Venezuela, the Monroe Doctrine and Trump’s Jungle Law

There is a grim joke that Americans learn about a country by invading it, and so to this week’s crash course on Venezuela 101.

Last weekend, US security forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from a compound in Caracas and presented them in a Manhattan courtroom on charges of effectively running a narco state to smuggle tonnes of cocaine into the United States, and installed Maduro’s deputy in his stead.

“What is new is the brazenness, the absence of even the slightest legal justification, or even the effort to frame actions within some interpretation of international law, however twisted it may be,” Diana Cariboni, openDemocracy’s editor for the Americas, writes in this edition of The Weekly. “There is no talk of democracy, freedom or human rights for millions of Venezuelans.”

Instead, we have Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado offering to give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize in the faint hope of having a say on how her country will now be run.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio has boasted that his administration has “tremendous control and leverage” over Venezuela, but in our podcast this week, long-time openDemocracy contributor and Latin America expert Laura Tedesco warns that Trump and his cronies have little grasp of how the regime operates in the interiors of the country.

Also in this week’s issue, openDemocracy’s defence expert Paul Rogers points out that while the world’s eyes were on Caracas, the US military was launching attacks across three continents – and appears to be preparing for major conflict with a newly announced $1.5trn defence budget. Amid rising domestic tensions, Trump is betting on war to win votes at this year’s midterms.

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Venezuela and the journey from Monroe’s Doctrine to Trump’s Jungle Law • Diana Caribioni

As the days pass, shock subsides over the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, which was ordered by Donald Trump and carried out by the US military. That the victim is a dictator has helped to justify the illegal use of brute force.

There is a long history of US military intervention in Latin America. It’s been the expression of the most enduring principle that has governed relations in the American continent…

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Trump’s $1.5trn gamble: Will endless conflict win midterm votes?

Donald Trump’s plan to raise US military spending to $1.5trn at best signals a plan to put military force at the centre of his presidency, and at worst, an administration planning for all-out war.

The president this week unveiled his proposal to increase the defence budget by almost 60% by the 2027 fiscal year, after three weeks of lethal US operations in Nigeria, Syria, Venezuela and the Caribbean and Pacific littorals.

An increase of this kind, up from $901bn this year, suggests a White House making preparations for major war – a scenario that Trump has said the world must be prepared for…

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How Venezuela’s Maduro went from usurper to dictator • Rut Diamint & Laura Tedesco [Jan 2025]

Nicolás Maduro has now been in power in Venezuela since 2013 – gradually usurping power over the past twelve years until becoming a full dictator. But how did we get here? The answer is: A process of election fraud, crackdown on any opposition, deep state militarisation and wider human rights abuses. It’s meant that the Venezuelan people have suffered incredibly – and likely will continue to suffer as he begins yet another term this week.

Maduro first became president on an interim basis in 2013, after the death of Hugo Chávez, who had designated him as his successor. That same year, he narrowly won a special election, denounced by the opposition and many commentators. The opposition candidate Henrique Capriles at the time faced relentless persecution by the government after asking for a full review of the results – a case which he took to the Inter American Court of Human Rights and won last December (eleven years on).

But here’s how Maduro continued to entrench his power further over the years…

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 After Maduro: Storm Warnings in Venezuela • In Solidarity

Last week US security forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife from a compound in Caracas in an operation that killed 70 people.

Maduro was presented in a courtroom in Manhattan, on charges of supposedly “importing tons of cocaine into the United States”, and his deputy Delcy Rodriguez was installed in his place as acting President.

To make this all make sense, we speak with Laura Tedesco, a long time openDemocracy contributor and professor of political science and international relations at St. Louis university in Madrid. Prof. Tedesco is also the author of several books on democracy and politics in Latin America…