The Wider Implications of US Action in Venezuela: RUSI Experts React

The 3 January actions by the US in Venezuela will have implications for Europe and transatlantic relations more broadly.

The action is a first manifestation of the US National Defence Strategy’s (NDS) prioritisation of the Western Hemisphere relative to other regions. It underscores the US’ lack of interest in European security (and Ukraine) and suggests the Western Hemisphere will be a continued draw on limited US military, financial and law enforcement resources. If the proposed consolidation of US Southern Command and US Northern Command into US Americas Command proceeds in 2026, forces and capabilities could be reassigned from those regional commands responsible for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Insofar as the Venezuela operation relied not only on US military forces but also on Drug Enforcement Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation assets, European allies could also experience a decrease in the United States’ ability to cooperate with them on transnational crime across Europe.

What is more, any consequent instability in Venezuela could have a spill-over effect in the region that would affect European interests in the Latin America. France, for example, maintains a significant military presence in its territory, French Guiana, charged with preventing illegal gold mining and conducting maritime surveillance, as well as guarding against potential incursions by Venezuela into Guyana's oil-rich Essequibo region. French forces in the region, as well as Dutch forces in Netherlands’ island territories off the coast of Venezuela, could face pressure to cooperate in enforcing US plan for the region.

Yet by far the most consequential effect on European and transatlantic security would be any US attempt to occupy or take Greenland by force as part of the NDS goal to ‘reassert and enforce’ US pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere through what it calls the ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine. However unlikely, this prospect cannot be discounted or ignored. Such a move would undermine security in the Arctic and have devastating consequences for the NATO alliance.

Comments by Rachel Ellehuus, RUSI Director General

In seizing a foreign leader by military force, the Trump administration’s actions reveal how ‘war on drugs’ rhetoric continues to be used as a legitimising device, recasting clear violations of international law as routine law-enforcement actions.

The capture of Nicolás Maduro and his transfer to New York was framed visibly and explicitly as drug enforcement, from the prominent role of the DEA in the operation’s public imagery to a 25-page indictment charging Maduro with narco-terrorism, drug trafficking – including thousands of tons of cocaine to the US – and weapons-related charges.

The fragility of this justification was laid bare as Trump used his 3 January press conference to declare the US intention to ‘run’ Venezuela and position American oil companies to exploit its energy reserves. Tellingly, the seizure and indictment also come just a month after Trump issued a presidential pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, convicted on near-identical charges in the same New York courtroom for trafficking over 400 tons of drugs into the US.

In the Venezuelan case, efforts to cast extraordinary cross-border military action as justice rather than aggression underscore how far prohibition remains entangled with geopolitics in the hemisphere, serving not merely as a policy framework but as a strategic tool of power. Far from a narrow or technical issue, drug policy can be readily mobilised to normalise coercion and the projection of force across borders. Prohibition, in this sense, continues to shape geopolitics by determining how sovereignty is overridden, power is wielded, and violence is rendered justifiable – all while failing completely to reduce drug use or deter drug-related crime.

Within Venezuela, the operation is unlikely to curb organised crime: removing Maduro alone will not dismantle deeply entrenched criminal ecosystems that have for decades intertwined with state structures. Instead, the ensuing disruption may drive adaptation, as domestic and cross-border actors exploit the crisis. High demand and criminal competition – spanning cocaine, gold and other illicit markets – may reshape production patterns, informal bargaining and protection, while any disruptions to legitimate trade could redirect trafficking routes and methods.

Ultimately, the impact of Operation Absolute Resolve on criminal markets in Venezuela and the region hinges on what comes next. Without serious efforts to restore the rule of law, a prolonged political crisis – contrary to the intervention’s stated aims – risks deepening illicit activity across the region.

Comments by Cathy Haenlein, Director of Organised Crime and Policing Studies

Operation Absolute Resolve must be set against a backdrop of existing US-Venezuela tensions in cyberspace. In 2019, Maduro accused US Cyber Command of sabotaging the national grid following a nationwide blackout – which was disregarded by many due to the dire state of energy infrastructure in the country. In December 2025, Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA suffered a cyberattack that took down its website and reportedly suspended oil deliveries – one week after the US military seized a PDVSA tanker carrying Venezuelan oil to Cuba. PDVSA publicly attributed the attack to the US government.

Whether accurate or not, these accusations indicate that Venezuela views cyber operations as part of the US coercive toolkit, and Washington has neither confirmed nor denied such actions. Even so, it would not come as a surprise to know that the US had access to key systems to conduct surveillance and deliver effects ahead of the operation.

Operation Absolute Resolve demonstrates effective multi-domain coordination, but the role of cyber capabilities remains opaque. Reports suggest the Caracas blackout resulted from a cyber operation, yet we have little detail on what was actually deployed. During the 3 January press conference, General Caine noted that US forces began ‘layering different effects’ from multiple agencies, including Cyber Command, to ‘create a pathway’ for the operation. Trump added that the ‘lights in Caracas were turned off due to a certain expertise.’ Despite this suggestive comment, we lack detail about what Cyber Command delivered – reconnaissance, disruption, or both.

