Revolut has applied for a full banking license in Peru as it steps up its expansion across Latin America, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Key Takeaways:
Revolut is applying for a banking license in Peru to expand its regulated footprint in Latin America.
The company is targeting remittances in a highly concentrated banking market dominated by incumbents.
Growing crypto and stablecoin adoption is reinforcing Revolut’s regional strategy.
If approved, the move would allow the London-based digital bank to operate as a fully regulated lender in the country, adding Peru to a growing regional footprint that already includes Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil.
The company said the license would enable it to roll out localized banking products and compete directly with Peru’s incumbent banks rather than newer fintech challengers.
Revolut Targets Peru’s Concentrated Banking Market With Remittance Push
Peru’s financial system is highly concentrated, with the four largest banks accounting for roughly 82% of total loans, based on data from the national banking regulator SBS.
Revolut Peru CEO Julien Labrot said the company sees an opportunity to increase competition and improve access to financial services, particularly for underserved users.
Remittances are expected to play a central role in the strategy, with Labrot noting that around one million people in Peru rely on money sent from abroad.
According to the World Bank, personal remittances to Peru reached $4.93 billion in 2024.
The license application comes as Revolut continues to scale its broader platform, including its crypto and digital asset services.
Founded in 2015, the neobank reported a record year in April 2025, with 2024 net profit rising 130% to 790 million pounds ($1.06 billion), driven by customer growth and a rebound in cryptocurrency trading.
Revolut has applied for a full banking license in Peru, the 5th country in Latin America.
The license would allow the company to “roll out a comprehensive range of localised products and services, offering Peruvians greater control over their finances,” Revolut said in a… pic.twitter.com/BqUavQaEk0
A report from Chainalysis shows the region generated nearly $1.5 trillion in crypto transaction volume between July 2022 and June 2025, showing why global players like Revolut are accelerating their Latin America ambitions.
Stablecoin Payments on Revolut Surge as Everyday Use Gains Momentum
As reported, stablecoin usage on Revolut accelerated sharply in 2025, with payment volumes estimated to have jumped 156% year over year to about $10.5 billion.
While Revolut has not published official figures, onchain data suggests stablecoins nearly doubled their share of total payments on the platform compared with 2024, pointing to growing adoption beyond trading and transfers.
Blockchain data compiled via Dune Analytics shows that growth was steady throughout the year rather than driven by short-term spikes.
Much of the activity came from routine transactions, with transfers between $100 and $500 accounting for roughly 30% to 40% of stablecoin payments, indicating that users are increasingly relying on digital dollars for everyday spending.
EXPERT OPINION — Rule by proxy just isn’t as simple as the Trump Administration wants to make it sound. While the long-term goals of the Administration in Venezuela are unclear, the tools they appear to want to use are not.
First, the Administration seems to want to dictate policy to the Delcy Rodriguez government through threats of force, which President Trump recently highlighted by suggesting that he had called off a second strike on Venezuela because the regime was cooperating.
Second, the Trump Administration has stated that it will control the oil sales “indefinitely” to, in the words of the Secretary of Energy, “drive the changes that simply must happen in Venezuela.”
Leaving aside the legality and morality of using threats of armed force to seize another country’s natural resources and dictate an unspecified set of “changes”, this sort of rule from a distance is unlikely to work out as intended.
First, attempting to work through the Venezuelan regime will drive a number of choices that the Administration does not appear to have thought through. Propping up an authoritarian regime that is deeply corrupt, violent, and wildly unpopular will over time increasingly alienate the majority of the Venezuelan people and undermine international legitimacy.
Regime leaders, and the upper echelons of their subordinates, are themselves unlikely to quietly depart power or Venezuela itself without substantial guarantees of immunity and probably wealth somewhere else. Absent that, they will have every incentive to throw sand in the works of any sort of process of political transition. Yet facilitating their escape from punishment for their crimes with some amount of their ill-gotten gains is unlikely to be acceptable to the majority of the Venezuelan people.
Elements of the regime have already taken steps to crack down on opposition in the streets. The Trump Administration is going to decide how much of this sort of repression is acceptable. Too much tolerance of repression will harm the already-thin legitimacy of this policy, particularly among the Venezuelan people, the rest of the hemisphere, and those allies the Administration hasn’t managed to alienate. Too little tolerance will encourage street protests and potentially anti-regime violence and threaten regime stability.
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Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has announced that she plans to return to Venezuela in the near future, which could highlight the choices the Administration faces. Some parts of the Rodriguez government will want to crack down on her supporters and make their lives as difficult as possible. The Trump Administration is going to have to think hard about how to react to that.
The tools of violence from a distance, or even abductions by Delta Force from over the horizon, are not well calibrated to deal with these dilemmas.
The Venezuelan regime appears to be heavily factionalized and punishing Delcy Rodriguez, which President Trump has threatened, could benefit other factions, for example, the Minister of the Interior or the Minister of Defense, both allegedly her rivals for power.
Unless the Administration can count on perfect intelligence about what faction is responsible for each disfavored action and precisely and directly respond, we are likely to see different factions, and even elements of the opposition, undertake “false flag” activity intended to cause the U.S. to strike their rivals.
Actions to punish or compel the regime also run the risk of collateral damage, in particular civilian casualties which will undermine support for U.S. policy both in Venezuela and abroad and potentially bolster support for the regime. And intelligence on the ground is not going to be perfect and airstrikes or raids will almost certainly cause collateral damage despite the incredible capabilities of the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. military.
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Secondly, assuming that the Administration doesn’t intend to use the proceeds of sales of Venezuelan oil to build the White House ballroom, it’s unclear what mechanisms they plan to use to ensure that those proceeds benefit the Venezuelan people.
The Venezuelan regime is deeply corrupt. Utilizing the Venezuelan government to distribute proceeds from oil sales is just a way of ensuring that regime elites continue to siphon off cash or use that money to reward their followers, punish their opponents, or coopt potential rivals by buying them off.
Assuming that the U.S. could, in fact, somehow track the vast majority of the funds from oil sales and ensure that they are not misused, this would again undermine the unity and inner workings of a regime built on buying off factions and elites. That would likely encourage those factions to find other ways of extracting funds—for example, increased facilitation of drug shipments or shakedowns of local firms supporting the reconstruction of the oil sector.
Yet the U.S. is not at all likely to have a granular view of what happens to that money. The U.S. intelligence community, while capable of a great many things, cannot track where most of these funds go or who is raking off how much.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. had tens of thousands of soldiers, spies, advisors, and bureaucrats and was directly funding large parts of those governments, staggering levels of corruption existed and at times, helped fund warlords and faction leaders who undermined stability. We even managed to fund our adversaries at times.
In Venezuela, by contrast, we might have an embassy.
Unless the problem of how to monitor where the money goes can be solved, the U.S. will be supporting and funding a corrupt regime that feathers its own nest and undermines the transition to democracy.
Ruling from a distance, or even trying to force a political transition from a distance, drives a number of choices that the Administration clearly hasn’t thought through. And the tools the Administration is choosing to use; force from over the horizon and the control over the flow of some funds, aren’t matched well enough or sufficiently nuanced to accomplish the ends they claim to want to achieve.
Given that, it’s unlikely this will end well.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.
Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
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EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Now comes the hard part in Venezuela. Dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife are gone but the regime is still in power. Most Venezuelans, particularly in the diaspora, are pleased and relieved. Many are also apprehensive.
The Trump administration has decided to compel the cooperation of Maduro’s Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez, now interim president. It is not at all assured that she will be a reliable partner. The U.S. decision to work with those still in control was logical even if disappointing to some in the democratic opposition which, after all, won the presidential election overwhelmingly in late July of 2024. The opposition’s base of support dwarfs that of the regime but the military, intelligence services and police are all still loyal to the regime - at least for the time being. The Trump administration believes the cooperation of these elements of the regime will be necessary for the Trump administration to implement its plans for the country without further U.S. police and military actions on the ground.
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The Trump administration has said we will be taking over the oil sector and President Trump himself has announced his intention to persuade the U.S. private sector to return to Venezuela to rebuild the sector. Oil production in Venezuela has declined by two thirds since Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s predecessor, was elected in 1998. This unprecedented decline was due to incompetent management, undercapitalization and corruption. Had Chevron not opted to stay in the country under difficult circumstances, the production numbers would look even worse. Resurrecting the oil sector will take time, money and expertise. The return of the U.S. oil companies and the infusions of cash that will be required will only happen if an appropriate level of security can be established — and that will require the cooperation of the Venezuelan armed forces and police. Many senior leaders in those sectors are believed to have been deeply complicit in both the abuses and corruption of a government the United Nations said was plausibly responsible for “crimes against humanity.” Two of the regime figures most widely believed to have been, along with Maduro himself, the architects of the Bolivarian regime’s repressive governance are still in power, Minister of the Interior Diosdado Cabello and Minister of Defense General Vladimir Portino Lopez. They will need to be watched and not permitted to undermine U.S. efforts to rehabilitate the oil sector and orchestrate a return to legitimate, popularly supported and democratic government.
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There are several considerations that the U.S. will need to keep in mind going forward. First, more than 80 percent of Venezuelans now live below the poverty line. Their needs must be addressed . Even the shrinking number of Venezuelans who aligned with the regime are hoping to see their lives improve. Between 2013 and 2023, the country’s GDP contracted by around 70 percent, some believe it may have been as much as 75 percent. As most of Venezuela’s licit economy is essentially moribund and the U.S. will be controlling oil exports, the poor will naturally look to the United States for help. Heretofore, the regime employed food transfers to keep the populace in line. That role should move to the NGO community, the church or even elements of the democratic opposition.
Indeed, it will be important to secure the cooperation of the opposition, notwithstanding the Trump administrations to work with Delcy Rodriguez and company as the opposition represents the majority of Venezuelans inside the country as well as out. It will also be necessary to pay the military and it is not at all clear that the regime elements still in place will have the money to do so once oil receipts are being handled by the United States. If the U.S. is to avoid the mistakes that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein, attending to the needs of the populace and paying the rank and file of the military should be priorities.
