One of Donald Trump’s reflexes is to claim that his actions occupy a singular place in world history. This applies to virtually every hot-button issue, from social mobility (“No one has done more for American workers than me”) to gender relations (“No one has ever respected women more than I have”). While the Maga slogan promises restoration, its standard-bearer likes to insist on the novelty of his record.
Recent events in Venezuela were no exception. Following months of steady escalation, the White House finally gave the order to pound the country with bombs and kidnap its president, Nicolás Maduro, in a raid that Trump has since praised as “one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history”. As the death toll reached 40, he boasted that the US was now respected “like never before”.
In light of these superlatives, there is a certain temptation to deflate the hype. That would mean situating Maduro in the long line of coups and espionage operations that Washington has orchestrated in Latin America: not a break with precedent, but a culmination of the well-worn regime change agenda pursued by Bush, Obama and Biden alike, whose tactics ranged from economic strangulation to alleged attempts to murder Hugo Chávez.
Yet can such a deflationary approach capture the significance of one head of state ordering the rendition of another to a hellish prison complex on phoney charges? It seems clear that some kind of imperial pivot has taken place. Whereas Biden represented the last gasp of multilateralism, striving to fortify the so-called liberal order against its New Cold War antagonists, Trump’s approach is more bilateral: he is willing to use drastic means to coerce friends and enemies into compliance with American aims. The debate between what the historian Matthew Karp has termed “Trump maximalists” and “minimalists” – those who view his presidency as a historical turning point and those who reject this as hyperbole – hinges on whether such coercion should be seen as a new phase of imperial statecraft.
Despite the many obscure and fast-moving components of the Venezuelan crisis, these two readings of the situation are now beginning to crystallise. Let’s start with the maximal one. Trump has made no secret of his ambitions to acquire new territory: annexing Greenland, seizing the Panama Canal, turning Gaza into a high-tech protectorate. This strategy is partly about securing critical resources. But it goes beyond the standard neocolonial methods of negotiating unequal trade terms, and looks more like a reversion to traditional colonialism, with the US playing a direct role in administering its overseas empire.
Some analysts argue that the assault on Venezuela is not just a scramble for oil (which might not be particularly profitable for US companies to exploit) but rather an attempt to turn the country into an outpost of the US military, given its geostrategic location in the Western hemisphere. This objective requires the fall of the post-Chávez regime, which is now in motion given Maduro’s capture. Further violent interventions will follow unless the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, allows Trump to “run” Venezuela and eventually cedes power to a right-wing puppet administration. For some, this reliance on brute force marks an epochal shift from hegemony to domination.
The minimal reading, by contrast, claims that the jailing of Maduro was essentially a false-flag operation. The Chavista leadership, having long ago traded its principles for pragmatism, had already agreed to hand over the nation’s oil to the US, with Chevron licensed to produce for the American market, and it is likely willing to do the same with its rare earth minerals. Since Trump is fixated with such resources – regardless of whether it’s profitable to exploit them – he has agreed to leave the current government in place and sideline the right-wing opposition led by María Corina Machado.
Maduro’s forced departure was necessary for the purpose of appeasing Republican anti-Communists, distracting from domestic political woes and projecting the most telegenic version of American hard power; yet the rest of the Maduro apparatus has been left intact. Washington has not tried to realise any expansive geopolitical vision and has no intention to govern Venezuela, hence other figures in the administration rowing back on Trump’s remarks. American military bombast is, from this standpoint, merely a cover for the fact that they have struck a fairly typical imperial resource agreement with this besieged nation.
Right now we don’t know enough to decide between these rival interpretations, and there is every possibility that Trump is yet to make up his mind. There are maximalists and minimalists within his administration who are vying for influence, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio advocating a hardline approach while special envoy Richard Grenell appeals for dialogue. So far, Trump’s threats to seize control of foreign territories have mostly come up against the constraints of realpolitik. The same pattern could play out in Venezuela, with colonial rhetoric giving way to more limited schemes for resource extraction. But this does not depend solely on Trump’s whims or forces in the White House. Perhaps the most decisive factor is whether the Venezuelan people, backed by global solidarity movements, can mount enough resistance to thwart the plans of their aspiring masters.
[Further reading: Maduro won’t satisfy Trump’s hungry ego]
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