 Photograph by Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP Caroline Mimbs Nyce
Newsletter editor Just days into the New Year, and following months of military escalation, the United States attacked Venezuela, capturing its President, Nicolás Maduro. On Truth Social, President Trump posted a photo of what he said was Maduro aboard the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, blindfolded with a heavy-looking headset over his ears. In a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump asserted that the United States will “run” the country. I caught up with Jon Lee Anderson, a longtime New Yorker writer who has written extensively about Venezuela and Maduro. We discussed yesterday’s press conference—and where the situation goes from here. The following conversation has been edited and condensed. The standout moment of yesterday’s press conference was Trump saying that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela. What might that look like? Do we even know? Anderson: It’s too early to truly say. But as ever with Trump, the possibility of lucrative fringe benefits for his family’s empire, or those of close allies, seems to follow any major foreign-policy initiatives; his vaunted “Gaza Riviera” plan comes to mind. In Venezuela, I suspect—in tandem with whatever notionally sovereign regime is kept in place to keep things stable and get the oil pumping again—it is likely to involve some U.S. oil and mining majors. With Trump, there is always a strong element of cartoonish arrogance, of course; his avowal in his presser that we’re going to run things in Venezuela suggests an Olympic disdain for how calamitously American custodial operations in other post-regime-change landscapes have fared in recent years. Iraq, again, comes to mind, as does Afghanistan. But for those who don’t know their history, I suppose it’s always an exciting possibility to reinvent the wheel—er, or Make America Great Again—especially if you can make a lot of money doing so. There’s a long and sordid history of U.S. interventions in Latin America and elsewhere. I’m curious how you’re thinking about yesterday’s attack in light of that context. Anderson: This intervention resonates with others launched by the United States in the past; in a sense it’s a Trumpian mashup of everything that has come before—the Panama invasion of 1989 and abduction and subsequent conviction and jailing of Noriega, the Gulf War the following year to humble Saddam Hussein (which resulted in him, weirdly, being allowed to stay in power). It also has elements of the 2003 Iraq invasion, albeit thus far without a major U.S. troop presence on the ground. It strikes me that this is the decisive test of the recently-announced “Trump Corollary” to the dusted-up and reactivated Monroe Doctrine, under the rubric of which he has declared his intention to reassert American control over the entire Western Hemisphere again—just like it was in the decades that followed the Spanish-American War, with military governors placed in charge of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and other places. Jon Lee, you’ve spent time with Maduro and written about him quite a bit. What are you thinking about in regard to the man himself at this juncture? Anderson: As so often happens—think Noriega, Saddam, Qaddafi—he misread the seriousness of his situation. He seems to have got himself into a bubble and couldn’t see clearly out of it. One part of that is a common symptom of holding unbridled power—which has a way of isolating those who hold it without guardrails (look at Trump), and also, to a degree, because of the hubris that comes when one feels oneself to be leading a “sacred” battle. In this case, the maximum dream of any Latin American revolutionary nationalist is to stand up to el imperio, to the Yankee Empire itself. The end, almost always, involves a self-immolation of sorts. And what might it mean for the future of Venezuela? Anderson: Venezuela’s future hangs in the balance, of course, and it seems likely that with this regime change, one way or the other, its “Bolivarian” revolutionary fever dream, now a quarter century old and long since stripped of virtue by mismanagement, corruption, overheated rhetoric, and not a little repression, will finally expire. In the short term, the cack-handed control by the Chavistas will be replaced by other, more diffuse mechanisms of power and probably grayer, more pragmatic personalities. But it will be an era in which new nationalist politicians (it is an indelible part of the Venezuelan national persona) and plenty of carpetbaggers will abound. Chief among them will be numerous fast-talking Americans, who will be seeking to gain profit in an oil-rich country that, for much of the twentieth century, was a mainstay of the Rockefeller empire and a major gringo playground in South America. What else is on your mind right now? Whether or not the takeover by Trump of Venezuela will necessarily mean a subsequent attempt against Communist Cuba. All the indications are that it will; both he and Rubio have hinted as much today. If the Americans are able to effect regime change in Cuba, that would have immense symbolic power, and truly would be the Hope diamond in Trump’s tiara. Cuba’s own immediate value is symbolic: as the cradle of anti-Yankee activities in the hemisphere for the past six and a half decades, its demolition would cement the spectre of Trumpian power over the Americas. Unlike Venezuela, Cuba has no oil to speak of, but as a seven-hundred-mile-long Caribbean island with the potential for the construction of hundreds of new hotels, beach resorts, and golf courses, it is a real-estate man’s Nirvana. For more: Read Anderson’s new piece on Maduro’s ouster, and revisit his 2017 reporting on Maduro and his repressive regime. | 
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Welcome to my geopolitics blog site. This is a Hawaii Island news site focusing on geopolitical news, analysis, information, and commentary. I will cite a variety of sources, ranging from all sides of the political spectrum.