Running Venezuela: The Return of the American Protectorate?
In a midnight raid on Caracas on 3rd January, the US quickly deposed Nicolas Maduro as President of Venezuela by kidnapping him and the First Lady, and bombing several locations. At a press conference the following morning, President Trump remarked that following the ousting of President Maduro, the US is "going to run the country until such time as [we] can do a safe, proper and judicious transition."
There are still a lot of questions about what happens now that President Maduro is not in control anymore. Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, together with other senior government members, was on national television a few hours after the press conference saying that Venezuela “will never again be anyone’s colony – neither of old empires, nor of new empires, nor of empires in decline”.
At the same time, President Trump seemed determined that Venezuela is under the control of the US, saying there's a team that would be running it and that this team includes the people standing behind him at the press conference: among them Secretary of State Rubio, Secretary of War Hegseth, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, as well as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, Stephen Miller.
If history were to be of any guidance, Cuba might give us an indication of how the US could run Venezuela. In 1901, Cuba, right after the Spanish-American War, included the Platt Amendment in its constitution as a condition for the US to withdraw its troops from the island, but it also gave the US the right to intervene militarily in Cuban affairs, prohibit Cuba from signing treaties that could undermine its independence, and require it to lease naval stations to the US, such as Guantánamo Bay.
Cuba was de jure sovereign, it had elections, its own government, but ultimate authority always rested with Washington. Indeed, throughout the time that the Amendment was in force, the US intervened militarily three times in Cuba.
The consequences of this were predictable. Cuban Presidents were always governing under the shadow of a potential US intervention and could not assert their authority. Everyone knew that Washington held the real power, and the Cuban elite, especially those with ties to US interests in the sugar industry, benefited the most. At the same time, local institutions lost legitimacy and nationalism became the only 'real' opposition, which in turn radicalised Cuban politics and eventually led to the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
What could such a model look like for Venezuela in 2026?
We can expect that until a "proper transition" takes place, Venezuela would undergo a period of 'constrained sovereignty' where the US would assert its right to intervene both politically and militarily, independently of whoever is in government during this time.
While initially many expected that Nobel Prize winner and opposition leader María Corina Machado could lead a transitional government, President Trump has already shown his distrust, saying "it would be difficult for her" to lead Venezuela, and that "she does not have the support in Venezuela." At the press conference, Trump said that Secretary of State Rubio was already in touch with Venezuela's Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, and he claimed that she agreed to work with the US. "She had no choice", confirmed Trump, contrary to press reports quoting her as saying that Maduro remains "Venezuela’s only president".
On the military aspect, President Trump made it clear that the US is prepared to use force again. "We are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so," he said, highlighting the US's apparent original plan to stage another attack, presumably should the first have failed. Any Venezuelan government would be expected to cooperate on US security priorities: stronger border control and counter-narcotic operations, with the implication that non-cooperation would only invite further intervention.
Another provision, if not the provision, in a 'Venezuelan Platt' would be US control over Venezuelan oil. President Trump himself has repeatedly stated, both before and during the press conference, that the US is "going to have [our] very large US oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country...".
The US would probably also ensure that any transitional and future Venezuelan government would not enter into renewed agreements, or maybe any agreements at all with countries like Iran and China. "We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind [after] decades of that. We’re not going to let that happen."
Just as in Cuba, any potential Venezuelan government would govern in the shadow of Washington, aware of the risk of being overthrown, should it do anything that goes against US interests. While we have yet to see how the transition is organised and how long the US would continue to directly impact politics in Venezuela, its actions on 3rd January, as well as its promise to "run" the country, could leave Venezuelan institutions directly dependent on the US, and only serve to increase anti-US sentiment in the country. Chavismo is more than just Maduro; there are people who really believe in the system and will defend it. Indeed, elements of Maduro's government have already called for resistance to the US's intervention.
The Platt Amendment in Cuba was eventually recognised as a failure by the US and was abrogated in 1934 under Franklin Roosevelt's 'Good Neighbor Policy'. It still created conditions for instability and radicalisation that eventually led to Fidel Castro's communist revolution in 1959, and Cuba has remained an authoritarian state since then. So can the US administer Venezuelan sovereignty without repeating the same mistakes made in Cuba? History suggests it will be difficult.