The Trump administration should also move as quickly as the security situation permits to reopen the U.S. embassy in Caracas. There is reporting out of Colombia that the U.S. Charge in Bogota has already made a trip to Caracas to evaluate the situation. This is a good thing. There is no substitute for on-the-ground engagement and observation.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
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THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW —As Venezuela faces a moment of profound uncertainty following a dramatic U.S. operation that removed longtime strongman Nicolás Maduro from power, policymakers and intelligence professionals are grappling with what comes next for a country long plagued by authoritarian rule, with Washington signaling an unprecedented level of involvement in shaping Venezuela’s political future.
To help unpack what's ahead, Cipher Brief CEO Suzanne Kelly spoke with former CIA Senior Executive David Fitzgerald, a veteran intelligence officer whose career spans decades of operational, leadership, and policy roles across Latin America. Drawing on firsthand experience as a former Chief of Station and senior headquarters official overseeing the region, Fitzgerald offers a sobering assessment of Venezuela’s challenges, from rebuilding its institutions and oil sector to managing internal security threats while navigating the competing interests of China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
A 37-yr. CIA veteran, David Fitgerald retired in 2021 as Chief of Station in a Middle Eastern country, which hosted CIA’s largest field station. As a seven-time Chief of Station, Fitzgerald served in numerous conflict zones to include Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and South Asia. He also held senior HQS positions that included Latin America Chief of Operations and Latin America Deputy Division Chief. He also served as the senior DCIA representative at U.S. Military’s Central Command from 2017-2020, where he participated in several tier 1 operations as the intelligence advisor to the commander.
The Cipher Brief: How are you looking at Venezuela at this moment through a national security lens? What do you see as the next real challenge the U.S. is likely to face there?
Fitzgerald: As President Trump has said, the U.S. intends to run Venezuela. I'm still waiting for how the U.S. government intends to define 'running Venezuela'. I'm going to assume, and I hate to assume, but I'll assume that the goal will be to work closely with the current Venezuelan government to transition to a democracy and allow elections, something like that. So that will just be my assumption in lieu of any comments or any guidelines coming out of the White House.
The Cipher Brief: You understand the history, the politics, the culture of Venezuela better than most Americans. Where do you think some of the bumps in the road will come as the U.S. tries to figure out and define, as you put it, what running Venezuela really means?
Fitzgerald: It's a very diverse country. It's an incredibly rich resource country. People talk about the oil and the petroleum, but it's not only that. It could be one of the largest gold producers in the world. It's amazing the amount of natural resources that Venezuela has, yet 25 years after President Chávez was elected as president, it's one of the poorest countries in Latin America.
I think one of the hurdles that they're going to have is the brain drain. You don't have a strong cadre. A great example is Pedevesa, [Petróleos de Venezuela],the state run oil company. Back in the 90's, Pedevesa was considered one of the most efficient and best run oil companies in the world. Compared to even the private companies, it was a machine because they owned everything from downstream to upstream. They owned the drilling, they owned the pipelines, they owned the refineries, they owned the oil tankers, they owned the refineries in the U.S., they owned the distribution through their Citco company here. It was just an amazing company, and it was always held up as a model for state run companies. Of course, with the election of President Hugo Chávez, and then in 2002, the general strike when he just fired all of the Pedevesa members - even today, if you look around at the Chevrons, Exxons, the BPs, you'll find a large amount of former Pedevesa employees because they all migrated to the private petroleum companies because they were that good.
So, one of the biggest challenges is that Venezuela's going to need the financial means to really rebuild itself. I was last in Venezuela in 2013, and I'd been there in the early '90s, and it looked exactly the same. The infrastructure was terrible. Nothing had been modernized or built. So instead, what the Maduro and the Chavez government had done, was basically used Pedevesa as their cash cow to really distribute that money to themselves, steal the money, or distribute it to their followers. There was no effort to modernize the infrastructure or to do the necessary maintenance in the oil fields. That's why I think they're producing maybe 10% to 15% of the amount of oil they were at their peak.
So for me, that's really the key. How do you get Pedevesa up and running so it becomes a profitable company again that can actually provide the necessary resources for the country to rebuild itself?
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The Cipher Brief: If you were looking into your crystal ball, and you had to guess, will there be enough political stability with the U.S. involvement to be able to allow for this infrastructure to be rebuilt? How difficult is that political component going to be?
Fitzgerald: I think it's twofold. Not only the political component, but the security component. How do you transition from basically a dictatorship to some form of transparent democracy, which I think is the White House's goal. You do that via Delcy Rodríguez and the current Venezuelan government. As you know, the PSUV, which is the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which is Maduro's party, they control every apparatus of government, whether it's the Supreme Court, the judicial branch, the legislative branch, the executive branch, it's owned by them. There is no transparency right now. How do you get away from that? How do you rebuild these institutions so they become functional again and in some type of democratic transparent manner? That has to be a principal goal.
Number two, the security situation. You have maybe 20% to 25% of the population supporting Maduro and the PSUV. I would argue most of these people are supporting the party because they benefit from the party. They're either on the payrolls, they have some type of sweetheart deal, or they're able to conduct their illegal activities. The security forces are not hardcore ideologues. I think with the death of Chávez in 2013, he was the last ideologue you had as far as the Bolivarian revolution. My experience working with these people is that they're just in it for their own self-enrichment. Nobody really drank the Kool-Aid and said, "I want to be a Bolivarian revolutionary." I mean, this might have happened during the earlier stages when Chávez was first elected, but through the decades, it's become just an empty suit. Nobody really believes in any type of revolution.
On the security side, getting back to that, you have a disruptive element. You have this organization called the Colectivos, which is kind of a non-official goon squad that is supported by the government, basically comprised of criminals and local bullies. During demonstrations, they're the ones who go out there and start beating people and stuff like that. But you have the security services themselves as well. The rank and file. I think if you can do something like we did maybe in the Haiti occupation and in Panama where we actually formed an interim security force — I can't talk about the Haitian National Police nowadays as an effective force — but at the time in 1994, they became an effective enough security force, which provided security to the populace. That led the whole population to believe that there was hope.
I think that's going to be key along with the political transition. Can you provide security? Can you provide faith that people will adhere to the rules and regulations? How you do that? It's a good question.
Venezuela's a little different than most Latin countries. There is no national police force, other than the National Guard, which currently, if you talk to our DEA colleagues they'd probably say it's one of the largest drug cartels on the continent right now. Like the United States, Venezuela is divided into the state and municipal police forces.
For example, Caracas has two major police forces. You have the city of Caracas Police Force, and then you have the Miranda State Police Force, which is about maybe a third of Caracas, and then the rest is by the city of Caracas. Then you go out to the different states in Venezuela. They each have their own police force, and the large cities all have their police force. Years ago, they tried to form this Bolivarian national police agency. We're trying to incorporate this. It's never really worked because these police forces are all influenced and run by the local politicians.
So, that could work to our advantage as far as being able to work independently of the government and work with these local institutions to not only enhance their capability, but kind of vet them, cleanse them.
The Cipher Brief: How do you think Russia and China are assessing what''s next in Venezuela? What are the losses here and what are the opportunities here for each of them?
Fitzgerald: Let's talk about China first because that's probably going to be the most important for Venezuela. China must be extremely careful about how they handle this because they have literally billions and billions of dollars in loans that they provided the Bolivarian government. And one of their concerns, no doubt is that if you have a new democratic government, they could come in and say, "You know something? These loans that you signed with China, we don't consider them valid. We think they're illegal, and we're going to nullify all the loans." And right now, China's getting paid back in petroleum. So, China's got to be worried.
That means that if you're China, you're going to make nice with any new government because you don't want to be in a situation where they just say, "We consider these agreements you made with former government officials as illegal, and we will no longer honor them." So I don't see China being a spoiler. I see them willing to work with any new government coming into power because they have a lot of financial stake in what happens in Venezuela.
Russia, on the other hand, has very little commerce here. Russia's main trade with Venezuela is in arms. Venezuela's never even been able to pay back the loans or the purchases they made on some of the weapons systems they bought. Iran's another one. Iran's been there for decades now. It's entrenched. They've been allowed to work pretty much without limits in Venezuela, going back to, I think it was 2012, and the assassination attempt on the Saudi Ambassador in Washington. That was all being run out of, or being facilitated by, the Iranian embassy in Caracas.
So, it's going to affect all of their relationships. Iran's been more important than they realize for their oil industry as far as providing the parts and the 'know how' to maintain the oil fields and some of their refineries. A lot of that's coming from Iran. The big thing here that people don't realize is that there's one ingredient that's important for Venezuelan petroleum and if you don't have this, you really can't produce the amount of petroleum you need. Even at today's rate, you can't produce it. So Iran's been a major provider of this substance.
The Cipher Brief: How are drug cartels likely looking at this? And what about Cuba?
Fitzgerald: I would love to be in Cuba right now and listen to what they're saying about this. I mean, this really must be a shocker for them. Number one, for their security service. They just had a major failure because it's very well known that all of President Maduro's inner security was being provided by the Cubans. They're the only people he trusted. To a greater extent, they're out of security. Plus all their security services were being managed by the Cuban CI officers. The Cubans don't do it for free. So Venezuela pays the tab for that, and no doubt it's a greatly enhanced bill that they were getting from the Cuban government for President Maduro's security.
On the other end, as you know, Suzanne, the petroleum is just as vital to the Cuban economy. It's not all of it, but it's a major percentage of the petroleum that Cuba uses to include refined products that are provided by Venezuela at incredibly reduced rates that Venezuela knows Cuba will never repay. So, they have billions of dollars in debts to Venezuela and although they're technically selling the petroleum to Cuba, there's pretty much an understanding that it's not going to be repaid. So that's going to be a big blow to Cuba right now.
The Cipher Brief: What are the indicators that you're going to be watching for next that give you some clue as to where things might be headed?
