So, we did a thing, didn’t we?
By now, everyone already knows about what happened on Saturday. We deposed Nicolás Maduro from what can effectively be described as his throne in Venezuela. He’s now in the U.S. He appeared in court Monday on charges first dating back to 2020 that charged the now deposed dictator with narco-terrorism, amongst other things (DOJ). As I said, everybody already knows this part. What we don’t know for sure is where this whole situation goes from here or whether what we’ve done will turn out to have been a good or a bad choice.
That is not to say that people haven’t already drawn their own conclusions, however. People certainly have. Perspectives are flying all over the place. “This was great for America,” “It’s Iraq all over again,” and “This breaches international law” are samplings of the types of common perspectives presented in the aftermath of our operation in Venezuela. Now, go ahead and dismiss any of the perspectives bringing up international law on account of being foolish and, therefore, unserious. International law is not a thing, at least not in practice when the United States of America may be in the International Court’s crosshairs. Yes, go after the U.S. International Court, and try to enforce whatever judgment you render. Let’s see how that works out for you all. But, getting back to serious business, the other two perspectives, which are more worthy of attention, lie at opposite ends of the spectrum regarding whether this operation was a positive or negative development.
In order to come to the conclusion as to whether the operation in Venezuela was a positive or a negative, I believe it useful to engage in a thought process exercise. The process consists of guiding questions, which, I don’t know about you, but I quite like because they help me keep greater structure and focus in my thinking.
There are four key guiding questions that can be applied to our operation in Venezuela and any foreign policy move, really. They are the following:
So, how does this action benefit our nation? There are four benefits that immediately stand out.
Firstly, an anti-American dictator who has cozied up to some of our greatest adversaries—China, Russia, and Iran—who also hails from a nation in our hemisphere is no longer in power. Fewer communists in power, anywhere in the world, but especially in our hemisphere, is good for America. And yes, I know he’s a socialist and, technically, not a communist. I’m not going to split hairs over which camp he belongs to. He’s an anti-American pinko. That’s all that matters. That means he’s bad. Yes, it’s that simple. “Pinko” equals bad.
Secondly, we now have a greater say regarding the oil coming out of Venezuela, which, by the way, amounts to a whole lot. The largest reserves in the world, in fact (BBC). The amount is a benefit to be sure, and if production is ramped up and the product is then shipped our way, it’s a safe bet that costs at the pump will go down. Moreover, it would also not be unreasonable to assume that costs of most goods across the board would go down because, to summarize the words of our vice president, lower energy costs equal lower costs for consumers (Business Insider). We’ll see if that actually comes to fruition. But that’s only discussing the oil coming here. We now also have a greater say on where the oil goes when it’s going other places. And a lot of that oil has been going to countries that are not on our friends list. More on that later.
Thirdly, we took out a guy involved in drug trafficking. Sure, if we really wanted to hammer drug trafficking, particularly of drugs like fentanyl, we’d probably need to carry out an operation in Mexico—that’s not an advocation for such an action, by the way. But drug trafficking was not the primary political motivation for taking out Maduro; the two aforementioned reasons were. Taking out someone involved in cocaine production in our hemisphere is a sweet bonus, though.
And lastly, this operation should help immensely with an issue like immigration. A whole lot of Venezuelans came into the U.S. while Maduro was in power, due either to being “refugees” or plain old illegal immigration (CBS, CNN, 2026). But now that Maduro is gone, to reiterate the sentiment of many from the Trump administration, people can begin going back home. Yes, I realize the regime is still in place, which is a major sticking point for many Venezuelans here in the States, but, given what happened on Saturday, the remaining regime is going to be much more inclined to cooperate with the U.S. than when Maduro was in charge.
As the question shows, we need a justification for this operation other than purely the political benefits. I referenced that Maduro’s involvement in drug trafficking and other narco-related endeavors weren’t primary political motivations for his ouster, despite being framed as such. But all these things are, at least partly, the legal motivation for his ouster. The legal justification for this operation is that Maduro is facing all these charges, originally stemming from a case first filed in March 2020 (Jurist), during Trump’s first term, and we went and got him. Why do you think law enforcement was involved?
Furthermore, and forgive my sarcasm here, aren’t people who contest or deny election results supposed to be dealt with? We haven’t recognized Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela since 2019 because he actually denied legitimate election results. Just based off that, isn’t what we did justified given the logic we were all told we must adhere to regarding election results earlier this decade? Again, apologies for my sarcasm.