Assessing the contribution of cyber effects to this operation requires distinguishing what it can reliably deliver from what a direct attack already guarantees. Cyber operations are difficult to scale and calibrate – striking a power line produces outages in ways cyber cannot guarantee. Yet cyber excels at creating fog during initial deployments and provides superior reconnaissance value.

The decisive factors in this operation cannot be analysed through a cyber effects lens alone. The mission depended on disabling air defences – achievable through jamming or kinetic means – and large-scale cyber effects would have exposed vulnerabilities worth preserving for future access that could be critical for monitoring a post-operation context. Given Venezuela's precarious power infrastructure, attributing decisive effect to cyber remains speculative.

Comments by Dr Louise Marie Hurel, Research Fellow, Cyber and Tech

The prominence of Venezuela’s oil industry in US President Donald Trump’s rhetoric following US strikes and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro – despite the stated justification of alleged drug trafficking – underscores this administration’s fixation on controlling strategic resources.

Few US governments have placed hydrocarbons and strategic minerals so openly at the centre of crisis diplomacy. Trump’s pressure on Venezuela over oil, including claims that US firms would rapidly restart production and access sanctioned crude, echoes his approach to Ukraine, where mineral cooperation became a condition for continued military and intelligence support. Similar dynamics were evident in the minerals deal signed with the Democratic Republic of Congo as it struggled to contain fighting in its eastern regions.

The lesson is that Trump will require resource concessions from the Venezuelan leadership. US oil companies have a long history in Venezuela, providing capital, technology and expertise that enabled its industry. Yet they have also exited twice following bouts of resource nationalism, in the 1970s and 2000s. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips are believed to have recovered only a fraction of the arbitration awards granted after their most recent departures: will they want another bite of the cherry?

Commercial incentives nonetheless exist. Venezuela’s proximity to the US market and the configuration of some US refineries to run most profitably on heavy, sour crude create a structural pull. But large-scale reinvestment is unlikely until Venezuela’s political future is more predictable, and companies would create serious risks if they re-entered under contractual or fiscal regimes later perceived to be illegitimate. Past arbitration outcomes offer little reassurance.

This may matter little to Trump, who has shown a willingness to leverage US military and diplomatic power to extract resource deals with few prospects for near-term delivery. Such pressured agreements risk undermining more effective US efforts to support domestic minerals production and finance overseas supply chains through the Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank. They also reinforce perceptions of the United States as extractivist and unreliable. Meanwhile, heavy crude could be sourced more securely from Canada and Mexico, were trust with both neighbours not already strained.

The emphasis this administration places on direct control of strategic resources should concern any country in which the US has a geopolitical interest. Resource concessions would be politically explosive in the Latin American countries in the administration’s crosshairs: Colombia, Cuba and Mexico. Yet Ukraine and DRC suggest deals can deflect some unwanted attention: Might a minerals’ deal (with little prospect of realisation during this administration) in Greenland, combined agreements on US military presence and Chinese investment satisfy Washington?

Comments by Dan Marks, Research Fellow for Energy Security, Organised Crime and Policing

The Trump administration framed its capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro on 3 January as a ‘law enforcement operation’ to prosecute alleged narco-terrorism. They did so portraying Maduro as the leader of the so-called Cartel de los Soles, which experts (and now the US administration itself) have recognised to be less a traditional cartel and more of a colloquial term to describe a network of corrupt senior government officials linked to drug money.

The accusations presented thus far have lacked rigour: while Maduro presided over a system that tolerated and profited from illicit economies, claims linking him to Tren de Aragua – a group with limited evidenced involvement in international drug trafficking – or falsely portraying Venezuela as a major conduit for fentanyl to the US, undermine Washington’s stated rationale.

Despite these inconsistencies, many have welcomed Maduro’s removal given his government’s lack of legitimacy, hoping it might enable democratic and economic recovery. However, Washington has offered little indication that it intends to support a democratic transition, instead signalling it aims to pressure what remains of the Venezuelan administration to secure access to oil, casting doubt on whether regime change was ever the primary objective.

Furthermore, since intervening in Venezuela, Donald Trump has stated that similar action could be taken against Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, whom he has also repeatedly accused of drug trafficking, without providing evidence. The difference is that Petro is a democratically elected head of state – and happens to be an outspoken critic of Trump’s policies. The use of weak or distorted criminal allegations to justify exceptional extraterritorial action against defiant Latin American leaders – elected or otherwise – who refuse to acquiesce to US interests therefore sets a troubling and dangerous precedent.

The 2025 US National Security Strategy explicitly signals an ambition to reassert US dominance in the Western Hemisphere, its ‘backyard’, echoing Cold War-era interventionist policies that inflicted lasting damage on the region. The broader implications of Maduro’s removal are therefore alarming. While an intervention on Colombian soil is unlikely, the underlying threat of such actions and discrediting of elected leaders threatens to undermine the sovereignty and stability of Latin American nations.

Comments by Jennifer Scotland, Research Analyst, Organised Crime and Policing