Trump’s Venezuela Play: How US Intervention Deepens Latin America’s Crisis

How Latin America Failed Venezuela

Over the last ten weeks, analysts have debated whether the United States was justified in extracting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from Caracas. Washington’s defenders point out that Maduro was an authoritarian whose terrible policies immiserated Venezuelans and sent millions fleeing into neighboring countries. Its critics, meanwhile, note that the United States violated Venezuela’s territorial integrity, running afoul of international law. Both sides make strong points: Maduro’s leadership was illegitimate, yes, but so was Washington’s intervention.

it is excellent for Venezuela that Maduro is gone. But his tenure should not have ended like this—and it didn’t have to. When Maduro brazenly stole his country’s 2024 elections, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and U.S. President Joe Biden had a chance to push him out of office. Yet they didn’t. Instead, Lula, Petro, López Obrador, and Biden were unwilling to pressure Maduro either because of a misguided commitment to principles of nonintervention or simply because of apathy or ideological alignment. They all condemned Maduro with varying degrees of vigor, but they refused to capture tangible action. Maduro fortified his hold on power. By the time U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, American military action appeared to be the only clear way to remove Venezuela’s dictator.

A Disaster in the Making

The extraction of Maduro began on July 28, 2024, the day of Venezuela’s most recent presidential election. It was the best chance Venezuela’s opposition had to obtain him out of office. The opposition candidate and former diplomat Edmundo González, who was running in place of the disqualified opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, was broadly respected. González and Machado knew that Maduro would strive to rig the vote. But their supporters rigorously tracked and tallied the country’s ballots, which allowed them to report the results. When they did, they found that González had won with nearly 70 percent of the vote.

Yet Venezuela’s election authorities declared Maduro the victor anyway. In response, people from across the country took to the streets. Regional leaders demanded that Maduro produce tally sheets proving his victory. But Brazil and Colombia ultimately did not sanction him or apply any other real pressure to make him validate his win, and he refused to do so. López Obrador, then Mexico’s popular president, was of similarly little utilize. And Cuba never sought to convince Maduro, its client, that it was wise to step down.

Latin American countries weren’t the only ones that failed. The United States has feuded with the Venezuelan government for years, sanctioning its officials and economy and condemning its leadership. In the wake of the election, the Biden administration could have upped the pressure, but quickly made it clear it would not contemplate such measures, preemptively ceding U.S. Leverage. Biden, along with Lula, Petro, and López Obrador, also refused to mobilize the Organization of American States behind a resolution threatening sanctions and isolation against Maduro’s regime.

These countries did make an effort to get Maduro to rerun the election. In the weeks following the vote, they seemed to succeed. But Lula’s envoy in Caracas, Celso Amorim, publicized the deal, and it fell through. López Obrador subsequently pulled out of the mediation effort, and the entire endeavor collapsed. When Trump’s team arrived in office, it felt it had carte blanche to handle Maduro as it saw fit. About a year later, U.S. Helicopters were making their way to Caracas.

Proximity and Power

Maduro’s defenestration holds many consequences for Latin America. It marks the arrival of Trump’s “Americas first” foreign policy. The president’s administration now owns Venezuela. if the country breaks, the White House will have to put it back together. Washington will thus be more focused on Latin America than it was before. The Trump administration may also more readily choose to intervene in other countries in the region, as one of Trump’s main reasons for reasserting Washington’s supremacy in Latin America is to keep China out—a bipartisan ambition.

Washington’s attempt at promoting U.S. Hegemony in the hemisphere will probably prove successful in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. With the exception of post-1959 Cuba, these countries have fallen within the United States’ sphere of influence since the nineteenth century, and they are extremely dependent on their northern neighbor for trade, foreign investment, tourism, and defense. In fact, Mexico imposed 50 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports at the end of 2025, before officials began the renegotiation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal.

In South America, however, Washington’s efforts to assert its dominance will prove more challenging. China has become the largest trading partner for Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela—mainly through its purchases of commodities. Chinese state-owned companies have huge investment stakes in all these places, and Beijing is the largest foreign investor in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru. The Biden and Trump administrations have even alleged that a Chinese satellite station in Argentine Patagonia, the Chinese-controlled port of Chancay in Peru, and a sophisticated Chinese telescope in the Chilean desert have military purposes.

Trump might target Colombia, the other major country that is part of both the Caribbean basin and South America. The Colombian economy is still more tied to Washington’s than it is to Beijing’s, and it is a long-standing U.S. Military and security partner. But Petro has tried to draw closer to China, and he has made feuding with Trump a key part of his political persona. Trump, in turn, has suggested that he might attack Colombia, alleging that Petro is engaging in drug trafficking.

Trump might also call in favors from candidates he has helped, such as Javier Milei. The U.S. President could probably persuade the Argentine president to shut down or more closely supervise the Chinese-owned satellite station. But Trump will experience far more resistance if he tries to convince Milei to stop exporting soybeans to China. It is by far Argentina’s most important cash crop and source of currency, and there is no one else to sell it to. Trump will also have much less success pressuring Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy.

A House Divided

Washington’s policies are deepening Latin America’s divisions. Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and El Salvador—ruled by right-wing populists—all applauded Maduro’s extraction, whereas Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico condemned it.

The region has not always been disjointed. When the United States invaded Panama in 1989, for instance, the Organization of American States closed ranks in opposition, condemning the attack in a 20-to-1 vote. But today, Latin America risks being paralyzed by its schisms, rendering it unable to address the many challenges it now confronts.

To avert catastrophe, Cuba’s neighbors to the west and south must push Havana to make a peaceful, gradual, and fair democratic transition with Washington’s support. But if they can’t, the island will continue to be strangled by Washington.