Fitzgerald: Well, my big indicator is what's the plan? I'm sure they're huddling together both in the IC and in the State Department and the White House trying to figure out, 'Okay, how can we transition the current government to some type of viable democratic government and allow for a free election?' And there's probably been a million plans thrown out there. They just haven't figured out which one they're going to use. So I think that's what I'm waiting for is what the administration intends to roll out as their plan and how they intend to run Venezuela.
I think one of the big things here as far as Venezuela goes, is how to actually rebuild the country. It's going to require the private sector. The U.S. government is not going to be some nation builder like we tried to do in Iraq. And the great thing is that Venezuela has the resources that are quite sought after in the world where I think you're going to get a lot of interest from the private sector.
For example, a friend of mine asked the other day about the construction that would be needed. You're going to see some of the major construction companies needed to go in there and just rebuild the cities and the streets and everything. It's just the infrastructure there that hasn't been really modernized or updated in decades. So I think there is going to be a lot of interest in that. I think that interest by the private sector will also encourage the government to become as transparent and as democratic as it can be. So look for that too. And it's just not all about oil — it's minerals, construction, and the electric grid - it's across the board.
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DEEP DIVE – As audacious and complex as it was for the U.S. to extract Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela – and to do so without a single U.S. casualty – the challenges ahead may be even harder. “We’re gonna run it,” President Donald Trump said Saturday, referring to a post-Maduro Venezuela. The president gave few details and no specific time frame, saying only that the U.S. would “run the country” until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could be arranged. U.S. oil companies would return to Venezuela, investing “billions and billions” of dollars to reboot the oil sector and the country’s economy. American “boots on the ground” might be deployed in the interim.
It was a remarkable series of statements from a president who has criticized past American nation-building projects, and it raised questions about how exactly the Trump Administration would “run” a country beset by profound challenges. Venezuela, a country twice the size of Iraq, has endured decades of authoritarian rule, corruption, drug-related violence, and economic pain. And for the moment at least, the country’s leader still pledges allegiance to Maduro.
Miguel Tinker Salas, a Venezuelan historian, Professor Emeritus at Pomona College and Fellow at the Quincy Institute, said that when Trump spoke those words – “we’re gonna run it” – he was stunned.
“Initially, my jaw dropped,” Salas told The Cipher Brief. “Even at the height of U.S. influence in Venezuela, in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, they never said they wanted to run the country. And I don't think the Trump administration comprehends the complexity that they're dealing with for a country as diverse and as big as Venezuela.”
Even those who cheered the U.S. military operation warned of the difficulties that lie ahead. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who pronounced himself “delighted” by Maduro’s ouster, told NewsNation the mission was “maybe step one of a much longer process. Maduro is gone but the regime is still in place.”
“Maduro’s fall is good for Venezuela and the United States,” Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security, posted on X. “It was a brilliant military operation and the world should be better off because of it. Whether it WILL in fact be better off depends on what happens next. One of the lessons of other regime-change operations is not to topple a government without a plan for what comes next. What comes next in Venezuela seems as vague as the plan for running postwar Gaza under a ‘Board of Peace’.”
The Venezuelans who might lead
At a news conference following Maduro’s capture, Trump said that Delcy Rodriguez, the regime’s vice president, would lead Venezuela as long as she “does what we want.” And he suggested the U.S. would enforce that arrangement at the barrel of a gun.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” Trump said, adding that the U.S. might deploy “a second wave” of forces if Venezuelan officials or troops don’t go along with Washington’s wishes. The U.S. naval presence near Venezuela remains in place – the largest such deployment in the region since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
A day later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio painted a slightly different picture of the U.S. role. “It’s not running — it’s running policy, the policy with regards to this,” he said.
But Rubio and Trump were clear about the overall approach: in essence, Do what we say, and things will be fine.
“We’re going to make decisions based on their actions and their deeds in the days and weeks to come,” Rubio toldThe New York Times. “We think they’re going to have some unique and historic opportunities to do a great service for the country, and we hope that they’ll accept that opportunity.”
It’s not clear that Rodriguez, the former Vice President, will be a pliant ally. She was sworn in Monday as interim president, after almost immediately accusing the U.S. of invading her country on Saturday. She called the operation “a barbarity,” and in an address to the nation said that Maduro was still Venezuela’s head of state.
“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros,” Rodriguez said, with other senior officials at her side. Venezuela, she said, would never agree to being a U.S. "colony."
A day later she struck a less defiant note, calling on the U.S. to work with her government on an “agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development.” She added that “we prioritize moving towards balanced and respectful international relations between the United States and Venezuela."
It’s not at all clear that’s what Trump has in mind; he insisted that Rodriguez would comply with his wishes – one way or another. "She had a long conversation with Marco [Rubio], and she said, 'We'll do whatever you need,'” Trump said. “I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn't have a choice.” On Sunday he upped the ante, tellingThe Atlantic that if Rodriguez “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
Experts said Rodriguez will have to navigate an almost impossible political tightrope.
“She claims to represent a socialist party opposed to U.S. intervention and to U.S. meddling in her internal affairs – so how does she rationalize this to her base?” Salas said. “This is a very difficult, challenging position for her to be in – to on the one hand promise social change reforms, a continuation of Maduro, and at the same time, now become compliant in providing oil to the United States.”
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Beyond Rodriguez, who serves as both Vice President and minister for oil, other Maduro regime leaders remain in place, including the military chief General Vladimir Padrino Lopez and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. They have denounced Maduro’s abduction as well – Padrino vowed to resist “the most criminal military aggression” and ordered a mobilization of Venezuelan forces on land, sea, and air.
Experts have warned of splits within the army – between hardliners who may refuse to support anyone who bows to Trump’s demands, and others who will stand with Rodriguez no matter what. Such divides could lead to violence and – if Trump is true to his word – a deployment of U.S. “boots on the ground.”
Michael Shifter, a former president of the Inter-American Dialogue, said that while Rodriguez might be able to deliver on Trump’s demands to open up the oil sector, other critical tasks will prove more challenging.
“It will be exceedingly difficult if not impossible for her to tame the entrenched corruption and widespread criminality in the country while leaving the machinery of Chavista governance intact,” Shifter told The Cipher Brief, using a term for policies begun by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez. “The risks that chaos, violence and instability will ensue are high, and under that scenario the U.S. would have no choice but to send in troops to stabilize the situation.”
“Control of the military is essential for control of Venezuela, particularly in this unstable moment,” Salas said. “And so far, the commanding general of the military, Padrino, has shown no disposition to break with the PSUV [Maduro’s party].”
Absent in the Trump plans for now is any role for the Venezuelan opposition. The main opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month, issued a statement urging that her political ally, Edmundo Gonzalez, be recognized as Venezuela’s president. Gonzalez was widely seen as the rightful winner of the 2024 presidential vote. “Today we are prepared to enforce our mandate and take power,” Machado said.
But in his news conference after Maduro’s capture, Trump never mentioned Gonzalez, and threw cold water on the prospects of a role for Machado.
"I think it'd be very tough for her to be the leader," Trump said. "She doesn't have the support or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect."
Those remarks left Machado in the odd position of having won her goal of Maduro’s exit, while failing to win the backing of Washington. Salas said Venezuelans he had spoken with “were disillusioned about the fact that Trump essentially threw her under the bus.”
Asked Saturday which American officials would “run” Venezuela, Trump nodded to Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who flanked the president during his news conference. “The people that are standing right behind me, we’re going to be running it,” Trump said.
That drew a rebuke from Elliott Abrams, a Senior Fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations and longtime hawk in terms of U.S. policy in Latin America.
“Venezuelans wanted Maduro out and voted against him,” Abrams wrote on the organization’s website. “They did not vote for U.S. rule, and pursuing that path will create instability—exactly what Trump does not want.”
The oil factor
In the months-long runup to Maduro’s capture, as the U.S. deployed naval forces to the Caribbean and attacked alleged drug traffickers from the air, the Trump administration justified its actions by invoking the drug trade and the illegitimacy of Maduro’s rule. Oil was rarely mentioned.
Now, as U.S. officials explain their post-Maduro plans, oil is front and center.
Over the weekend, Trump accused Venezuela of seizing U.S. oil assets in the country, and said U.S. companies would return to operate Venezuela’s state-controlled oil reserves, “spend billions of dollars” and “start making money for the country.”
U.S. oil companies have a long history in Venezuela, dating to the early 20th century, when they came at the government’s invitation to explore and develop oil reserves. Gulf, Shell, and Standard Oil were among the early arrivals, in what proved to be a symbiotic relationship: the companies earned billions of dollars, and Venezuela grew rich; by the mid-1970s, oil revenues had helped make it the wealthiest nation, per capita, in Latin America.
In 1976, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry, creating a state-owned company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), that continued to partner with foreign companies. More than two decades later, President Hugo Chavez renegotiated contracts with foreign oil companies to boost Venezuela’s share of the profits, a move that prompted ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to leave the country.
Ultimately, Venezuela’s oil sector and its broader economy suffered the consequences – a deteriorating oil infrastructure, and U.S. sanctions on Venezuela and the PDVSA. Today, Venezuela produces fewer than one million barrels of oil a day, down from roughly 3.5 million in 1997, and more than 90 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty.
“Venezuela has been a problem both for the United States and for the Venezuelan people for over 20 years,” Paul Kolbe, a former Director of The Intelligence Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, told The Cipher Brief. “For the Chavez years and then the Maduro years, they've driven a country that was once one of the wealthiest in the world, and certainly the wealthiest in South America…into the ground through corruption, poor leadership, poor decisions, and oppression of the people.”
Only one U.S. oil company – Chevron – has remained in Venezuela, operating under joint ventures with the PDVSA. Rubio’s and Trump’s remarks suggest that the U.S. intends to force Rodriguez, the interim leader, to offer favorable conditions to other American companies.
But experts aren’t sure the others will return.
