United States special forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in an overnight raid in Caracas on Jan. 3 and brought him to trial in New York City on narco-terrorism charges, according to an interview published by The Dartmouth. The operation followed “months of the bombings of boats allegedly transporting drugs off the Venezuelan coast,” the article said.
The raid and Maduro’s arrest have prompted questions about the Trump administration’s direction in Latin America and what comes next for Venezuela, the region and U.S. standing abroad. In an interview, five Dartmouth-affiliated faculty members and experts discussed the operation’s implications, including the likelihood of regime change, potential effects on regional stability and drug trafficking, and what they see as the administration’s strategic and political goals.
The Dartmouth spoke with government professors Lisa Baldez and John Carey, visiting Latin American, Latino and Caribbean studies professor and former U.S. ambassador Peter DeShazo ’69, history and Latin American, Latino and Caribbean studies professor Matthew Garcia, and government professor William Wohlforth. Their comments, as presented in the interview, offered differing interpretations of the operation’s purpose and its potential consequences.
In the interview, the article noted that President Donald Trump ran for office on an anti-interventionist platform but has intervened militarily “first in Iran, and now in Venezuela.” Carey said that “within Trump’s base, he’s getting a lot of positive feedback about this most recent intervention,” adding, “My sense is that may feed his appetite for more.” Wohlforth said the administration appears to believe it can influence other governments’ choices “with lower cost, lower commitment uses of force than the forever wars it criticized when it was running for office.”
Questions about regime change and Venezuela’s future
Asked whether Maduro’s arrest would lead to meaningful regime change in Venezuela, Baldez emphasized the severity of conditions Venezuelans have faced under the current government. “The Venezuelan people have suffered mightily under this current regime,” she said, adding that “a quarter of the population has left the country.” Baldez described the country’s services and security situation as “by most accounts, terrible,” and said the economy is “very tenuous and weak.”
At the same time, Baldez argued that the operation’s approach is unusual. “This is an unusual strategy that the Trump administration is taking by basically decapitating the leader, but leaving the entire structure of government in place,” she said. “This kind of strategy has never been tried before.” She added that while “people are making a lot of analogies to Iraq,” she does not think it is analogous.
Wohlforth said he does not view the raid as a regime-change operation. “This is not, by all accounts, a regime change operation,” he said. Instead, he said the administration’s “current theory of the case” is that the U.S. can pressure “the interim president and her administration” to get Venezuela to comply with U.S. demands.
Wohlforth also situated that approach in a longer history of U.S. policy in the region. He said the U.S. has used “external coercive force” since at least the mid-19th century, including through the Platt Amendment regarding Cuba, essentially telling regional governments: “we will punish you if you don’t do what we want, but we will not formally take over your country and run it.”
Regional stability, oil and Cuba
Carey said the arrest could have regional consequences tied to energy and to Venezuela’s relationships with other governments. “There may be a deal about control over Venezuela’s oil production,” he said, including “new leases and new deals for American oil companies,” though he added that U.S. oil companies “don’t seem particularly gung ho about that.”
Carey also said the operation could affect Cuba if it interrupts Venezuelan support. “The other thing that could happen is the cutting off the stream of subsidies from Venezuela to the Cuban government,” he said, which “could potentially cause more profound political changes in Cuba than anything we’ve seen in Venezuela.” Carey added that the Cuban military’s reputation has taken “a blow,” saying it was known in part for its ability to keep Hugo Chavez and then Maduro “safe and secure.”
DeShazo said the raid may shape how countries in the region view U.S. policy going forward. He said the Trump administration has indicated it is willing to take military action against drug traffickers in other countries, “specifically in Mexico and Colombia.” As a result, he said, “Countries are going to have to deal with a U.S. policy that is much more forceful.”
U.S. reputation and the sovereignty norm
In the interview, Baldez linked the operation to the administration’s broader strategic framework. “This action seems like an instantiation of the National Security Strategy that was published in November of last year,” she said. Baldez characterized that strategy as a departure from “the liberal international order that has governed U.S. foreign policy since at least the founding of the United Nations,” and as “a reversion” to a period when countries “could go to war for whatever cause they deemed necessary and appropriate.”
