After abducting President Maduro, Trump says the U.S. will run Venezuela using its oil. Latin America, Africa, China, Russia and Asia push back against renewed U.S. imperialism.
By Ruzeki | Shadoww News | The WanTam Weekly | January 04, 2026
Donald Trump has done what even his critics once thought was a bluff: claim the capture of a sitting foreign president and announce a U.S. takeover of an entire country.
Speaking from Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, Trump said U.S. forces had seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a covert overnight raid and flown him to New York to face long-standing drug-trafficking and narco-terrorism charges. By evening, Maduro was reportedly inside a U.S. detention facility, awaiting a court appearance in Manhattan.
But the arrest was only the appetizer.
Trump went further—declaring Venezuela under temporary American control. According to him, the United States will “run the country” until a “proper transition” is achieved. Who decides what is “proper”? Trump didn’t say. What he did say—repeatedly—was oil.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and Trump made it clear that U.S. oil companies would move in to “fix” the country’s broken energy sector. The message was blunt: the occupation will pay for itself, using Venezuelan oil. History, of course, has heard this line before—most memorably in Iraq.
Trump named Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as part of the team that would oversee Venezuela, despite the fact that the country’s government and military remain fully operational. He also refused to rule out a full military invasion, casually assuring reporters that the U.S. is “not afraid of boots on the ground.”
In Caracas, the response was defiant. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez went on state television, calling the operation a kidnapping and demanding Maduro’s release. Venezuelan courts later named her interim president, signaling that Washington’s claim of control exists mostly in press conferences, not on the ground.
Globally, the backlash was immediate. Russia and China—both key allies of Venezuela—condemned the move as a gross violation of international law and sovereignty. Across Latin America, Trump’s rhetoric revived old wounds, reminding the region of decades of U.S. interventions justified in the name of “stability,” “freedom,” or—this time—“oil-funded transitions.”
Back home, legal scholars questioned whether abducting a foreign head of state crosses constitutional and international red lines. Democrats accused Trump of recklessness and demanded to know what the endgame is. Trump offered none—only confidence, bravado, and a promise that America always wins.
Ironically, Trump once mocked regime-change wars, calling the Iraq invasion a “big fat mistake” and boasting that he started no new wars. Now, he is openly flirting with an open-ended occupation of Venezuela, fueled by the same logic that turned Iraq into a trillion-dollar disaster.
Whether this marks the beginning of a new American entanglement or simply the boldest political gamble of Trump’s career, one thing is clear: Venezuela is no longer just a Latin American crisis—it is now a global test of power, law, and how far empire is willing to go when oil is on the table.
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