(The Epoch Times)—After U.S. military forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro over the weekend, attention has turned to what comes next for the country that has lived under socialist rule for more than 25 years.
President Donald Trump has spoken about his long-term goals for Venezuela, but for now, his focus remains on tackling short-term challenges. Holding fair and free elections and restoring a democratic government will take time, he said, as there is much work to do.
“We’ll have elections at the right time,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Jan. 4. “Venezuela right now is a dead country. We have to bring it back.”
The Trump administration has made clear that before any broader political change can take place in the country, the immediate priorities include ensuring that the interim leadership complies with U.S. orders, preventing interference by drug cartels, and bringing in U.S. oil companies to help rebuild Venezuela’s energy infrastructure.
In recent years, Venezuela has experienced economic collapse, accompanied by hyperinflation, widespread poverty, and a significant exodus of citizens.
During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump said the United States will run Venezuela until a “safe, proper, and judicious transition” to a new government is possible.
In a Fox News interview on Jan. 3, shortly after the operation, Trump explained why the United States needs to be involved in the country’s governance.
“We can’t take a chance on letting somebody else run it and just take over where [Maduro] left off,” he said.
Maduro and his wife were transferred to New York City on Jan. 3 and are currently being held in jail. At their first court appearance on Jan. 5, both pleaded not guilty to federal charges that include drug trafficking and collaborating with gangs designated as terrorist organizations.
Maduro told the court that he is still the president of his country and that he was kidnapped.
On the same day, Venezuela’s parliament swore in Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, as acting president. Her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, was also elected speaker of parliament.
Trump said Delcy Rodríguez will have to comply with U.S. demands, or “she will face a situation probably worse than Maduro.”
Delcy Rodríguez issued a statement on Instagram in response.
“Our country aspires to live without external threats,” she wrote on Jan. 5. “We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence.”
What Is Next?
A senior White House official told The Epoch Times that Trump’s national security team, rather than a single person, would continue to handle Venezuela policy for now.
The official said the team includes Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
Andrés Martínez-Fernández, a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, said he believes that Trump’s team will seek to avoid large-scale military occupation and instead protect U.S. national security interests through external pressure.
He told The Epoch Times that, in the near term, the administration will continue to apply economic and military pressure, as it has in recent months, to ensure that “the remnants of the regime in Venezuela don’t fall into a status quo of weaponizing drugs and migration against the United States.”
Corruption in the Venezuelan military and broader security services also creates a challenge for the Trump administration and will probably be a key topic in talks with the remaining members of the regime.
“There is a deep entrenchment of drug trafficking and corruption in those institutions, and there needs to be a major clean-up in those entities,” Martínez-Fernández said.
Role of Oil Companies
Trump has stressed that he expects U.S. oil companies to help rebuild Venezuela and restore the country’s economy during the transition.
Over the weekend, he said large U.S. oil companies would begin fixing broken infrastructure “and start making money for the country.”
The United States will be taking “a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” Trump said on Jan. 3.
He also indicated that oil revenues would be used to compensate people who were taken advantage of.
Venezuela, a founding member of OPEC, was once one of the world’s leading oil producers. The country sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves. However, its crude oil production has fallen in recent years, mainly because of the regime’s mismanagement.
Evan Ellis, a military strategist and former Latin America policy adviser to the U.S. State Department, said that former leaders Hugo Chávez and Maduro have left behind a serious legal and economic mess. The country faces significant international obligations to pay debts to various groups because of expropriations and unpaid monies under the leadership of the two socialist leaders.
“The path forward will be extremely challenging,” Ellis told The Epoch Times.
But effective management of the country’s oil assets and repairs to infrastructure, including the El Palito refinery, could boost oil production within two to three years, he said.
“That would allow Venezuela to reemerge as one of the most prosperous oil economies in the region and potentially reclaim its former status as one of Latin America’s wealthiest democracies, as it was through the 1990s.”
