David Farrar: Venezuelans support the US

The Economist commissioned a poll of 600 Venezuelans. The results are: (Click graphs to view)

Roger Partridge: When Intervention Is Justified … or Not

“If not military intervention, then what? And when is intervention justified?” Those were the challenges from readers of my recent essay arguing conservatives should not be too quick to praise President Trump’s removal of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

My objection was not that Maduro did not deserve his fate – he did. It was that methods matter. The Venezuela operation was unilateral, without congressional authorisation or allied support. Its justification was openly transactional – oil, drugs, the Monroe Doctrine. There was no plan for what follows. The historian Niall Ferguson, writing in The Free Press, praised Trump as a “nineteenth-century figure” returning to the politics of 1900. But that is not a compliment. The politics of 1900 produced 1914, and then 1945. A rerun with nuclear weapons will be worse.

Matthew D Mitchell: Three Lessons from Venezuela’s Economic Collapse

President Trump has accepted the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado. Unlike Machado, however, he does not accept the central lessons that can be gleaned from five decades of Venezuelan misrule. There are three.

Lesson 1: Past prosperity is no guarantee of future prosperity.

Roger Partridge: The Venezuela Precedent

There is something deeply satisfying about watching Nicolás Maduro being hauled from his palace and deposited in a Brooklyn jail cell.

The man was a monster. Under his rule, Venezuela’s economy contracted by roughly three-quarters – the largest peacetime economic collapse in the Western Hemisphere’s modern history. Nearly eight million Venezuelans fled, more than a quarter of the population he inherited. The country that once boasted Latin America’s highest living standards became a humanitarian catastrophe. In 2024, election observers believe he lost his bid for a third term by more than 30 points. He declared victory anyway.

Dave Patterson: Venezuela After Socialism

What will the United States do to ensure there is no Maduro redux?

Smoldering buildings and destroyed military vehicles — the targets of US air attacks in the early-morning hours of January 3 — are the only evidence remaining that American military forces had swooped in and captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. That may be a problem. Without a strong US presence on the ground in Caracas and throughout Venezuela, can a government emerge that will be democratically constituted, cordial to the United States, and focused on ridding the country of transnational organized crime and terrorism, and the likes of Hezbollah? These are the challenges to be faced in the next few months.

An Opportunity for Venezuela

Paul Mueller: Venezuelan Tragedy - Socialism, Entitlement, and Tyranny Are Connected

Once prosperous and cultured, Venezuela has become destitute, crime-ridden, and hopeless. Young socialists should take heed.

The shocking capture and extradition of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife over the weekend is the culmination of months of US pressure on the regime. President Trump and other administration officials have labeled Maduro and his close associates “narco-terrorists,” accusing him of leading a huge criminal organization and profiting by violating US laws, selling large quantities of illegal narcotics which may have potentially killed Americans.

But while the future of the Venezuelan regime is uncertain, it is worth taking a few minutes to understand how Venezuela got to where it is today and what Americans can learn from its descent into a tyrannical/criminal regime.

Dr Will Jones: The US “Needs Greenland”, Says Trump

Donald Trump has set his sights on a US takeover of Greenland after capturing Nicolas Maduro and saying he would run Venezuela, telling reporters: “We do need Greenland, absolutely.” The Telegraph has more.

Brendan O'Neill: Marine Le Pen is right about Venezuela

Why did it take a former far-right leader to spell out the danger of Trump’s intervention?


Here’s a sentence I never thought I would write – people should listen to Marine Le Pen. She might not be your cup of tea. She isn’t mine. Yet she has hands-down made the clearest, most principled comment on Washington’s venture in Venezuela. Slicing through both the hypocritical hysteria of the Maduro-sympathising left and the infantile gloating of MAGA influencers who’ve learnt to love war again, Le Pen reminds us what is at stake in this strange geopolitical blaze: the future of sovereignty itself.

Tim Donner: Maduro - How His Daring Capture Will Change the World

This could stand as the most significant geopolitical event since 9/11

They got him. The nightmare of Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate, murderous regime in Venezuela and the untold hundreds of thousands who have died at the hands of the lethal drugs pouring in from the South American narco-terrorist state has mercifully come to an end. After the daring capture of Maduro and his wife in the dark of night, the question quickly turns to what will happen next in once-prosperous Venezuela and, most importantly, how the success of this breathtaking military and law enforcement operation will change the geopolitics of not just the western hemisphere, but the entire world.

Ani O'Brien: What (the f***) just happened in Venezuela?

Love him or hate him, Trump is changing the world

What happened in Venezuela overnight is still unfolding, and while I have some baseline knowledge of the country’s long socialist collapse, its role in global narcotics trafficking, and the fact that it is sitting on a shit tonne of oil, I found myself feeling very disoriented about what the hell was happening. As it is an unfolding event, it is precisely the sort of moment where half-baked hot takes, tribal loyalty, and reflexive moralising are not at all helpful.

So I am going to try to avoid all of that and focus on trying to work through the legal and political consequences as well as lay out some possible motivations in a way that hopefully helps us figure out what’s going on. I will acknowledge any of my own opinions along the way.