Ali Moshiri, who oversaw Chevron’s operations in Venezuela until 2017, said the big oil firms won’t go back until they clear signs of change.
“Not many companies are going to rush to go into an environment where there’s not stability,” Moshiri toldThe New York Times. He also said that while Chevron and smaller operators could boost the country’s oil output slightly in the short term, a more robust expansion would take years, given the political situation, the state of the country’s oil infrastructure, and the time needed to reestablish operations in the country.
Salas echoed the point. “Exporting oil from Venezuela is a challenge,” he told The Cipher Brief. “The infrastructure has collapsed. The oil itself that has to be pumped out of the ground is heavy crude, which requires a lot of technology, and billions of dollars of investment. So I'm not convinced that American companies are going to be running in.”
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A long history of regime change
The Maduro mission came exactly 36 years after the surrender of another Latin American dictator – Panama’s Manuel Noriega – to face drug charges in the U.S. That operation had its detractors, but in the history of U.S. regime-change missions, it probably counts as a relative success story. The list of other cases is long – and while each episode had its own specific history, there have been few good outcomes.
To take three very different examples: The 2003 decapitation of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq – which involved a huge force of “boots on the ground” – was celebrated initially by President George W. Bush in a “Mission Accomplished” speech, only to unravel in a fierce domestic insurgency that lasted for years, cost more than 4,000 American lives, and led – indirectly – to the rise of the Islamic State. The Kennedy administration backed a coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963; Diem was later murdered, unrest followed, and in his memoirs, President Lyndon Johnson blamed the coup for the escalation of the Vietnam War. In Iran, the nationalization of the oil industry was at the heart of a coup orchestrated by the U.S. and Britain in 1953 to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. That led to the return to power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – and ultimately to the revolution that brought an Islamic theocracy to power in Tehran in 1979.
“I immediately am reminded of Iraq, where the military operation was well done and we removed Saddam Hussein pretty quickly in 2003, but then what came after was not great,” Glenn Corn, a former CIA Senior Executive, told The Cipher Brief. “So I hope we've learned that lesson and we're not going to repeat the mistakes we made there.”
Salas noted that one lesson of the Iraq War involved the perils of driving out the remnants of an ousted regime. “The lesson learned in Iraq was when they attempted to expunge the Ba’ath Party, they realized that they had utter chaos because there was no one there to run the government, no one with experience,” he said. “You had the nation fracture into particular sections, regions, strongmen, military individuals, and others. If that happened in Venezuela, it would be chaotic. The country's very big, very diverse. It has oil regions, it has urban areas, it has an industrial base. So you could imagine that happening on a national scale.”
To some, the Maduro operation was reminiscent of an earlier era of American “gunboat diplomacy,” when the U.S. military was deployed regularly to seize territory and resources. The New York Times’ David Sanger noted that Trump installed a portrait of William McKinley in the White House – and it was President McKinley who presided over the U.S. seizures of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.
“The U.S. operation, in seeking to assert control over a vast Latin American nation, has little precedent in recent decades,” Sanger wrote, “recalling the imperial U.S. military efforts of the 19th and early 20th centuries in Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.”
What comes next
Given the uncertainties of the moment, experts said the next phase in Venezuela will hinge on answers to several core questions:
Does the Trump administration have an arrangement with Rodriguez and other Maduro regime officials to do the White House’s bidding? If not, how will the U.S. respond if they fail to oblige? Does the U.S. have a plan to remove those leaders? What might trigger that “second wave” Trump referred to, and the deployment of U.S. forces to the country?
What milestones must be met for the end of the interim period? Would elections follow – and would the U.S. organize or oversee those? What will the major U.S. oil companies do?
“Uncertainties abound in Venezuela about what comes next,” Shifter said.“For now, a framework of coerced cooperation between the Venezuelan regime, now led by Delcy Rodriguez, and the Trump administration, seems to be in effect. But it is far from clear whether that model is viable, much less sustainable.”
Fontaine said that “the default could well be to work with a compliant President Delcy and most of the existing government. It would be a head of state change more than regime change.” But he added that such an arrangement would do little to satisfy the opposition – the same people who have cheered the news of Maduro’s capture. “Many would-be supporters of this move hoped for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela, not just a different approach on drugs and oil.”
He also noted that Trump was hardly the first president to decry nation-building projects, only to wind up taking them on.
“For 25 years, every U.S. president has opposed nation-building abroad and then gotten involved in it,” Fontaine said. “Trump, with the commitment to run Venezuela, appears to be the latest. The welcome fall of Maduro is not the end, or the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.”
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CIPHER BRIEF EXPERT INTERVIEW – While the U.S. operation to detain Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro took just hours to execute, a full assessment of its global impact will take weeks or months to fully understand in part, because of the complicated dynamic connecting the country’s assets, allies and oil.
“Venezuela is what I would call one of those hyphenated accounts,” says Norm Roule, a global energy expert who also served as former National Intelligence Manager for Iran at ODNI. “Venezuela in and of itself is important, but it's also Venezuela/oil, Venezuela/Russia, Venezuela/China, Venezuela/Cuba. There are a lot of different accounts and issues that must be taken into consideration.”
Venezuela’s partners depend on it for various strategic reasons: Cuba for economic support, Iran for political alignment in Latin America, and China for a notable share of its oil imports. The United States, meanwhile, is signaling a major shift in how it intends to assert influence in the Western Hemisphere.
Cipher Brief Executive Editor Brad Christian talked with Roule, a leading global consultant on Middle East and Energy issues, about what is likely to happen next as the U.S. signals a major shift in how it intends to assert influence in the Western Hemisphere. Their conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Norman Roule is a geopolitical and energy consultant who served for 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, managing numerous programs relating to Iran and the Middle East. He also served as the National Intelligence Manager for Iran (NIM-I)\n at ODNI, where he was responsible for all aspects of national intelligence policy related to Iran.
THE INTERVIEW
The Cipher Brief: The Trump administration recently released an updated national security strategy that weighed heavily on the Western hemisphere. Are we seeing perhaps the first kind of inclination that this is going to actually be something to pay close attention to?
Roule: Absolutely. And I think the national security strategy is something that every one of the Cipher Brief's readers and listeners should pull out today. Look at it again, because I can assure you that policymakers around the world - in both our partner and adversary countries - are certainly doing so. If you look at events in Venezuela and read that national security strategy, a number of themes come forward.
The U.S. will be the dominant power in the Western hemisphere. In Venezuela, we saw a display of massive U.S. power and skill in the form of our military intelligence and technology. This is very similar to the display that the world witnessed in Iran last June. So, this is coming very, very close to two sets of actions. And I think this is meant to be seen also, as the president alluded to in his press conference, as a visible reset of what he described as a previous erosion of U.S. military power in his predecessor's administration.
This is also showing that the U.S. is now capable of executing what was described by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as an extraordinarily large and complicated military and intelligence operation, without being leaked. This did not require foreign partners. And it also did not require the disruption of regional commercial air operations. If you listen to what the chairman talked about, this involved 150 aircraft from multiple locations descending upon another country. And other than closing the airspace for a short period of time, commercial air traffic was not disrupted. But you're seeing some other things that are also notable. The U.S. will undertake regime change when it perceives that the existing regime threatens core U.S. national security interests.
This also represents another U.S. blow against a Chinese partner in the Western hemisphere following the Trump administration's actions in Panama. The operation also took place on the anniversary of the killing of Iranian Quds Force leader General Qassem Soleimani in 2020 as well as the surrender of Manuel Noriega in 1990.
These are both examples of the long arm of the U.S. government. And certainly, the United States may have thought that the selection of this date would dampen any commemorations by the Iranian government for Soleimani's death in Tehran. Which would have been difficult enough given the ongoing demonstrations in Tehran. But the ripples from this Venezuela operation will be global. And I think the national security strategy puts some meat on the bone with this operation.
The Cipher Brief: Just looking at the intelligence that was needed to pull off an operations like this for a moment, what do you think this says about U.S. intelligence and what would have gone into that for this particular operation?
Roule: Well, it tells you a couple of things. It tells you that first, the intelligence was exquisite and up to date. But it also tells you that the intelligence was integrated into the military operation with an intimacy, with care, so that our military personnel were able to move with extraordinary speed to get to the location as quickly as humanly possible. We've seen this in the past with the operation against Osama bin Laden. This is just another example of the close integration between the U.S. intelligence communication and our amazing and extraordinary special forces personnel. I can't speak highly enough of those extraordinary and humble operators.
This also shows you the breadth of that intelligence community. The intelligence agencies that were cited included, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). So, you're getting a sense of some very broad intelligence capabilities which were brought to bear and then integrated.
The president, I believe, also mentioned that a house had been built in advance. I mean, you're just watching some incredible intelligence capability that was brought to bear by people on the ground over many months. It shows courage, it shows tenacity, it shows you the resources that were pulled together. And it also shows an ability to compartment this information and to prevent a leak. The U.S. government is doing what it's supposed to do. And in a world where we're often complaining about government, the American people and our partners should be gratified that our tax dollars are being well spent. And that the U.S. intelligence community and the military are performing superbly.
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The Cipher Brief: There's a lot of connective tissue between Venezuela and the rest of the world when you consider the oil industry, including China. As an energy expert, can you share what’s top of mind for you on the broader impact on the oil and energy markets?
Roule: Maybe the best way to answer that is to just explain a little bit about the Venezuelan oil system. First, the operation did not occur near Venezuelan oil production. Upstream oil operations are not located near Caracas, although exports and storage are highly sensitive to obviously, as you correctly put it, a U.S. maritime enforcement of a U.S. embargo.
Most of Venezuela's oil production, about two thirds, is derived from what is known as the Orinoco belt. And oil production from this Orinoco belt had fallen to about 498,000 barrels by the end of December, which is about a 25% drop from just a couple of weeks earlier. And it's been shutting down because they're running out of storage space because Venezuela can't export oil because of the blockade. So, they're trying to put the oil anywhere they can. They've put it in their own storage, they've put it in ships that are docked. They're putting it in almost in teacups at this point because they are running out of space to store the oil that they're producing.
