A certain class of analysts was purported to be scandalized by the American night raid on Venezuela that snatched away strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
China has been given a green light to invade Taiwan. Russia is finally free to trespass on… I don’t know, maybe Ukraine?
Even by today’s declining standards, that line of analysis is pathetically shallow.
Neither Xi Jinping nor Vladimir Putin look to the U.S. for permission. The opposite is closer to the truth: They wish to make trouble and undermine the hegemonic power.
Russia assaulted Ukraine and China conducted naval exercises in Taiwanese territorial waters, all without filling out the White House’s "Permission to Invade" form.
What will be the lesson, for Xi and Putin, of the Great Venezuela Raid?
I would think it’s this: that Trump will run enormous risks to protect American interests.
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I leave it to the intelligent reader to reflect on whether this will encourage or discourage rash adventures.
Trump has no wish to carve the world like an apple into spheres of influence, in which China, Russia and the U.S. can plunder smaller nations at will.
His meddling in conflicts in Africa and Asia is proof of that — and anyone who has observed Trump for longer than half a minute will know he doesn’t set boundaries on his actions.
In reality, Trump’s style in geopolitical gamesmanship is without precedent, at least in my experience.
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In any given theater, he looks for the tactical strike that will utterly alter the strategic landscape to our country’s advantage.
After allowing the Israelis to plow and seed the field in Iran, Trump harvested a strategic victory by dropping bunker-busting bombs on the regime’s nuclear facilities. From that moment, events in the Middle East tilted in our direction — and the negative consequences for Iran continue to multiply as I write this.
In the same manner, the extraction of Maduro from his Venezuelan fortress has had a domino effect favorable to the U.S., not just in Latin America but around the world.
Let me count the ways.
Here the dice are still rolling, and the final effects of the raid won’t be known for months, possibly years. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio chose to retain the Maduro people in power over the Venezuelan democratic opposition — a gamble on stability against the possibility of chaos and violence.
It could backfire, but the signs so far look encouraging.
The new Venezuelan president, Delcy Rodriguez, who happened to be Maduro’s vice president, has been sweet-talking the Trump administration. She may have played a part in the overthrow of her former boss.
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American officials are in Caracas, setting up shop. The Cubans, Russians and Chinese would seem to be out in the cold. Political prisoners are being released.
Most importantly from a strategic perspective, the Venezuelan oil industry is about to be resurrected with help from U.S. companies — and Venezuelan oil will soon flood global markets.
Its once-vaunted military and intelligence personnel protected Maduro. In a humiliating blow to the country’s prestige, they were wiped out without much of a fight.
Cuba imports all of its energy but lacks the foreign currency to keep the lights burning. Venezuelan oil, offered on a bartered basis, made up 60 percent of fuel imports.
That’s now gone with the wind. Whatever still functions in the Cuban economy is about to disintegrate into darkness and silence.
President Trump said that the post-Castro regime is "ready to fall." He also threatened, in his inimitable all-caps fashion, "THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!"
Nothing is certain.
But if the Cuban military, who already run the country, believe that their equipment will grind to a stop within weeks, they may decide to do away with their Communist Party intermediaries and cut a deal with Yankee imperialism.
The region was already trending rightwards — Maduro’s fall will only accelerate this tendency. Conservative governments applauded American intervention, something unheard-of in Latin America.
Radical leftist governments, on the other hand, are in a panic.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, once a leader of the Marxist M-19 guerrillas, made worried noises about his own fate. He got a reassuring call from the president and will visit the White House in February.
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Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega, normally addicted to repression, decided to release political prisoners in imitation of Delcy Rodriguez.
He also canceled an anniversary celebration — just in case the U.S. military were looking to pick off more unfriendly Latin American presidents.
One condition Trump placed on Rodriguez is that Venezuela end its alliance with China and Russia. Eager to survive, Rodriguez appears willing to do so.
If that is the case, Maduro’s departure will represent a strategic disaster for Xi — the loss not only of its most useful ally in the region but of access to 800,000 barrels of cheap oil per day, along with the total loss of what has been called China’s "$100 billion gamble" on Venezuela.
In addition, Maduro’s lair was ringed with Chinese military technology, including air defense systems. They were neutralized with remarkable ease.
When Xi calculates the cost of invading Taiwan, he must now add the fact that the Chinese mainland itself appears vulnerable to attack from the air.
Venezuela had become a playground for Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hezbollah. No more.
As the Islamic regime battles to survive a fierce street revolt, Trump has condemned the slaughter of civilians and told protesters "help is on the way."
The fate of Nicolás Maduro thus weighs heavily on the ayatollahs’ minds.
The anti-regime protesters also see the parallel with Venezuela and have cheered the president on. Video can be found of a young man, somewhere in Iran, solemnly changing a street sign to "President Trump Street."’
Venezuela demonstrated — once again — the absolute irrelevance of the Old World in times of crisis.
European governments couldn’t help or hinder the U.S., before or after the attack. They merely muttered from the sidelines.
Mostly they complained about U.S. violation of international law — but then overcame their scruples long enough to inquire about the payment of Venezuelan debt to European energy companies.
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In 10 years of repetitive squabbles, the Europeans have yet to figure out how to live in Donald Trump’s world. They have yet to admit that their static "rules-based order" has been swept away by a tempest of change of which Trump is simply the avatar, not the cause.
It would be unfortunate if Europe’s limpness in the geopolitical arena emboldened the president to swallow Greenland whole.
On this country will fall the most complex set of consequences.
Even more than China, Russia enjoyed a formal "strategic partnership" with Maduro, explicitly aimed at the U.S.
Venezuela purchased billions of dollars’ worth of Russian military equipment, aircraft and weaponry. Russia propped up Maduro on the world stage and endorsed his blatantly manipulated elections.
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Putin and Maduro stood shoulder to shoulder in Moscow as recently as May 2025.
All of that ended literally overnight. Yet, curiously, the Russians reacted to the fiasco by saying little and doing nothing.
What’s going on?
There is, with Russia, a bigger picture to consider.
The country is stuck deep in the bog of the Ukraine war and has limited room to maneuver elsewhere. Western sanctions have driven Putin to a position of complete dependence on China.
The strategic intent of Trump and his people, I believe, is to sever that link.
They want Russia to be a competitor rather than a satellite of China. That would explain the sustained effort to broker the end to a war that otherwise has distracted and diminished an antagonistic power.
Because Russia is a major exporter of oil and natural gas, its economy rises and falls with the global price of those commodities.
Trump has clearly seized on this. He has hardened the sanctions on the purchase of Russian fuel, even as he works overtime to bring down the cost of energy.
The ouster of Maduro evidently plays into this scheme. The president expects to unleash a gusher of Venezuelan oil on the markets.
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It’s his usual trick — a tactical blow that generates enough strategic leverage to nudge Russia into peace with Ukraine.
In this case, it hasn’t happened yet.
Possibly, it never will — Putin, after all, represents the Russian bear, whereas Maduro resembled a noisier but far less dangerous denizen of the tropical canopy. Frustrating American presidents is a habit the Russian leader has refined over the decades.
But it is a sign of the strange moment we are living through — and, it may be, of Trump’s skill at converting tactics into strategic outcomes — that we can imagine a raid on a Caribbean dictator helping to end a bloody war in Eastern Europe’s heart of darkness.
