil market is already saturated and demand is forecast to decline.

It could be that the real economics of oil are simply among a range of things that were not thought through before the operation. Or it might be worth noting that oil is not Venezuela’s only natural resource. It also has bauxite, coltan, gold and rare earths in abundance. Maybe that is where the profit and perhaps the motive really lie.

Or it could be that the motive is simply the urge to assert US power. As Trump also said in his press conference, “We are reasserting American power in a very powerful way in our home region.”

Monroe / Donroe

In 1823, US President Monroe articulated the doctrine that European and other non-American powers should stay out of the Americas. Under the heading of “The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine”, the US National Security Strategy announced in November says, “After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”

In the name of that pre-eminence, the USA has, for example,

• deposed the dictator Noriega in Panama in December 1989,
• deposed the unelected leader of Grenada in 1983,
• used profits from illicit arms sales to Iran to fund the Contra insurgency against the leftwing government of Nicaragua from 1981 to 1986,
• funded and trained a failed insurgency against Castro in Cuba in 1961,
• orchestrated the overthrow of the elected leader of Guatemala in 1954,
• invaded Haiti in 1915 and ran its customs, the treasury and the national bank until 1934,
• militarily occupied Cuba in 1906-09 and 1917-22.

And much else besides. In short, as the National security Strategy itself hints through its reference to Monroe, Trump’s Venezuela action is not unprecedented in US policy in the Western Hemisphere. The USA has been exerting its power in the region in support of its interests for a long time. Expect it to continue.

In the press conference on the Caracas raid, Trump accused Colombian President Gustavo President of having “cocaine mills… factories where he makes cocaine.” This was not a criticism of a country for allowing cocaine to be grown there; this was a direct accusation against an individual for producing cocaine: “He’s making cocaine, they’re sending it into the United States, so he does have to watch his (ass).” The next day when talking with reporters, Trump was asked if the US would launch a military operation against Colombia; he answered, “It sounds good to me.”

International disorder

In 2025 under Trump’s presidency, the USA has bombed Iran, destroyed 35 small boats from. Venezuela, bombed villages in Nigeria, and now raided Caracas and seized the country’s president. The day before the Caracas raid, he said that, if Iran’s government kills protesters, “the United States of America will come to their rescue.” The USA is, he said, “locked and loaded and ready to go.” Now he has threatened Colombia with military action. The day after Caracas, he also underlined earlier statements about Greenland, saying, “We do need Greenland, absolutely.”

In 2024 I posted a series of essays on the increasing weakness of the world order, unable to manage and resolve conflicts, generate disarmament, lower the toxin levels in geopolitics, develop a cooperative and effective response to ecological crisis including climate change, or develop adequate cooperation on a host of other shared problems including pandemic risk, cyber security and crime. In late 2025, the editor of The Economist, a magazine, opened a review of events in the year by writing, “In global politics 2025 was the year when an old order ended.” 

In some respects, the Caracas raid is not very different from other actions the USA and other states have taken in breaking international rules including breaching sovereignty. All these actions – Russia in Ukraine, USA and Israel against Iran, China in the South China Sea, and many others – have been undermining the norms, institutions and laws of the international order that was launched with the end of World War II and the founding of the UN. The Caracas raid and the threats Trump is hurling around at Colombia over cocaine and Denmark over Greenland are all the more shattering because of the weakness of the international order that is all that we have to restrain the use of power.

In the world that is now taking shape, the strong will be freer to use power. Because the great powers would prefer to avoid the risks entailed in using force against each other, this may evolve into a system of spheres of influence within which each hegemon has a free hand. Trump summed up what this means for the non-hegemons of the world during the press conference after the raid when he commented on a conversation between his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and the Venezuelan Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez. Reporting her as saying, “We’ll do whatever you need,” Trump added, “I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn’t have a choice.”

To repeat the words that the historian Thucydides attributed to an Athenian diplomat (twice quoted above), this is a world in which “The strong do what they can, and the weak do what they must.”

It is easy to understand the confusion and dilemmas facing the leaders of American allies who do not want to see the demise of the world order, don’t really have much confidence in Trump, and don’t want to make him angry. But they desperately need a strategy that goes further than hoping he won’t throw all the toys out of the pram, a strategy that builds on opportunities for governments to work together on shared problems.