Let's talk about the oil that is produced in Venezuela. They produce it from tar sands. It's extra heavy. It's a heavy type of crude oil and there are relatively few refineries that can process this grade of oil. It's difficult to extract. It's expensive to extract. Chinese refineries in 2025 tended to get a majority of Venezuelan exports. That amount ranged from 75 to 90% depending upon the amount. But even here, the Chinese tended to put much of that oil in their own storage. And China and Russia tend to be the two big players in Venezuela. For China, it is transactional. Chinese buyers look at it as a way to purchase cheap oil that they again put in storage. It's about 4% of China's exports and China again, has used a shadow fleet of intermediaries to purchase this oil. If China were to lose access to this, it's a problem. But because much of this has gone into storage and there are other suppliers out there in Saudi Arabia and other places, they could make this up.
Russia's a different story. Russia is an enabler of the Venezuelan oil industry. Because Venezuela's oil is so tar heavy, in essence, they need to import naphtha from Russia and this dilutes the ore and eco output and makes it blendable and then shippable. So, Russia sends in naphtha, it blends the stuff down and then stuff can then be exported. What would happen if suddenly Venezuela is opened up? Well, a couple of things.
First, because the oil market is relatively well supplied, people would look at it and ask, ‘where are the investment opportunities?’ If you look at the places where the world has changed suddenly and investment opportunities occurred, production didn't dramatically change. Let's take Iraq and Libya for example.
In Iraq, it took about a dozen years to get back to the level of pre-Saddam. And at that point, China was a major player. The U.S. is now returning to Iraq. In Libya, we're now a number of years after the fall of Gaddafi, and they are still about 25% below production levels under Gaddafi.
And again, the U.S. is returning. Much of it does depend upon the security of the country and the stability of the country. So, the president's comments about running Venezuela the right way really does strike at the heart of what happens in the oil industry.
The Cipher Brief: Devil’s Advocate here: how does it compete with Texas’ output? What does the U.S. do with that oil? Is it going to be sold to China?
Roule: The president and the Secretary of State have talked about stolen oil. What does this refer to? Is there a U.S. case there? I'll leave it to others to talk about the amounts and so forth but when this is talked about, this refers to a 2007 Venezuela expropriation of what I believe was then Conoco Phillips or ExxonMobil investments. That Venezuela did indeed expropriate. So, there is indeed a legal case of Venezuela nationalization of U.S. assets for which the U.S. was not compensated. If Venezuela's government did change and if U.S. oil companies were to go in, could the oil industry be dramatically changed? Yes, but it would depend upon security.
Maybe my final comment would be that Chevron has been heavily invested there, and they have maintained a very mature and stable outlook for the country. If you hear Chevron’s CEO speak about Chevron's investments, they've been very levelheaded and unflappable about national security events. So, I think you're going to see them stay there as well. And I think when you listen to the president's comments about how the U.S. would run Venezuela, he seemed fairly confident that the U.S. oil industry would play a role there. Which makes one think that there have been some sort of discussions in this regard playing out in some way in the background.
The Cipher Brief: At the most recent Cipher Brief Threat Conference, there was a lot of discussion around the idea of global conflict and some people believe that we are at the precipice of World War III. Certainly everyone agrees that global disruption is at fairly unprecedented levels. What is your thinking on this?
Roule: We are in a different world, but we're in a world of permanent gray zone conflict. But gray zone is defined and very, very differently. Gray zone was once defined by Iranian militias and it was defined by drone attacks or cyberattacks that were non-attributed. But we now have drone attacks or drone flights in Europe that come from God knows where, but they're Russian. We have Chinese routine harassment for more than a decade in the South China Sea. We have routine theft of intellectual property by China and North Korea, which in and of itself is a type of attack against our economy. But it's not necessarily a traditional gray zone attack. Because the people who are often involved in gray zone operations only see a certain number of colors on the palate. But the theft of intellectual property is just another form of attack.
We're in that kind of a world and the people who are running the countries, they don't need to launch a war per se. They need to launch a series of short, sharp conflicts. Or short, sharp attacks. Now they said these could lead to a war if people believe we don't care about certain areas. And I do think there is the issue of what could happen in Taiwan in 2026. That should be a worry for everyone.
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OPINION — “I knew the possible danger. It was a very dangerous operation. It was amazing that we had a few injured, but all are in good shape right now, but I knew there was great danger. You got off a helicopter. The helicopters were being shot out. They got on the ground amazing talent and tremendous patriotism, bravery. The bravery was incredible…They got off the helicopter and the bullets were flying all over the place. As you know, one of the helicopters got hit pretty badly, but that we got everything back. Got everything back and nobody killed,” meaning Americans.
That was President Donald Trump speaking Sunday aboard Air Force One on the way back from Florida about what he observed watching the early Saturday morning U.S. raid in Caracas that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
While events in Venezuela are still unfolding and I will discuss some below, I use that quote because it illustrates that deaths of American service members is one thing I believe is high in Trump’s mind as he has in recent months undertaken a series of worldwide military actions.
And despite Trump’s threat that he could put U.S. boots-on-the-ground if needed to “run” Venezuela, there is no immediate indication he has plans to do that.
Instead, it appears Trump’s plan is to “run” Venezuela using what remains of the corrupt Maduro military/police hierarchy as long as they do what Trump wants. To me it recalls Trump as a builder working with questionable union leaders and construction firms to get jobs done.
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Just why has President Trump spent time and money, first to negotiate with Maduro to get him to leave, and finally to dramatically oust the Venezuelan President from office?
I divert for a moment.
On Friday, the original beginning of this column was, “Most fentanyl and methamphetamine trafficking into the U.S. occurs through official ports of entry along the southwest border, according to DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency).”
The GAO’s report, including the finding cited above, focuses attention on fentanyl primarily coming into the U.S. through land ports of entry while the Trump administration made its anti-fentanyl focus on attacking narco-trafficking swift-boats initially from Venezuela, claiming they were headed for the U.S.
More recently, the attacks, and killing of those aboard, have been those in the eastern Pacific.
The New York Times published a story by Carol Rosenberg that discussed what happens when U.S. Coast Guard cutters intercept narco-trafficking boats, seize drugs and capture those aboard – but not kill 115 on 35 speedboats as the U.S. military did last year.
Putting together the December GAO report and the Times story raised some serious questions about the rationality of the Trump administration’s so-called anti-drug program.
Up to that time, interception of drug-carrying boats and interrogation of the crews gave valuable information on drug routes.
However, as The Times noted, “Attorney General Pam Bondi directed [U.S.] prosecutors in February to mostly stop bringing charges against low-level offenders in favor of bigger investigations.” According to The Times, “For the most part, people captured by the Coast Guard in the same smuggling routes the U.S. military is bombing are being repatriated -- either directly, before reaching the United States, or through deportation after briefly being questioned near U.S. ports.”
The Times noted that many earlier captured crew members were “poor, undereducated farmers or fishermen [who] would reach cooperation agreements that offered details of their engagement at the bottom rung of the drug smuggling business in exchange for possible leniency.”
The Times quoted Tampa-lawyer Stephen M. Crawford, who in the past had been assigned to represent defendants captured by the Coast Guard, who said the killing of crew members without prosecution amounted to very dangerous “political theater.”
I could say the same today for what I consider today’s ill-thought-out Trump actions in Venezuela.
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As many others have pointed out, returning democracy to the Venezuelan people was not uppermost in Trump’s mind.
On Saturday, in announcing the raid, Trump told reporters he had not been in contact with Venezuelan Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado. He then went on to say, "I think it'd be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn't have the support or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman but she doesn't have the respect."
What I believe Trump meant was that the Maduro power structure – the Venezuelan Army, Bolivarian National Police and urban paramilitary networks known as colectivos -- remain active and it is they that don’t “respect” Machado.
They are also probably the reason there are no U.S. boots-on-the-ground.
Instead, Trump seems to believe that by keeping major U.S. military forces near Venezuela, he can threaten additional military attacks to keep the ex-Maduro crowd in line.
As Trump put it Sunday on Air Force One, “Venezuela thus far has been very nice, but it helps to have a force like we have. You know, we were ready for a second wave. We were all set to go, but we don't think we're going to need it.”
Apparently it is Venezuela’s oil which is primarily on Trump’s mind.
As with other matters, Trump seems to be living in the past as illustrated when he told reporters over the weekend, “We [the U.S.] had a lot of oil there [in Venezuela]. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”
Nationalization was the culmination of a decades-long effort by Venezuelan administrations of both the right and the left to bring under government control an industry that an earlier leader had largely given away.
American oil companies, including Exxon and Mobil, which merged in 1999, and Gulf Oil, which became Chevron in 1984, were hit hardest. The Dutch giant Shell was also affected. The companies, which had accounted for more than 70 percent of crude oil production in Venezuela, lost roughly $5 billion in assets but were compensated just $1 billion each, according to news stories from that period.
On Sunday, Trump said, “The oil companies are ready to go. They're going to go in, they're going to rebuild the infrastructure. You know, we built it to start off with many years ago.
They took it away. You can't do that. They can't do that with me. They did it with other presidents.”
According to several sources, major oil companies are not eager to spend the years and money at the present time to revive the Venezuelan oil industry, but as with much about the Venezuelan situation, there’s little yet that is predictable.
One potentially dangerous outcome, looming already, is how Trump reads what he so far considers his military success.
On Sunday he made open threats to both Colombia and Cuba.
He called Colombian President Gustavo Petro “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he's not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you?”
And as for Cuba, Trump said, “Cuba always survived because of Venezuela. Now, they won't have that money coming in. They won't have the income coming in.”
He then went on to point out, “You know, a lot of Cubans were killed yesterday. You know that. A lot of Cubans were killed…There was a lot of death on the other side.”
But then Trump quickly added, as I have pointed out before, “No death on our side.”