Opposition Leaders, Political Prisoners
There are also major political and humanitarian questions, including whether opposition leaders currently living abroad will be able to return safely and what will happen to hundreds of political prisoners held in Venezuelan prisons.
Trump has suggested that Venezuela’s opposition figure and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado lacks sufficient support and respect within Venezuela to assume the leadership in the near term.
Following Maduro’s removal from office, Machado said that opposition leader Edmundo González, widely recognized as the rightful victor of Venezuela’s 2024 election, is ready to take over the government.
“We are ready to take over the government. We have the teams, we have the plans,” she said in a statement.
However, both Trump and Rubio have expressed skepticism.
“There has to be a little realism here,” Rubio told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Jan. 4. “They’ve had this system of chavismo in place for 15 or 16 years. And everyone’s asking why, 24 hours after Nicolás Maduro was arrested, there isn’t an election scheduled for tomorrow. That’s absurd.”
It remains unclear when Machado, currently in Norway, and González, currently in Spain, will be able to return to Venezuela.
Rubio said that the administration is not ready yet to appoint opposition leaders.
“We’re going to make an assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly in the interim,” Rubio said. “So we’re going to find out.”
Whether Trump’s efforts will successfully lead Venezuela toward democratic elections—and how long that process may take—remains to be seen.
Martínez-Fernández said that rebuilding electoral, regional, and broader state institutions will require significant time.
However, he expressed hope that an election could take place before the end of Trump’s presidency, possibly sooner.
A credible election would finally end the “deeply unpopular” Chavista movement, he said.
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Every Country But Ours First
This is very much within the scope of MAGA. Venezuela has been a major source of illegal immigration. It has also been a major source of drug trafficking. Those both end. This keeps China out of our backyard and gives American companies and our government a huge say in the management of the World’s largest oil reserves. That is very important to American security. When production returns it will very likely result in a world wide oil glut which will be great for American and all other consumers. Perhaps most importantly, it reenforces the almighty Petro-dollar. At the end of the Biden Administration, the US Dollar was right on the verge of losing its status as the world’s reserve currency. This is bad for BRICs and great for the USA because if we lose status as the world’s reserve currency, we will no longer be able to export the inflation caused by our feckless Congress over-spending to the rest of the world. Venezuela oil will not solve our problem but it will at least buy us quite a bit of time.
The difference between Trump and Democrats: Trump will remove the Marxist threat to our national security and restore a democratically elected government. Democrats collude with a Chinese/Iranian puppet to bring down the U.S. and call it ‘democracy’.
“The difference between Trump and Democrats: Trump will remove the Marxist threat”??? REALLY?
Here’s his record so far on removing the country’s Marxist threat: Russia hoax arrrests=0; J6 FBI arrests=0; Covid scam murder arrests=0; 2020 election fraud arrests=0; Ukraine impeachment hoax arrests=0; Epstein pedophile arrests=0; Benghazi arrests=0. Are you starting to see a pattern here? I voted for him 3 times. You need to figure out this isn’t “Trump.vs Democrats.” In the past 80 years, except for Grenada, name ONE successful regime change. The dead US military personnel and families need an answer.
Your numbers are false. You seem to be interested in tearing down the USA. There have been many arrests and prosecutions, just not the big ones yet. As we have seen, if you don’t proceed in a well planed and executed manner, you can mess up your case. ie Comey.
Iraq and Lybia. Successful is relative to the person.
Machado is pro abortion and pro “gay marriage”, and appears to be a feminist. I doubt she could win an election, and would say that Trump is likely correct to say that she couldn’t. If the US is involved in “installing” any leadership in the country, it should not be individuals who would seek to impose such anti-christian ideologies. The people have been beaten down, oppressed, extorted, coerced and enslaved enough. They don’t need some rabid activists coming in and adding insult to injury, followed by more injury, putting their backs against the wall to deny their faith if they want to put food on the table. There’s enough of that mess going on in this world as it is. And nobody, not even the USA, has the right to impose such things on the people of Venezuela.
