The Trump administration’s intervention was swift – but it has created a new set of problems for Venezuelan civil society. On 3 January, over 150 US aircraft descended on Caracas. Within a couple of hours, US special forces had abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and were taking them to New York to face narco-terrorism charges. At least 24 Venezuelan security officers and 32 Cuban intelligence operatives were reportedly killed in the raid.

The operation deliberately violated the United Nations (UN) Charter’s prohibition on the use of force against sovereign states and signalled a shift in hemispheric relations. It evoked a long-gone era of direct US military interventions but went further: past military operations were confined to Central America and the Caribbean, with interference in South America exercised more covertly. The Trump administration has crossed that threshold, enshrining what analysts call the ‘Trump corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine, a 19th-century policy asserting US primacy in the western hemisphere. Trump has abandoned any rhetorical commitment to promoting democracy, openly prioritising US hegemony and access to Venezuelan oil and mineral deposits and investment opportunities.

Many in the Venezuelan democratic opposition had hoped Maduro’s removal would lead to power passing to Edmundo González Urrutia, who according to all available information was the rightful winner of the July 2024 presidential election and is currently in exile in Spain. Instead, within hours of Maduro’s capture, a hastily convened ceremony confirmed Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez as acting president.

The Trump administration made no effort to consult opposition leaders, excluding them entirely from post-intervention planning. When asked about the prospects of main opposition leader María Corina Machado leading Venezuela, Trump bluntly dismissed her. Perhaps slighted by the fact that she rather than he won the Nobel Peace Prize, he argued she didn’t have Venezuelans’ respect or the capacity to lead. He announced the USA would be the one to ‘run’ the country, seemingly through Rodríguez.

The US intervention removed the government’s leader and created significant friction in the ruling party, but left the regime intact. Its authoritarian structures – military officer corps profiting from corruption, Cuban intelligence operatives embedded in security services, patronage networks, loyalist bureaucrats and the repressive apparatus – all survive unchanged.

As soon as she was sworn in, Rodríguez denounced the operation that put her in charge and vowed that Venezuela would ‘never again be a colony of any empire’. An insider of a regime that for years ignored the public will and welcomed the interference of Cuban intelligence, Iranian oil traders and Russian military advisers, Rodríguez has wrapped herself in the flag and framed regime continuity as a patriotic stand against ‘western imperialism’.

A decade-long collapse

The US intervention came after a decade that saw Venezuela’s ruling party systematically destroy institutional checks on its power, criminalise opposition activity and crush civic space. The crackdown began in earnest following the 2015 parliamentary election, which gave the opposition a National Assembly supermajority. The Maduro government responded by stripping the body of its legislative powers. In January 2016, the Supreme Court, captured by the ruling party, declared the National Assembly in contempt of court after it swore in three opposition lawmakers who the judiciary had disqualified. In January 2017, the same court declared all the National Assembly’s actions since the election null and void, and two months later it removed its powers and its members’ immunity, leaving them liable to prosecution, including in military courts.

In 2017, the government established a Constituent Assembly packed with loyalists that fulfilled legislative functions, effectively abolishing oversight. The fact that the body was dissolved around four years later without coming close to producing a new constitution made clear that its only purpose was to replace the National Assembly. Authorities responded to major anti-government protests with brutal repression, establishing a pattern of treating mobilisation as a threat to authority.

Authoritarianism intensified with the 2018 presidential election, held amid an opposition boycott and fraud reports. Maduro’s disputed re-election triggered an international crisis, with over 50 states instead recognising National Assembly President Juan Guaidó as interim president in 2019. Yet the regime survived through military loyalty secured by patronage and Cuban intelligence support. Further crackdowns on civil society followed, with organisations harassed, journalists detained and opposition figures forced into exile. By 2020, the regime had effectively criminalised independent civil society work and controlled all democratic spaces.

Political repression came against a backdrop of economic collapse with devastating humanitarian consequences. Due to years of economic mismanagement exacerbated by the impacts of unilateral sanctions, between 2013 and 2020 Venezuela’s GDP contracted by around 70 per cent, and public services such as education, healthcare and water and sanitation fell apart. Around eight million people were forced to leave the country, the highest-ever number for a country not at war. A similar number who still live in Venezuela need humanitarian assistance, with over five million requiring urgent food assistance. Well over half of Venezuela’s 28.5 million people live in extreme poverty. In 2025, Venezuela had the world’s highest inflation rate, 269.9 per cent, and its currency was devalued by 381 per cent.

The process accelerated after the 2024 presidential election, when Maduro’s National Electoral Council brazenly ignored González Urrutia’s clear victory, verified by independent observers and opposition poll watchers. Street protests erupted across Venezuela, met with a crackdown that included thousands of detentions and at least 25 deaths. The regime deployed the narrative of a ‘fascist coup attempt’ to justify mass arrests of activists, protesters and social media commentators. Subsequent measures, such as an anti-NGO law targeting foreign-funded organisations and a law criminalising ‘treason’, broadly defined to include peaceful dissent, completed the architecture of repression.