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CIPHER BRIEF EXPERT Q&A — President Donald Trump said the U.S. is "in charge" in Venezuela after U.S. forces detained President Nicolas Maduro on charges related to drug trafficking. President Trump is also demanding "total access" to Venezuela's oil infrastructure. Venezuela's de-facto leader Delcy Rodriguez said Caracas is seeking "balanced and respectful international relations" with Washington.
Intelligence professionals are reacting to this major development as it will have far-reaching consequences far beyond Venezuela, for the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere amid heightened tensions with adversaries such as Russia and China. Cipher Brief Executive Editor Brad Christian spoke with former CIA Senior Executive Paul Kolbe about what Maduro's capture signals for the national security landscape in 2026. The conversation has been lightly edited for length.
Paul Kolbe is former director of The Intelligence Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Kolbe also led BP’s Global Intelligence and Analysis team supporting threat warning, risk mitigation, and crisis response. Kolbe served 25 years as an operations officer in the CIA, where he was a member of the Senior Intelligence Service, serving in Russia, the Balkans, Indonesia, East Germany, Zimbabwe, and Austria.
Christian: How are thinking about what just happened in Venezuela? What's top of mind for you?
Kolbe: Venezuela has been a problem both for the United States and for the Venezuelan people for over 20 years. For the Chavez years and then the Maduro years, they've driven a country that was once one of the wealthiest in the world, and certainly wealthiest in South America, with unbelievable natural resources, particularly oil, and driven it into the ground through corruption, poor leadership, poor decisions, and oppression of the people. There's a reason eight million Venezuelans have fled the country. So, it's been a series of corrupt, horrible rulers. Not sorry to see Maduro go.
Venezuela has also been a foothold for Cuba. Very important for Cuba in terms of the oil that they get there, but also as a place to plant the flag and spread Cuban revolution throughout South America. It's been a base and source of money and money laundering for Hezbollah and Iran. Russia has had a long-standing relationship with Chavez and with Maduro, supporting them with weapons, with intelligence, with the Wagner Group. So, Venezuela has been both a thorn in the side of the U.S., and has been involved in so many different things that are against our interests — not sorry to see Maduro go.
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Christian: Last year, President Trump had authorized covert activity in Venezuela. There had been talk even recently, just days ago, of the CIA being involved in a strike against a target in Venezuela. We don't often see a military operation of this complexity that goes this smoothly. What does that tell you about the intelligence that was at play here and the level of cooperation with the military?
Kolbe: Clearly it was highly professional and extraordinarily well-executed operation, both by the intelligence community and by the U.S. special operations forces that went in. Very pleased that there were no casualties, that we didn't suffer any losses. But the split that I would make is to ask if this is a very well-executed tactical operation that is without a larger strategy? And if there's a larger strategy, what is it? In particular, what's the follow-on? There's been a number of times where we've gone in and broken things and not done such a great job of fixing them or just leaving. You can look at Libya, at Iraq, and other places where that's not happened. Some folks will point to Panama and Grenada and try to use those as analogies for Venezuela, and they're very different cases. Venezuela's not Panama — much bigger, much different set of dynamics there — and it's certainly not Grenada.
So the follow-on of who's going to rule, what the transition is, how do you maintain stability? The narco-traffickers are still there, the narco-syndicates, the military is still there, the street gangs are still there. The paramilitaries, which have been supported by the military and have acted as the chief arm of oppression and brutality against the people, they're still there. There's a lot of generals that have an awful lot to lose. So, unless there's been a negotiated handover of power, I don't quite understand, yet, how we're going to run the country without boots on the ground or without a clear negotiated handover.
Christian: Russia's been described as a special type of enabler for Venezuela over the years. Russian officials have called the U.S. operation in Venezuela "unlawful'' and a violation of norms. There have been other Russia developments related to Venezuela recently. The ship, Bella 1, that the United States has been pursuing for the last couple of weeks was reported to have painted a Russian flag on it's hull on Dec 31, and Russia reportedly has asked the United States to stop pursuing it. What's your reaction to how Russia has publicly responded to these incidents?
Kolbe: I'll start with the irony of Russia's protestations against what they see as the invasion of sovereignty of another country and how awful that is put out there with no sense of irony. Russia is condemning something that is not analogous to what they've done in Ukraine, but also completely ignoring what they've done in Ukraine and the ongoing war that they continue to pursue against the Ukrainian people, against their infrastructure, against everything that stands there.
So, while Venezuela is going to capture a lot of attention over the next few days, I suspect that's also, perhaps, part of the purpose of it. It distracts from what I think is a far more strategic, far more important issue, i.e., What's going to happen in Ukraine in 2026? Will the U.S. abandon Ukraine? Will we stab them in the back, or will we be able to provide support that lets them fight Russia, preserve their sovereignty?
The story with the ship is a pretty interesting one. It feels like watching a sea-born version of OJ Simpson's escape in his Ford Bronco as this Coast Guard cutter trails this gigantic oil freighter, which is running away at the speed of 11 knots and is now in the North Atlantic and is claiming to have Russian protection. Russia has reportedly put out a diplomatic note dissuading the U.S. from taking any action on that. So it will be interesting to see what actually happens if the ship managed to make good on the escape or if we turn around and say, "Oh, nevermind."
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Christian: At the most recent Threat Conference back in October, there was a lot of talk of global conflict. And some people use the phrase, "World War III." Are we in it? Has it begun? There's been a lot of talk about gray zone, the level of gray zone activity, and the risk of major conflicts breaking out such as Taiwan or the situation in Europe growing beyond the borders of Ukraine. How are you thinking about the world as we start 2026 amid what is truly a dynamic national security backdrop?
Kolbe: I'm thinking about it as we're in a state of conflict without recognizing it. Just a couple of days ago over New Year’s, you saw China mount a blockade exercise, clearly practicing for a coming blockade of Taiwan. The signaling coming out of there is ever sharper and, it’s always been clear, but suggests a narrowing timeline for action on Taiwan. I don't believe anything's imminent, but clearly they're building the capability and then the intent, the decision, once they have the capability, can happen at any time.
Just a couple of days ago, we saw another communications cable cut between Estonia and Finland by a Russian ship that had left a Russian port that continues what is essentially low grade warfare on the European continent by Russia: sabotage, assassinations, misinformation, disinformation, and just a series of things which are clearly preparation of the battlefield, designed both to deter Europe and get Europe to self-deter, but also for the U.S., but also to put into place the capabilities that would be useful or used in conflict.
I think what is clear to me is that we, the US — as stated in the National Security Strategy that came out in December — are basically carving out Latin America as a U.S. area of influence and seeming to leave Europe and Central Asia to Russia and East Asia to China. And for me, that's very disturbing that America First looks to be coming to include South America First.
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OPINION — “The question before the body is, can the Congress stop a military conflict declared by the Commander-in- Chief because we don’t agree with the decision, and without our [Congress] approval it must end? The answer, unequivocally, to me is no. Under the Constitution, the authority to be Commander-in-Chief resides exclusively with the President. The power to declare war is exclusive to the Congress. Now, what could the Congress do constitutionally if they disagree with a military action that is not a declaration of war? We could cut off funding.”
That was Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) speaking on the Senate floor on the afternoon of November 6, when debate was to begin on S.J. Res. 90, legislation that was “to direct the President to terminate the use of U.S. Armed Forces for hostilities within or against Venezuela, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.”
Graham’s remark that Congress could cut off funds to halt a President ordered foreign military action took me back 56 years to December 1969, when I was working for Sen. J.W. Fulbright (D-Ark.), then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I had in late 1969 been to Laos where the Nixon administration was carrying out a secret bombing campaign in an attempt to limit weapons going from North Vietnam to pro-Communists in South Vietnam.
To halt the at-the-time classified Laos bombing program, Fulbright introduced an amendment to the fiscal 1970 Defense Appropriations Bill that prohibited the use of U.S. funds to send American ground combat troops into Laos or Thailand. To get his amendment debated and passed, Fulbright had to arrange for a closed-session of the Senate.
That closed session was held on December 16, 1969, with all 100 Senators present, a handful of staff – including me – but no one in the public galleries and no reporters in the press gallery. After a 90-minute debate, the amendment passed. The House accepted the amendment in conference and it was signed into law by President Nixon on December 29, 1969.
Fulbright’s purpose was to assert Congress’ Constitutional role when it came to a prospective military operation amid his concern that the Nixon administration was expanding the Vietnam War into neighboring countries without consulting Congress.
I describe that long-past activity to explain my continuing apprehension over today’s possible Trump administration military action against Venezuela. The Trump administration has already introduced deadly military operations against alleged narco-traffickers working from a secret list of drug cartels using a classified Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion which claims the drugs are to kill Americans and finance arms to terrorists who will destabilize the U.S. and other Western Hemisphere countries.
Last Thursday and Friday, President Trump met in the Oval Office to discuss a host of options for Venezuela with Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Friday night, in remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One as he traveled for the weekend to his Mar-a-Lago estate, the President said he had “sort of made up my mind” about how he will proceed with the possibility of military action in Venezuela. On Sunday, flying home, Trump told reporters the U.S. “may be having some discussions with [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro,” adding that “they [the Venezuelans] would like to talk.”
Although he swings back and forth, it appears clear from President Trump’s point of view, he need not consult with Congress should he decide on any military action that targets the Venezuelan mainland. As Sen. Graham pointed out, “We have only declared war five times in 250 years, and we have had hundreds of military operations -- some authorized and some not.”
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Opening the Senate debate on November 6, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a key sponsor of the congressional resolution, pointed out, “On October 31, public reporting shows that many Trump administration officials have told the press that a secret list of targets in Venezuela has been drawn up. All of this, together with the increased pace of strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific [21 attacks on alleged narco-trafficking boats, 83 individuals killed], suggests that we are on the verge of something that should not happen without a debate and vote in Congress before the American people.”
On November 6, after a relatively short debate, the Senate resolution to block the use of U.S. armed forces against Venezuela was defeated by a 49-to-51 vote.
