08.01.2026

Delcy Rodriguez: too early to say if she conspired

Hands off Venezuela!

Trump is revealing the stark truth of how world politics really works - ‘might is right’. Pleas for a return to ‘international law’ are as pathetic as they are delusional. The working class must become a global power in its own right, says Eddie Ford

I t is fair to say that we were expecting something big to happen, with the huge military build-up in the Caribbean. However, what we were not expecting - who was? - was Trump’s sheer audacity that began around 2am local time on Saturday January 3, when military strikes hit Caracas and other locations.¹ It was undoubtedly a brilliant miliary success, if reports are right, and there is no reason to dispute them: not a single US service person was killed and only one helicopter was seemingly hit by gunfire, but could continue to fly - though Venezuelan officials said at least 40 people died during the attack and the Cuban government said that 32 of its military were killed.

But, of course, there was the abduction of president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores - even if that impartial arbiter of truth, the BBC, has ‘banned’ its journalists from using the word “kidnapped”, with the guidelines saying “captured” instead, to “ensure clarity and consistency” (even if Trump himself has said that “kidnapped” is “not a bad term”).² Maduro and Flores were flown to New York City to face utterly absurd charges - as does their son, Nicolas Guerra, and other officials in absentia - in a Manhattan federal court with all the hallmarks of a show trial. Amongst other things, they are charged with “narco-terrorism conspiracy”, which we are supposed to believe was funded by the proceeds of the oil industry, and - now wait for this - “possession of machine guns”, which seems like a wise idea if you are the head of a South American state facing concerted threats from a belligerent US president.³

Naturally, they pleaded not guilty to the 92-years-old district judge, Alvin Hellerstein - who apparently is “old school” and “doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks about him”⁴ - with Maduro in particular calmly saying he was a “completely innocent” and “decent man”, and a “prisoner of war”, which a lot of people will think is a fairly accurate statement.⁵ Trump, of course, has a different perspective. He justifies the operation as a “law-enforcement action” with military support - you could almost call it a special military operation – which, as US president, he has “inherent constitutional authority” to undertake.

Transition

Trump also took people by surprise at a press conference held after Operation Absolute Resolve - at which he also described Cuba as a “failing nation” that would find it harder to survive without heavily subsidised Venezuelan oil and suggested that the US might need to ‘address’ the situation there. But he went on to make the incendiary remark that the US would “run” Venezuela for the foreseeable future - “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition”.⁶

He compounded the surprise when the question was posed of the opposition leader, María Machado. She has previously called for US military intervention in Venezuela because the country had already been “invaded” by “Iranian agents, and terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, who operate together with the regime”. Furthermore, she told Fox News that she praised Trump’s “courageous vision” by forcibly removing Maduro from power and vowed to return to Venezuela as soon as possible, wanting the transition to “move forward” as in “free and fair elections we will win over 90% of the votes”.⁷

But he dismissed her as not having enough “support within, or the respect within, the country” - therefore she would find it “very tough” to lead Venezuela (Machado later said that she had not spoken to Trump since October 10, when it was announced that she had won the Nobel peace prize and was congratulated by the US president). Trump did not even discuss former presidential candidate, Edmundo González, who had western media sources predicting that he would win by a “wide margin” in 2024. Having been barred from running, he invited Machado to run. Indeed, Trump made it quite clear the day after Operation Absolute Resolve that early elections were not the priority for him, as Venezuela is a “dead country right now” which needs to be fixed.

Rather, according to Trump, there would be “big investments by the oil companies to bring back the infrastructure” in Venezuela, with companies “ready to go”. And on January 7 the US president said in a post online that the country will be “turning over” $2 billion worth of Venezuelan crude to the United States and that this oil will be “sold at its market price.”⁸ He added that the oil will be taken from ships and sent directly to US ports, and supplying the trapped crude to the US could initially require reallocating cargoes originally bound for China, which has often replaced the US in Latin America as the main trading partner, or main conduit of investment - something that is certainly the case when it comes to Venezuela.

So in that sense you could argue that the military strikes against Venezuela was a ‘war for oil’, as many on the left insist, but not because the US wants the oil for itself - it is, after all, the world’s largest producer - but because it wants to exert control over oil as part of the US attempt to reboot its global hegemony, China being its only strategic rival. Trump has also made it explicit that he wants the new president in Caracas, Delcy Rodríguez, to give the US and private companies “total access” to Venezuela’s oil industry, and some are suggesting that the deal - if that is what it is - indicates the Venezuelan government is complying with Trump’s demands.