David Farrar: What to make of Venezuela

When news first broke of the US attack on Venezuela, I was perplexed as just bombing Venezuela was unlikely to overthrow Maduro, and a full invasion could be costly. I did wonder if it was part of a plan to capture Maduro, and so it was. In just 150 minutes Maduro was a prisoner of the United States, and not a single US solider was killed. From a military point of view it was an incredible operation, and one that could cause other country leaders to have a nervous night’s sleep – be it Cuba or Denmark.

Brendan O'Neill: Trump’s gunboat diplomacy is a betrayal of populism

His regime-change crusade against Nicolas Maduro is dangerous for Venezuela and for America itself.

So regime change is back? Having for years mocked the wasteful, lethal Clinton-Bush-Obama crusades against states they hated, now President Trump has carried out a regime decapitation of his own. Having installed as his director of national intelligence one of the most stinging critics of regime-change wars – Tulsi Gabbard – now Trump launches not quite a regime-change war but certainly a regime-change strike. Having said MAGA would end these ruinous excursions and prioritise the needs of the American working class, now Trump goes south and does what so many administrations before his did: topples a Latin American dictator.

DTNZ: Maduro captured – Trump

The Venezuelan president and his wife have been flown out of the country, the US president has said.

US forces have captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife during Washington’s strikes on the nation’s capital, US President Donald Trump has announced, adding that the two have been flown out of the South American country. Venezuelan authorities have long accused the US of attempting to topple the government in Caracas.

Emmanuel Rincon: Sanctions Didn’t Destroy Venezuela’s Economy — Socialism Did

In recent weeks, the debate over Venezuela has intensified, largely due to the military pressure that the Trump Administration has placed on Maduro’s regime. This has led various political figures, journalists, and analysts to revisit Venezuela’s recent history and the causes that drove the Maduro regime to provoke the worst economic collapse ever recorded in the Western world — an 80 percent GDP contraction in less than a decade. The crisis becomes even more shocking when considering that Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

Dave Patterson: Hezbollah and Iran Narco-Terrorists on US Back Porch

Dangerous Middle East networks thrive in Central and South America.

If you thought that Hezbollah was just Israel’s problem, think again. Iran’s proxy and Iran are well established in America’s southern neighbor countries, and, without intervention by the United States, they are there to stay. A tropical islet in northeast Venezuela called Margarita Island – also known as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s “Terror Island” – is a safe haven for Hezbollah and Iranian operatives. They move freely, participating in narco-terrorism, human trafficking, money laundering, terrorist training, and arms trafficking.

Mark Angelides: Blockade - Venezuela Gets the Terror Treatment

A total blockade of oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuelan waters has been imposed by the Trump administration, ratcheting up tensions that came to a head Tuesday evening, December 16. Ordering a “total and complete blockade,” President Donald Trump has escalated the South American situation in an effort to disrupt and destroy the flow of illegal drugs into the US. And yet, the political and economic ramifications go far beyond the drug cartels.

Dave Patterson: What to Do About Venezuela?

The war on drugs wasn’t a real war until President Trump made it one.

President Trump has made Venezuela a special project, presenting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as the face of the evil visited on America by drug and human traffickers. Maduro does not personally run the cartel’s transnational criminal operations, of course, but he facilitates. In some cases, he may actively support and protect them. Trump has taken a multi-pronged approach to stopping this.

Trump’s Venezuela Strategy Is Three-fold

DTNZ: Trump warns Venezuelan jets could be shot down amid rising tensions

US President Donald Trump has warned that Venezuelan jets flying over American naval vessels could be shot down, following two reported incidents of Venezuelan aircraft approaching US ships near South America.

The warning comes days after a US strike on a Venezuelan boat alleged to be carrying drugs killed 11 people, an operation Venezuela denies.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Dictators conspire: Oil, assassins, exploitation

Last week’s prisoner exchange between Russia, Belarus and several Western nations offered a stark glimpse into the workings of modern autocracies. As such, it serves as a timely backdrop to Anne Applebaum’s new book, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, which examines the collaborative efforts of authoritarian regimes to undermine liberal democracy globally.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Meddling in other countries’ internal affairs – when do two wrongs make a right?

The doctrine of sovereign nation-state equality underpins international law. A corollary of this maxim is that thou shalt not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations.

National sovereignty means that we run our own show and do not stick our noses into the internal affairs of other sovereign nations. This maxim should only be deviated from in extreme circumstances, such as when a government is involved in genocide.

Interfering in the affairs of other nation-states can take very direct forms or subtler ones. The most direct form is military intervention in order to effect a change in the target country’s government or its policies. The Opium Wars were a classic example of the latter kind, while the NATO action against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999 provides a more recent instance. Tanzania’s military intervention in Uganda, and Vietnam’s in Cambodia in 1979, exemplify interventions aimed at regime change. (So was the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but that was under the pretext of Iraq presenting an imminent military threat, thereby invoking the right to pre-emptive self-defence.)