But during that debate some important points were made, and they need some public exposure.
For example, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a military veteran herself, said, “Listen, if the Trump administration actually believes there is an ongoing credible threat of armed conflict, then they must bring their case to Congress and give the American people a say through their elected representatives. They must respect our service members enough to prove why war is worth turning more moms and dads into Gold Star parents. And they must testify about what the end state of these military operations would actually look like.”
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said, “Maduro is a murderous dictator. He is an illegitimate leader in having overturned the last election by the use of military force. He is a bad actor. But I do not believe the American people want to go to war to topple this regime in the hopes that something better might follow… Let them [the Trump administration] seek an authorization to use force to get rid of Maduro. But let us not abdicate our responsibility. Let us vote to say no to war without our approval. We don’t have to wait, nor should we wait for that war to begin before we vote.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pointed out, “Of course, we have the capability of overthrowing the Maduro regime, just like we had the power to overthrow Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qadhafi. But what comes next? Is anyone thinking about the potential blowback that such a campaign could entail? Overthrowing the Maduro regime risks creating more regional instability, not less. The breakdown of state authority may create a power vacuum that the very drug cartels the administration is ostensibly trying to destroy could exploit.”
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“You cannot bomb your way out of a drug crisis,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The demand that motivates drug trafficking is not found in the Caribbean. It is located in communitiesacross America where people are suffering from addiction, where economic opportunity has dried up, where the social fabric has frayed. Military strikes do nothing to address those root causes. Boats have been blown out of the water in videos released by the administration. But has the flow of fentanyl into America decreased? Has a single trafficking network been dismantled? The administration hasn’t provided any evidence that these strikes are achieving anything beyond the destruction they document on camera. This is not a strategy. This is violence without a strategic objective.”
Sen. Reed also pointed out how the Trump administration is expanding its war powers. “The White House is apparently now arguing that these strikes [on alleged narco-boats] don’t constitute ‘hostilities’ under the War Powers Act because American service members aren’t directly in harm’s way while operating standoff weapons and drones. This is ridiculous…They are very much in harm’s way, and to say that this operation is so safe that it doesn’t qualify as ‘hostilities’ is embarrassing…This new interpretation creates a dangerous precedent. If standoff weapons exempt military operations from congressional oversight, we have effectively granted the Executive Branch unlimited authority to wage war anywhere in the world so long as American forces can strike from a distance.”
Taking a different approach, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) pointed out an irony in Trump’s anti-drug argument. Van Hollen said, “I will tell you what you don’t do. You don’t submit a budget to the U.S. Congress that cuts the funding for the Drug Enforcement Agency and cuts funding for the task forces we developed to go after major organized crime syndicates involved in the drug business.” He added, “I happen to be the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee that oversees the Justice Department. And all my colleagues have to do is take a look at the request from the President of the United States when it comes to resources for fighting drugs coming to the United States. They cut them.”
Raising an additional problem, Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said, “Letting Donald Trump ignore the law abroad makes him think he has a free pass to do it right here at home. Donald Trump thinks if he can do this in the Caribbean, he can do it on the streets of Chicago. He could use the military for his own political retribution and consolidation of power in and outside our borders. After all, he [Trump] said in his own words: ‘We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.’ That is what the President said. We cannot be complacent as he sends troops into our cities as a tool of intimidation against his political enemies.”
While we await President Trump’s decision on what comes next, let me close with another ironic situation, created last Wednesday by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
Giving the keynote address at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Homeland Security Summit, Noem celebrated recent successes in the counter-drug mission. She said that since January, the Coast Guard has stopped 91 metric tons of drugs, confiscated 1,067 weapons and seized more than $3.2 million in cash from terrorist cartels, thanks primarily due to Operation Pacific Viper, which Noem said is strategically designed to seize historic amounts of drugs from smugglers in the eastern Pacific. “Viper has saved millions of lives of individuals and Americans by stopping those drugs before they ever got to the U.S.,” Noem said.
Operation Pacific Viper, according to a Coast Guard press release, also resulted in the arrest of 86 alleged narco-traffickers as of October 15. A needed reminder: Viper was an interdiction program where narco-traffickers were intercepted, arrested and drugs seized – not boats blown up and people killed.
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OPINION / EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — The armada the U.S. has assembled in the Caribbean is more formidable than anything the region has seen in decades. What is going on? The administration says it is targeting drug trafficking through the Caribbean. Is that it? Is that really all we are doing? Trump administration officials insist that it is but also acknowledge that strikes on land targets may be necessary to achieve the administration’s goals. Skeptics suggest that regime change in Venezuela is part of the administration’s plan. Is it?
Early in 2025, shortly after taking office, the Trump administration designated several drug cartels as terrorist organizations. This signaled the administration’s intention to escalate U.S. efforts to fight trafficking beyond the usual efforts of the Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement Administration and Border Patrol. It also presaged the use of the military.
Combating narco-trafficking remains the administration’s declared purpose. Implicitly, the decision to escalate U.S. efforts is based on several key points. First, drug abuse in the United States remains at epidemic levels despite decades of efforts to control it. Second, previous efforts to suppress drug smuggling into the U.S. have not been successful. Third, because the cartels smuggling drugs into the U.S. are not merely drug traffickers but large terrorist organizations, they need to be confronted as forcefully as terrorist groups elsewhere. This, effectively, means employing military force.
The administration contends that Venezuela is the country from which much of the illicit boat and air traffic carrying cocaine emanates and that Venezuela’s long-time strong man is really the head of a cartel and “a fugitive from American justice.” On August 7, the administration announced a 50-million-dollar bounty on Venezuela’s long-time strong man, Nicolas Maduro. It is this view of the Venezuelan regime and its leader, in combination with the size and capabilities of the deployed U.S. military in the Caribbean, that suggests the administration’s goals are more ambitious than just striking alleged traffickers on the high seas.
The question then is, how would the Trump administration define regime change? New leadership or something more extensive? If regime change is a goal, how does the administration hope to achieve that result? Would a combination of intimidation, enhanced economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure from the world’s democratic community convince Maduro to abandon power? Can the Venezuelan military, which in 2002 temporarily removed Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chavez, be persuaded to act once again? Or is the U.S. administration contemplating military strikes inside of Venezuela? If so, how extensively? Would a targeted attack of regime leadership result in regime change or would the U.S. need to hit various elements of the military plus drug labs? The scope of any U.S. kinetic actions would likely affect the way Venezuelans – who overwhelmingly rejected Maduro in last year’s presidential election, react. It would also affect how the region and the rest of the world regard the U.S. campaign.
If the U.S. were able to oust Maduro what would follow? There is a legitimate government in waiting. Former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez won last year’s presidential election by a huge margin despite regime efforts to sabotage the democratic opposition. Would anything short of the installation of the democratic opposition be considered an acceptable outcome to Venezuelans or the United States? Would a government of national unity which included some of the Venezuelan dictator’s base and elements of the military be acceptable to the democratic opposition? To the U.S? The Venezuelan military has been deeply compromised by the Maduro regime’s criminal activity and is believed to be complicit at the highest levels in drug trafficking. The Cartel de los Soles is thought to include many high-ranking military personnel. Would the U.S.be prepared to put troops on the ground to prevent criminal elements of the Venezuelan military from regrouping even if current regime leadership were forced out?
Finally, what effect will current U.S. operations in the Caribbean have on U.S. relations with the rest of Western Hemisphere especially if U.S. military strikes Venezuela directly? What effect have U.S. operations already had? The answers to these questions are not all obvious.
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The Trump team has never mentioned regime change as a campaign goal. The size and nature of the deployed U.S. forces, however, make speculation on the U.S. administration’s real intentions inevitable. The number of ships, aircraft, sailors and marines appeared to be substantially greater than required to combat narcotrafficking through the Caribbean and eastern pacific even before the ordered deployment of the U.S.’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford. The messaging from Washington, moreover, focuses squarely on the Venezuelan regime.
What we have been hearing from Washington about operations in the Caribbean is a logical extension of steps taken by the Trump administration prior to the start of current operations. While President Obama first called Venezuela a threat to national security in 2015, it was only earlier this year that the U.S. designated the cartels as terrorist organizations. The designation of the cartels as terrorists was a necessary step to operationalize the shift from a law enforcement effort to a military one.
The new militarized U.S. strategy in the Caribbean has had an effect. Drug trafficking by sea is apparently way down. That said, this new strategy has not diminished trafficking by land nor reduced the flow of deadly fentanyl into the country. It has, on the other hand, generated concern in some countries about the return of American gunboat diplomacy. Domestically, the president’s new approach resonates well in some quarters but has incensed many Democrats in the U.S. Congress and even worried some Republicans. British concern about the legality of the U.S. strikes on the high seas is now so acute that the United Kingdom has ended intelligence sharing on Venezuela. The Trump administration has, however, given no indication that either international concern or congressional criticism will precipitate a change in policy.
President Trump’s change of the U.S strategy for fighting the cartels and maybe for achieving regime change in Venezuela has important implications for U.S. relations with its allies everywhere but especially within the region. The Trump administration has clearly made the Western Hemisphere a national security priority but there are many other vitally important arenas in which U.S. interests are affected by developments in this hemisphere – both positively and negatively.
Accordingly, the administration’s agenda in Latin America must include more than just winning the drug fight and controlling our Southern border. More than 40% of all U.S. manufacturing goods are sold into the Western Hemisphere and the U.S. has a positive trade balance with many countries in the region, including Brazil, Chile, Peru, Panama and others. Millions of American jobs depend on trade with the region. Energy production in the region is also significant; Canada is our largest foreign supplier but there are other key players including Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Trinity and Tobago and, more recently, Guyana. Guyana’s oil production, in fact, is exploding. The country’s GDP grew by over 25% in 2023 and by more than 30% in 2024. On the other hand, China’s influence continues to surge and China is now the largest trading partner for South America in the aggregate. The U.S. clearly needs to do what it can to strengthen the value proposition for the countries of Central and South American to see the U.S. as their commercial partner of choice.