The most obvious answer to this question is that Venezuela is impacted by no longer having their leader in charge. But that’s really only the surface-level answer. The deeper answer to this question is that the rest of the regime, which has been left in place as of the writing of this piece, have effectively been “taught their place.” In other words, you are going to respect the authority of the big dog in this hemisphere. No more blowing us off and running around with our enemies. Gangster-like behavior from Trump? That’s certainly an arguable position, but what do you expect from an old-school New Yorker? Anyways, it appears as though this approach from the Trump administration has worked because, after some initial tough talk, the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, put out a statement in which she “invited the US government to work together on an agenda of cooperation” (The Guardian). The acting president coming out with this response a mere day after the operation effectively gave Trump the win. Furthermore, it rendered cries of “It’s Iraq all over again” moot, at least for the time being (fingers crossed), because we, the U.S., got what we wanted while maintaining stability and not toppling the entire regime, which would’ve destroyed the country and, almost certainly, cost American lives in armed conflict.
The answer here is a resounding “Yes!” and an exciting “Yes!” Us conducting this operation, and as of now, without a hitch, is a blow to countries like China, Russia, and Iran. These countries will now no longer be allowed to exercise their power in the Hemisphere of the Americas, at least not by doing so through Venezuela.
Now China is the most detrimentally impacted because they are our greatest legitimate adversary, so one less country in our hemisphere for them to exercise anti-American influence hurts them and helps us the most. Moreover, unlike Russia and Iran, China does not have an abundance of oil within its own borders. Just for some statistical context, Chinese investors have pumped “$2.1 billion into the country’s oil sector since 2016,” and it’s estimated Venezuela’s debt to Beijing “exceeds $10 billion” (Reuters). So an influence, economic, and energy dent for China appears to be the result of our operation in Venezuela. Or maybe, it’s a mix of the three. Either way, it’s hard to find a negative there. But what about Russia and Iran? Let’s start with the latter.
Iran and Venezuela have been buddy-buddy for years. As part of this friendly relationship, people with links to the terrorist group Hezbollah—which is sponsored by Iran—were given Venezuelan passports and IDs, which enabled movement into places these individuals wouldn’t have otherwise been able to access (CNN, 2017). The friendly relationship between the two countries does not appear to have stopped when Maduro took charge in 2013. Obviously, the likelihood that Iran is going to be able to continue fooling around in Venezuela has diminished significantly as a result of Saturday’s operation.
And then there’s the Russians. Russia, like China, has invested in Venezuela’s oil industry (Reuters). They have also offered the Venezuelans the ability to purchase military technology through loans (AP). But as with the Chinese and the Iranians, Russia’s ability to influence events in Venezuela has been significantly hampered by Maduro’s deposing.
But floating above how the operation affects these countries is the question as to how they can respond in our direction. The biggest concern any country should have when engaging in a foreign policy action is response through hard force. Is that a concern here from any of the aforementioned countries? No, that would be highly unlikely. We also haven’t seen fears of these nations engaging in armed conflict with us being pushed by the propagandists in the legacy press as a strong narrative, so they don’t even believe it’s likely. And that’s probably due to the fact that these countries value Venezuela, but not to the point of being willing to go to war over it. In other words, they can function reasonably well without Venezuela. This point does bring the necessity of our action into question, however. “If these countries don’t actually need Venezuela to function, why did we need to do what we did?” That’s a totally valid question. The most reasonable response to it would be that taking away a country in our hemisphere from which these nations can exercise anti-American influence alone justifies—at least for now, unless crap somehow hits the fan in Venezuela—our action; energy and economic considerations be damned.
Now, given what I’ve said thus far, it likely comes across as though I’m totally behind what we did in Venezuela. And, with each day that passes without a major hitch, I suppose I am. But the memory of failed international excursions in the not-too-recent past still looms large. So that concern is still there, maybe not in Venezuela but somewhere else, especially given Lindsey Graham is on this obsessive “Make Iran Great Again” path, and Trump, unfortunately, didn’t immediately rule that out. But it’s also worth mentioning that Trump has an impressive record of “dropping the hammer” moments on the foreign policy front and not seeing any disastrous fallout, particularly in the form of armed conflict involving U.S. forces. Let’s just hope it stays that way if anything happens in Colombia or Cuba in the future. The last thing we need is another war somewhere because (1) getting involved in other countries is like playing with fire; eventually you’re going to get burned, and (2) more importantly, we’ve got enough problems here. And Minneapolis is causing quite a lot of them here recently, isn’t it?
Sources:
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/nicol-s-maduro-moros-and-14-current-and-former-venezuelan-officials-charged-narco-terrorism
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/05/venezuela-delcy-rodriguez-trump
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-oil-investments-venezuela-2026-01-05/
https://www.businessinsider.com/jd-vance-trump-inflation-grocery-energy-prices-executive-orders-2025-1?op=1
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crkr4y717k7o
https://www.jurist.org/features/2026/01/05/the-charges-against-nicolas-maduro-what-the-indictment-alleges/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/venezuelan-migrants-us-mexico-border-september-numbers/
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/07/politics/venezuela-migrants-deportations-maduro
https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/08/world/venezuela-passports-investigation
https://apnews.com/article/russia-venezuela-putin-trump-maduro-ukraine-2e8c57d2a02ee0b4b6c6ed01f2e4a2af