Carey said public opinion in Latin America generally opposes U.S. military intervention, but he suggested the specific circumstances of Maduro’s removal could complicate regional reactions. “The critical mass of public sentiment in Latin America is against U.S. military intervention,” he said. But he added that Maduro “was a dictator, and he was widely despised, not just in Venezuela, but throughout the region.” Carey said that because the intervention was “in and out” and “it’s not an occupation, at least not yet,” and because “Maduro is gone,” the operation may “resonate more favorably than critics would anticipate.”
Garcia argued the intervention could be damaging in a broader international context. “The United States trying to control another country in this way is really bad at a time when Russia is asserting its rights to conquest in Eastern Europe, and China is threatening its right to conquest over Taiwan,” he said. Garcia said the U.S. has lost reputation as “a kind of arbiter of justice and practitioner of respect for sovereignty,” which he argued has “opened the door to other dictators that want to do harm to their neighbors.”
Wohlforth disagreed that the operation would meaningfully shape other major powers’ behavior. He said he is “extremely doubtful that this operation will have any material effect on the propensity of either China or Russia to execute similar sovereignty-defying actions in their own neighborhoods.” He added that Russia “obviously needed no precedent from the United States” regarding military domination of Ukraine. Wohlforth described the raid as a “marginal decrease in U.S. respect for the norm of sovereignty,” calling it “very marginal” and “doubtful to have any effect on the strategic behavior of the other great powers.”
Drug trafficking impact
On whether Maduro’s arrest would change drug trafficking patterns, DeShazo predicted limited effects. “Very little,” he said. He said Venezuela is responsible for “maybe 10%” of cocaine trafficking out of Colombia, which he described as “the largest producer, by far, of cocaine.” DeShazo said “maybe 10% of Colombian cocaine transits through Venezuela,” and only part of that reaches the United States, while Venezuela also serves as a transit point to Europe.
DeShazo added that significant counter-drug activity by Venezuela could reduce cocaine supply, “but the lion’s share would still be coming out of Colombia.”
Motivations: oil, ideology and domestic politics
The professors offered differing views on what drove the administration’s decision to intervene. Baldez said that “the oil justification for this action seemed to me and others to come in late in the game, once the action had already taken place.” She said it “was not the justification that was used in the lead up to this action,” adding that the months prior featured “a very different set of justifications.” Baldez said she does not see “any clear consensus on what the Trump administration’s actual substantive policy goals are in Venezuela,” and described the action as a “demonstration of power” connected to goals and principles in the National Security Strategy.
Garcia attributed differing motivations to different figures. “For Marco Rubio, it’s about ideology. It’s about Cuba. It’s about rolling back socialism or communism,” he said. “For Stephen Miller, it’s about asserting power, the right to conquest.” Garcia added that “if you’re asking about Trump, it’s about the business part of it. It’s about oil.”
Wohlforth said the domestic political benefits of such operations often come early, while costs may arrive later. “Normally the costs accrue later,” he said, describing a pattern in which there is “a dramatic military success” because the U.S. military is “extremely competent” at these missions, while “resistance, pushback and blowback accrue more slowly.” He said that while the long-term effect on public opinion could become negative, “in the immediate aftermath, it can be sold as a highly successful, low-cost operation.”
What the professors say people miss
Baldez urged students to seek out multiple viewpoints. “I would especially encourage students to gather information from as diverse an array of perspectives as they can, rather than to lead with kind of an ideological view or political view,” she said. Baldez cited polling she has seen indicating that “40% of the population supports this action and 42% don’t support it,” and said there is an opportunity “to try to step back and explain what just happened.”
DeShazo said the National Security Strategy indicates a renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere. He said that while attention to the region “in other circumstances would be considered a positive step,” the administration’s objective appears to be a return to “an early 20th century model of shaping the behavior of the countries in the region in order to advance U.S. interests, especially U.S. business interests.” He added that “the possibility of militarization of U.S. policy in the region is a matter of concern.”
Garcia criticized how he said U.S. media frames the intervention. “National Public Radio starts with ‘this is about democracy’ or ‘this is about drugs.’ No, it’s not,” he said. “This is about money, and this is about a kind of idée fixe on communism.” He said, “That’s why I think Cuba is in great danger.”
The interview published by The Dartmouth was edited for clarity and length, according to the article. Read more Dartmouth campus news for coverage of faculty perspectives and campus developments.