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It is, at this point, not clear what the Trump administration’s end game is in the Caribbean. What is clear is that the U.S. cannot ignore other issues around the region or other views on how challenges should be met. Neither should we naively assume that success in suppressing the trafficking of cocaine out of South America is assured even temporarily, however many go-fast boats the U.S. military sinks. Transit by land, which the Trump administration has indicated it may take on next, is still robust. Demand for illegal drugs is still strong in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. has recently made progress in engaging Mexico, especially on combating the Mexican cartels, but how effective joint efforts will be remains to be seen. Relations with Colombia, the source of most of the world’s cocaine, on the other hand, have deteriorated dramatically. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has characterized U.S. attacks on the drug boats as atrocities, called President Trump a criminal and encouraged American military personnel to defy his orders. The U.S., for its part, has decertified Colombia for failing to cooperate fully with U.S. counternarcotics efforts and cancelled Petro’s visa.
The U.S. still has partners in Latin America, especially trade partners, but there is also, always, concern over U.S. unilateralism. Moreover, President Trump’s announcement that he has authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to become active in Venezuela inevitably recalls for some an earlier and darker time in U.S. relations with Latin America. That said, criticism of U.S. operations in the region has been surprisingly muted – and some countries have been explicitly supportive.
Still, many in the region have been left wondering where multilateral cooperation, diplomacy, democracy support and human rights, pillars of U.S.-Latin American policy since at least the 1980s, fit in America’s new more muscular policy toward the region. At the same time, most of the region agrees that the cartels are a grievous problem, and recognize that Venezuela is a dictatorship and that it has become an epicenter for a great deal of the most pernicious activity in the region. I expect they are dubious about the likelihood of the U.S. eradicating all drug trafficking from South America because so much of the trafficking is by land. They are also unconvinced that combatting drug trafficking per se is the U.S.’s only goal. They do not wish to see a war in either South or Central America but they are also profoundly tired of living with the consequences of the growing and corrosive power of the cartels.
The Trump administration’s campaign to date has had some success and may have put Russia, China and Iran – Venezuela’s extra-regional allies -- on notice that the U.S. has decided to counter malign activity and actors in the region forcefully. But this is a high stakes game for the U.S. A U.S. escalation to ground operations could catalyze world-wide criticism of the U.S. Success with targeted strikes is not assured. At present, we are left to wrestle with the question of whether the campaign to date is a preamble to even more ambitious operations. And, can what has been accomplished to date be sustained at a time when coca cultivation in source countries like Peru and Colombia is increasing and the head of a cartel – which is how the administration has characterized Maduro – remains in control of the government of Venezuela?
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OPINION / FINE PRINT — “The U.S. Coast Guard announced [last] Tuesday it has seized more than 100,000 pounds of cocaine in the eastern Pacific Ocean since launching Operation Pacific Viper in early August, averaging over 1,600 pounds interdicted daily. These drug seizures, and the apprehension of 86 individuals suspected of narco-trafficking, were the result of 34 interdictions since early August. Through Operation Pacific Viper, the Coast Guard is accelerating counter-drug operations in the eastern Pacific Ocean, where significant transport of illicit narcotics continues from Central and South America. In coordination with international and interagency partners, the Coast Guard is surging additional assets — cutters, aircraft and tactical teams — to interdict, seize and disrupt transshipments of cocaine and other bulk illicit drugs.”
That’s the beginning of a U.S. Coast Guard press statement released last Tuesday, which has gotten little national publicity.
I publish it, and more about Operation Pacific Viper, because until last week I had no knowledge of this successful Coast Guard operation. It’s important, because one day later, in the Oval Office last Wednesday, President Trump was asked by a reporter why he had not used the Coast Guard to stop alleged Venezuelan narco-boats rather than having – at that time -- at least five of them blown up causing the deaths of 27 individuals. A sixth narco-vessel was destroyed last Friday killing three more individuals.
Last Wednesday, Trump replied, “We've been doing that [using Coast Guard interdiction] for 30 years and it has been totally ineffective.” Trump went on: “They [the Venezuelan narco-traffickers] have faster boats. Some of these boats are seriously, I mean they're world-class speedboats, but they're not faster than missiles.”
Apparently, the “world-class speedboats” have not affected the Coast Guard interdiction activities in the eastern Pacific. Below is a Coast Guard-released photo of Coast Guard Cutter USS Hamilton with its two boarding teams out interdicting two go-fast speedboats suspected of drug smuggling. It was taken June 26, 2025, southeast of the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.
As last Tuesday’s Coast Guard press release explained, “Detecting and interdicting narco-terrorism on the high seas involves significant interagency and international coordination. U.S. Southern Command’s (SOUTHCOM’s) Joint Interagency Task Force-South (JIATFS), based in Key West, Florida, detects and monitors both aerial and maritime transit of illegal drugs. Once interdiction becomes imminent, the law enforcement phase of the operation begins, and control of the operation shifts to the U.S. Coast Guard throughout the interdiction and apprehension.”
I should point out that SOUTHCOM’s JIATFS is a Defense Department (DoD) command that uses the capabilities of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, allies and partner nations to detect, monitor, and support interdiction of illicit narcotics movements in the air and maritime throughout the Western Hemisphere – meaning both the Pacific and Caribbean areas.
Let me emphasize, SOUTHCOM directs what takes place both in the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean areas.
In the case of last June’s narco-trafficker speedboat in the above photo, the boat was initially detected by a U.S. Navy maritime patrol aircraft. Then the Hamilton’s own Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron aircrew took over and provided airborne tactical support. Among their special weapons are helicopter-mounted, long-range rifles that can hit and disable the engines mounted at the rear of narco-trafficker speedboats. The result is the speedboats in the eastern Pacific are being halted, the crews arrested, and seizure of more than 4,475 pounds of cocaine, according to the Coast Guard.
In the Caribbean, the U.S. has Coast Guard cutters similar to the Hamilton, but also other U.S. Navy vessels that I believe would have permitted seizure of the five speedboats that instead were blown up. While the first Caribbean-located speedboat destroyed September 1, was moving, perhaps heading back to where it came from, videos of the next four that were destroyed showed they were not moving in the water before they were struck and exploded.
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Last Thursday, Defense Secretary Hegseth announced a sixth strike, this time against a slow-moving semi-submersible submarine-type boat used by narco-traffickers in both the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
On Friday, in an Oval Office press availability, President Trump said, “We attacked a submarine, and that was a drug-carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs.” The semi-submersible was destroyed, but while two crew members were killed, two survived.
Here I should note that under Operation Pacific Viper, the Coast Guard has also released recent video showing its personnel capturing a semi-submersible narco-trafficking vessel in the eastern Pacific, arresting its crew and seizing its drugs.
On Friday, President Trump tried to rationalize the Caribbean policy of blowing up narco-trafficking vessels, with no mention that in the eastern Pacific under Operation Pacific Viper similar narco-traffickers are stopped, boarded, crews arrested and drugs seized.
Trump on Friday defended the Caribbean destruction/killing policy saying, “We had tremendous amounts coming in by boats, by very expensive boats. You know, they have a lot of money, very fast, very expensive boats that were pretty big. And the way you look at it is every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives. So every time you see a boat [destroyed] and you feel badly, you say, ‘Wow, that's rough.’ It is rough. But if you lose three people and save 25,000 people -- these are people that are killing our population. Every boat is saving 25,000 lives.”
On the other hand, Rear Adm. Jeffrey Novak, deputy commander of the Coast Guard Pacific Area, whose Operation Pacific Viper since August has carried out 34 interdictions and arrested 86 suspected narco-traffickers, said last Tuesday, “Our maritime fighting force is scouring drug smuggling routes in the eastern Pacific and dismantling narco-terrorist networks. We are complementing the Coast Guard’s unique law enforcement authorities with cutting-edge capabilities to stop the flow of deadly drugs that threaten U.S. communities.”
Why a killing policy in the Caribbean and an interdiction policy in the eastern Pacific?
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On Thursday, the same day that Secretary Hegseth announced the striking of the semi-submersible, Adm. Alvin Holsey, commander of SOUTHCOM, unexpectedly announced he was retiring after less than a year into what normally is a three-to-four year assignment. Holsey gave no reason.
However, The New York Timesreported last Thursday that one current and one former U.S. official said Adm. Holsey “had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.”
The Trump administration has argued that drug cartels are Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Transnational Criminal Organizations and it is the policy of the U.S. “to ensure the total elimination of these organizations’ presence in the United States and their ability to threaten the territory, safety, and security of the United States,” according to an Executive Order signed by President Trump on January 20, 2025.
This has led to the Trump administration’s legal justification for using military force against narco-traffickers in the Caribbean, classifying them as "unlawful combatants." This policy shift has been highly controversial and has triggered debate among lawmakers and legal experts.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), appearing Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation, said, “This [Caribbean] operation, which is clearly, traditionally a law enforcement operation, now escalating to something maybe, as the President talks about, regime change. I think this is the wrong move for this President. The Coast Guard has the resources to do this.”
A Navy pilot for more than 20 years who flew 39 combat missions during Desert Storm, and later three space flights as a NASA astronaut, Kelly added, “I do worry about the legal authorities or lack thereof that the United States military has to conduct these kinds of strikes… Those admirals and generals, they need to speak truth to power. I have had conversations with the most senior members of our military about this specific thing. They cannot be breaking the law.”
Kelly went on, “[It] doesn't matter if the President or the Secretary of Defense tells them to do something. If it's against the law, they have to say no. They're not required to follow an unlawful order. So we expect that from them.”
When it came to Adm. Holsey’s surprise retirement, Kelly said, “I don't know the exact circumstances, why the admiral quit. He hasn't said publicly yet. I expect, in time, we're going to find out more.”
Let us hope so, from Adm. Holsey or some other military personnel involved in the Caribbean killing operations.
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