This has reignited an awful lot of speculation, particularly amongst the left, about the events of January 3 being some sort of ‘inside job’ - that is, a quid pro quo with Rodriquez when she was vice-president that if she allowed the US to get Maduro, then she will agree to act as a satrap for Trump. Of course, it is possible, however we do not have sufficient information at the moment to make a judgement. So far, there is no reason to come to such a conclusion. Either way, what we have is not regime change, but regime decapitation. A situation totally unlike Iraq, where the US disbanded the army and completely ‘de-Ba’athified’ its bureaucracy, creating the conditions for the rise of Islamic State.⁹

But Rodriquez, so far, has struck a defiant tone, saying that Maduro is still the legitimate president and declaring in a televised address this week that “no external agent governs Venezuela”, describing the kidnapping of Maduro (sorry, BBC editors) as a “terrible military aggression” and a “criminal attack” whose “absolutely illegal outcome” is “in violation of international law” - which sounds like a rebuttal to Trump’s claim that after the removal of Maduro, the US would be “in charge” of Venezuela.

Trump, however, or so it appears, thinks that she will bow to Washington, believing that she is “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again”, in the almost inevitable words of the US president.

There is talk in Washington of a ‘Trump doctrine’ echoing the Monroe Doctrine of 1828, which started off opposing European colonialism in the western hemisphere and proclaiming America’s ‘manifest destiny’. Having said that, it was very much a rhetorical document - it announced that the United States was going to become a major world power. In reality it was Britain that dominated Latin America, and did so until World War I, when Britain sold off its assets to the US - that is when you had American domination starting for real.

Donroe Doctrine

Then the hegemonic idea behind the Monroe Doctrine became America’s grand strategy, which held that any reformist experiment, even the mildest, would be regarded as hostile to the United States. Trump has just updated that approach for the 21st century with the ‘Donroe Doctrine’. So Trump is blessing a historic American foreign-policy idea with his own first name, but supercharged with the notion that Manifest Destiny is back - as he declared in his inauguration speech of January 2025. That is, the assertion that the US has a god-given right to change governments and even take territory.

Mere weeks before the attack on Caracas the new US National Security Strategy made that more explicit, openly declaring that the Trump administration was treating the entire western hemisphere as its own turf, where it could act with impunity. Such as taking back control of the Panama Canal, which Trump thinks was stolen from the USA in 1999, following the Torrijos-Carter Treaties signed in the late 1970s; and absorbing Canada as the 51st state. We should take all this seriously, as we should Trump’s threatening noises against Cuba, Lulu in Brazil, Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico and his warning that Colombia’s Gustavo Petro needs to “watch his ass” over the cocaine he is purportedly sending to the US.¹⁰

As a consequence, being a live issue right now, we should take with deadly earnestness Trump’s talk of taking over Greenland - a semi-autonomous region controlled by the kingdom of Demark, even if some are short-sightedly inclined to dismiss the idea as a personal symptom of Trump’s madness. But the US could do so almost effortlessly by sponsoring some sort of political party or movement in a country that has a population of only just under 60,000, especially as it already has well-established military bases there.

Trump has been discussing “a range of options”, including the use of the military to acquire Greenland, because the US “needed” the country as a “national security priority”. This alarmed Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen, who warned that any US attack on Greenland would spell the end of Nato.¹¹ Telling you where things are heading, a day after the US strikes against Venezuela, Katie Miller - wife of one of Trump’s senior aides - posted on social media a map of Greenland in the colours of the American flag, alongside the word, “Soon”. And Stephen Miller himself, when asked whether America would rule out using force to annex it, responded by saying that “nobody’s going to fight the US over the future of Greenland” - which is surely true, whether it means the end of Nato or not (highly unlikely given that the US intends to radically deepen the subordination of its allies).

In this way, Trump is relentlessly stripping away not just the facade of ‘international law’ and the post-World War II international architecture of multilateralism and a ‘rules-based order’ - instead revealing the stark truth of how world politics really works: ‘might is right’. Trump has therefore taken us back to a 19th century-type world of naked plunder and military conquest. This is also, crucially, about the US competition with China - being the only country in the world that presents a genuine, full-spectrum challenge, even if much weaker by comparison.

The US is not going to grant China its ‘legitimate’ sphere of influence: eg, the South China Sea and Tawain. That is utter nonsense. Trump is no isolationist, nor does he eschew - except in pre-election rhetoric - wars and foreign adventures. Trump wants hegemony not just over the western hemisphere, but the entire globe - though, in an attempt to cleave Russia away from China, he seems keen on a greater Russia, which includes Crimea and the whole of the Donbas.

How should we respond? Not by hand-wringing pleas for a return to the norms of ‘international law’ (always a delusion). No, the working class needs once again to become a great power it is own right. A class that opposes the wars of its own ruling class and is ready to take state power and begin the global transition from capitalism to communism.