On Jan. 3, the Trump administration invaded Venezuela and abducted Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s sitting president. Since removing Maduro, Trump has claimed that the U.S. is “in charge” of Venezuela while Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated that the U.S. will not in fact govern the country. Both seem to agree, however, that the main U.S. focus will be oil. Rubio elaborated that the U.S. will use the existing oil blockade “as a means to press policy changes in Venezuela.” Trump further suggested that the U.S. government will fund U.S. multinationals to build out Venezuela’s oil infrastructure because “having a Venezuela that’s an oil producer is good for the United States because it keeps the price of oil down.”
Recent articles in Good Authority have analyzed the international implications of U.S. actions. For example, Elizabeth Saunders noted that Trump’s unconstrained, personalist foreign policy is likely to lead not only to U.S. military misadventures, but may also embolden other countries to invade neighbors and grab resources. And Jeff Colgan suggests that we have returned to an era of unabashed petro-imperialism where might makes right when it comes to the world’s oil supplies.
Despite the wide-ranging global ramifications of the U.S. military action, in many ways, little has changed within Venezuela itself. Venezuelans did not wake up to a new regime despite Maduro’s departure – in fact, the same security forces that repressed protests under Maduro are currently cracking down on any signs of dissent. Moreover, it’s not even clear that Maduro’s removal will provide the U.S. with a compliant regime willing and able to do its bidding absent the threat of force.
Taking out Maduro without changing the regime
After capturing Maduro, the Trump administration quickly recognized Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as the acceptable replacement for Maduro. In doing so, Trump passed over opposition leaders María Corina Machado – who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her work to promote democracy in Venezuela – as well as Edmundo González, whom many believe won the 2024 presidential election despite Maduro’s claims of victory. A classified CIA brief reportedly outlined that the opposition leaders would likely face “resistance from pro-regime security services, drug-trafficking networks and political opponents.”
Rodríguez has expressed a willingness to cooperate with the U.S. but, as Trump quipped, “she really doesn’t have a choice.” Unlike the opposition candidates the Trump administration sidelined, Rodríguez has never been a proponent of greater integration with the United States. On the contrary, in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in 2019, she described the U.S. as engaging in economic terrorism and criticized the country for flexing its “imperialist claws.” More recently, Rodríguez dismissed U.S. claims that the motive behind the recent boat bombings was drug trafficking concerns, asserting that the real intention behind the attacks was to steal Venezuela’s natural wealth. She warned, “we will never hand over our homeland – never!”
While she is more of a pragmatic technocrat than Maduro, one recent analysis notes her “ironclad socialist credentials.” Rodríguez served as Maduro’s vice president from 2018 until her recent assumption of the presidency. Despite her recent conciliatory gestures towards the Trump administration, Rodríguez is deeply rooted in the same political tradition and networks as Maduro.
Venezuela’s complex network of security forces remains
In addition to the continuity in the presidency, all other government institutions, including the military and police, remain intact. While the process of capturing Maduro and his wife reportedly killed some 40 members of Maduro’s security detail, Venezuela’s high-level military leaders all remain alive and in their posts. For example, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, considered a regime hardliner, pledged support to Rodríguez after Maduro’s ouster and remains in charge of the military. Padrino has served as head of the armed forces since 2014 and, over the last decade, reportedly increased military engagement in the drug trade.
Likewise, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, a hardliner accused of widespread human rights violations and linked to drug trafficking activities, remains in charge of the police, counterintelligence agencies, and paramilitary groups known as colectivos. For years, the colectivos have supported the government by violently repressing protests, while also engaging in criminal activities. Just this week, the Venezuelan government declared a state of emergency – and deployed the colectivos to suppress potential expressions of support for Maduro’s removal. Cabello’s control of these security forces makes him an important power broker in post-Maduro Venezuela, leading the Trump administration to threaten him to ensure his compliance.
The landscape of armed security forces is complicated by design. To protect themselves from coups, Maduro and Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president from 1999 until his death in 2013, set up what political scientist Orlando Pérez describes as “a layer cake” of security forces composed of the regular armed forces, the Bolivarian National Guard, several competing intelligence agencies, and the colectivos. Members of varied organizations within this array of military and paramilitary forces also interact with nonstate armed groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN), a Colombian insurgent group that actively engages in criminal activities in Venezuela.
What about the oil?
In his first press conference after the military attack on Venezuela, Trump asserted that U.S. oil companies would go in and “fix” Venezuela’s oil industry, adding that if further military intervention was required it would be paid for by “money coming out of the ground.” Given the nature of the Venezuelan oil industry, what would this look like in practice?
In the 1970s, Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez nationalized the oil industry and created Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). For 25 years, PDVSA operated as a professional, meritocratic state-owned enterprise in partnership with foreign companies. But when Hugo Chávez assumed the presidency, he increasingly politicized PDVSA. After a 2002 general strike paralyzed the oil sector, Chávez fired top management as well as 18,000 PDVSA employees. Then, in 2007, when oil prices were high and rising, Chávez attempted to extract a better deal from PDVSA’s multinational partners. Chevron negotiated and still operates in Venezuela. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips did not agree to a deal and Chávez expropriated their assets.
The departure of multinational partners along with Chávez’s mass firing of the PDVSA managers and workers created a major loss of capital and expertise – and Venezuela’s oil infrastructure suffered heavily. The crumbling infrastructure generates numerous spills and leaks and there are thousands of waste pits not up to international standards – all of which lead to pollution and water contamination. Robert Rapier, a chemical engineer who covers the energy sector, explains that even if foreign operators reengage, “restoring Venezuela’s oil production would take years.” The extensive infrastructure and human capital requirements needed to extract Venezuela’s extra-heavy crude oil would prevent a quick rebound even under the most facilitative political conditions.
Where does this leave U.S.-Venezuela relations?
Just last month, Rodríguez complained that the U.S. wants “Venezuela’s oil and gas reserves. For nothing, without paying.” Rodríguez’s pragmatism may lead the interim president to focus on the potential benefits of conceding to expanded multinational activity in Venezuela’s oil industry, especially given her experience working with the private sector, including international companies, during her time as oil minister. But given the strong nationalism that runs through the upper echelons of the regime, civilian and military leaders alike seem unlikely to welcome Trump’s recently announced plans to control Venezuelan oil sales indefinitely with anything other than grudging acceptance under the looming threat of another military invasion.
Regardless of Rodríguez’s next steps, the rapid creation of oil output and wealth is not a near-term possibility. And as Jeff Colgan notes, while the U.S. has in the past used force to maintain control over oil and its related profits, petro-imperialism comes with major downsides, “particularly if preserving this model requires violent interventions against uncooperative foreign leaders of nominally sovereign states.”
While Rodríguez may be less openly hostile to the U.S. than Maduro, this does not mean that the Trump administration is now dealing with a friendlier regime. The U.S. government can continue to exert military pressure to extract concessions, but the efficacy of these tactics seems to bear little relation to the individual holding the presidency. The U.S. had already pressured Maduro into accepting deportation flights, for instance. And whoever holds the presidency would not likely have escaped the impact of the economic and humanitarian catastrophe brewing from the blockade on Venezuela’s oil exports.
There’s one likely difference in the months ahead, however. Unlike Maduro, it seems doubtful that subsequent Venezuelan leaders will view U.S. military threats as empty bluffs.
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