Despite unprecedented opposition unity, a democratic transition didn’t get any closer in 2025 because Maduro maintained control of the military through economic privilege, patronage and tight surveillance. High-ranking officers profited from collapsing infrastructure, controlling lucrative smuggling operations and the oil trade while the population starved. Cuban intelligence operatives, embedded in the security services, monitored dissent in the armed forces and identified potential coup plotters before they could act, making military rebellion close to impossible.

Global impacts

Operation Absolute Resolve, the action that removed Maduro, was preceded by Operation Southern Sphere, a series of at least 36 airstrikes against boats alleged to be involved in drug smuggling in the Caribbean that killed at least 125 people. UN experts made clear these strikes were illegal under international law and may have constituted crimes against humanity.

The 3 January intervention brought a bigger international reaction, but one more polarised. The UN Security Council convened emergency sessions and UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the operation as a violation of international law. UN experts warned it breached a foundational principle of the post-1945 international order. The Organization of American States convened an extraordinary meeting. Most states rejected the intervention, which they viewed as a dangerous precedent and, particularly for those in the Americas, a direct threat to their sovereignty.

The intervention also breathed new life into anti-imperialist rhetoric used as a shield for authoritarianism. When the Cuban or Nicaraguan regimes justify their repression and blame their failings on US imperialism, they can now point to recent evidence rather than historical grievances. Progressive governments that previously supported sanctions against Maduro have found themselves defending Venezuela’s sovereignty alongside authoritarian states, sharing their condemnation of unilateral US intervention.

Some, including the European Union, issued carefully worded statements that condemned both the illegitimacy of Maduro’s government and the unilateral action that bypassed multilateral processes. The loudest defenders of sovereignty were authoritarian powers such as China, Iran and Russia: states that routinely violate their citizens’ rights expressed their ‘solidarity with the people of Venezuela’ and positioned themselves as champions of international law. The intervention achieved the remarkable feat of making dictatorships appear as global moral arbiters.

The intervention has also shifted regional priorities. The question is no longer how to restore democracy in Venezuela, but how to prevent US military intervention elsewhere in Latin America. The USA has made clear that economic and geopolitical considerations have primacy, and any talk of democratic principles and international law now has no credibility.

Prospects for democracy

Maduro may be no longer at the helm, but genuine democratic transition feels as far away as before. The US operation changed the person in charge but left the regime untouched. Rodríguez presides over the same repressive machinery her predecessor used to crush dissent.

Rodríguez’s strategy likely centres on regime survival, doing enough to satisfy the Trump administration while posturing against imperialism – but, unlike her predecessors, without specifically naming Trump or other US government officials. She will likely continue to demand Maduro’s return, with the fiction that he could imminently come back enabling her to evade the constitutional obligation to call immediate elections. That buys her government two years to try to bring a measure of economic stability and international respectability, helped by sanctions relief and a more favourable US trading relationship, while maintaining authoritarian control. Backed by a business elite seeking to launder capital and gain global legitimacy, Rodríguez could then legally declare Maduro’s role vacant and finish his term without having to face voters for a few more years.

Central to this arrangement is resource exploitation. Oil and the mineral-rich Orinoco mining arc provide the economic means to sustain the regime’s power structure. Trump’s statements repeatedly mentioned oil and rare earth metals, framing Venezuela as a strategic asset to be recovered from Chinese, Iranian and Russian influence. Early indications suggest Rodríguez is negotiating deals that give US companies favourable access to Venezuelan reserves. Democracy will be seen as a hindrance to the drive to extract resources.

Meanwhile the democratic opposition faces further marginalisation. Machado’s humiliating public presentation of her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump to try to win his favour has accelerated opposition fragmentation, with rival factions increasingly questioning her leadership.

The sovereignty trap

The US intervention has created a sovereignty trap for civil society. The regime weaponises nationalism, framing its continuity in power as patriotic resistance to foreign intervention. But the nationalist backlash is real. Venezuelan activists who sought international pressure now find themselves painted as foreign collaborators, while the work of years to build international support networks risks collapsing as the global focus shifts from democracy promotion to resource control.

For Venezuela’s civil society, the way forward lies in reclaiming agency from both internal repression and foreign interference. In trying to navigate this difficult path, a broad coalition of Venezuelan civil society organisations has recently outlined 10 urgent demands designed to decouple the democratic struggle from geopolitical posturing. These priorities centre on the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and the repeal of restrictive laws used to criminalise dissent. They demand the dismantling of irregular armed groups and the restoration of unrestricted access for international human rights monitors and humanitarian aid.

Crucially, civil society calls for transparent management of public resources and the re-institutionalisation of state powers through credible constitutional processes, culminating in a legitimate presidential election. By establishing transitional justice mechanisms to ensure truth and reparations, civil society seeks to pivot the national conversation away from external agendas and back towards the demands and needs of Venezuelan people. Until that autonomous space is restored, Venezuelans will remain spectators rather than the builders of their future.

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