The need to vote, and they need to vote free of any and all coercion, threat, extortion, and anti-christian pressures. And it will take time for things to get to the point where such an election is possible. First they must be freed, before they can vote freely.
Return the stolen property to its rightful owners. Get their economy going. Ensure the people are free from the threats of the cartels and socialists. And do not attach any more strings beyond that. Don’t mess with the people. Don’t start trying to change them. Don’t start violating their conscience. And then there will be no resentment, animosity, distress, or other such factors that would lead to another, and possibly worse, mess like the one of the past 26 years.
Understand, Venezuela is majority Christian (or at least claims to be). They cannot, and need not, be dealt with the way we’ve had to deal with Muslim and other anti-christian peoples. They can govern themselves. (without preaching a sermon here, the reason they could be trusted to govern themselves, if enough of them are truly born again Christians, is because of the implanted Word and the work of the Holy Spirit … the problems are dealt with at their source – the wickedness of the heart)
OK, so how are we going to ensure all of the Maduro/communist chumps who have become part of the Venezuelan political corruption cartel when can’t even eliminate the ingrained Swamp operatives in our own government?
Good question. If they get a two-party system, with both party establishments corrupted, damned if they do damned if they don’t, always choosing between the lesser of evils both of which are more evil than those of the last election, then they’re in the same boat we’re in, with elections not meaning much of diddly squat.
At the end of the day, the only thing that works is Jesus Christ. The problems come from the wickedness in the heart of man. And that’s where they have to be fixed and dealt with, and only God can do it. That’s why it is vitally important that we do nothing to destroy their Christian culture, as ours has been destroyed. To make sure they don’t end up going down the same path, making the same errors we’ve made. Beyond simply setting things right to return the stolen property, and so on, zero strings should be attached, and zero pressure applied. Basically, deal with the sins and only the sins. If something isn’t sinful, such as the slaughter of the unborn being illegal, and so-called “gay marriage” being illegal (neither of which should’ve ever been legalized here), then leave them be. Then they’ll be a lot less likely to end up having to choose between the lesser of grievous evils.
I’d say we can expect the media to start with the sob stories and other tactics any day now, if they haven’t already done so, intent on remaking Venezuela in their own wicked image. And we’ll need to stand against that.
Catholics are NOT Christian. Why do you think all these countries are so messed up? Mexico, all the Latin American countries, Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, are all in bondage to the Catholic cult, which is why they fall so easily for the cartels and murder gangs. When immigration is your hope for the future, you should import ONLY those of your own faith.
https://www.born-again-christian.info/roman-catholics.htm
Catholic Charities in good measure are responsible for our immigration situation. What going to change?
Bob, you’re right about that. No question about it, where the Vatican is concerned. But at the same time, we’re talking about countries that don’t have much of any churches except the RCC. The history goes back a long ways. It’s their traditional church. In which case, some, perhaps even many, many truly be born again, even though the RCC is unquestionably apostate.
They’re certainly closer to truly born again Christians than the fallen apostate denominations like the UMC, UCC, DOC, Anglican, etc. that are basically hanging signs out front saying “sin is good!”, while flying the flag of sin worship.
Right. If the slaughter of the unborn and the perversion of marriage are still illegal in that country, then the truth is they’re a lot better than many in this country who call themselves Christians.
Sort of like the church at the time of Jesus. Right. It wasn’t a church either. It was apostate. The pharisees had made up a bunch of mess that wasn’t in scripture, taken away from scripture, tried to change it. But that didn’t mean everyone in the church was also apostate. Because it was the only church. Right. There was only one temple. We’re talking about a country where people don’t have much of any other options, and were membership in the RCC is more a matter of tradition.
But you’ve made an important point that needed to be made. And it’s good that you did so. The correction/clarification is much appreciated. I should’ve made that clarification myself.