Newsletter #68: Trump kidnaps Maduro
What comes next?
Good morning,
For the first newsletter of 2026, we felt we should take a moment to look ahead at what the coming year has in store, and put our reputation on the line with some predictions. After all, there’s never any big news so soon after the new year…
That look ahead will now be in a bonus newsletter on Saturday.
This newsletter’s agenda: Trump kidnaps Maduro (free/paid)
Trump kidnaps Maduro
Overnight on Friday, US Special forces kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from his Caracas safe house along with his wife. The operation followed months of espionage, and involved the deployment of 150 aircraft alongside the elite special mission unit ‘Delta Force’. It began with an almost complete shutdown of electricity supply to the city, after which a number of key military sites — and also the Mausoleum of Maduro’s predecessor and founder of modern Venezuelan socialism, Hugo Chavez — were taken out from the air. As of Sunday, it appears the operation was carried out with zero US deaths and without losing a single US aircraft. In total, it lasted two hours and twenty minutes.
The scale, speed, and violence of the mission was, of course, dictated ultimately by the requirements for success. Nevertheless, the opportunity to remind Trump’s international opponents of the overwhelming military capacity of the United States will not have been unappreciated in Washington. Maduro was in no way poorly protected.
What comes next is still unclear. The Venezuelan government has appointed Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodriguez, as acting President. Rodriguez has expressed outrage at the actions of the US, and demanded the immediate return of Maduro — although Trump has indicated that she has privately committed to working with his administration. This is not implausible, as the US remains positioned for a ‘second wave’ of actions which would surely see her arrest if she refuses to co-operate. The internationally recognised liberal opposition, led by Nobel Prize winner Maria Machado, has so far been largely snubbed by Trump, who has said that the US will ‘run’ Venezuela until a suitable alternative government is found. What that means has not yet been explained, and the US does not appear to have operational control on the ground as of today.
Why did Trump authorise this action? Ostensibly, it is a result of Maduro’s involvement in the drug trade, and to a lesser extent a reaction to the emigration crisis that his leadership has caused. Neither of these justifications should be taken particularly seriously. To the extent that Maduro’s regime has taken part in the drug trade, it has largely been enabling the shipping of cocaine to Europe — America’s problem is with fentanyl, which is primarily manufactured in Mexico — and the emigration crisis has been a problem mostly for neighbouring South American countries, although the US has seen a small increase in Venezuelans crossing the border.
The real answer, then, involves two highly connected motivations: oil and geopolitics. Some have minimised the importance of Venezuela’s oil reserves by pointing out that the country’s supplies, whilst among the largest in the world, consist almost entirely of ‘heavy crude’ — viscous and difficult to refine — which is far less valuable on the international market compared to, for example, American shale oil. This misses the fact that, prior to the discovery of shale deposits, the US invested a great deal into refining capacity which focused specifically on heavy crude for the precise reason of its lower market price. 70% of US domestic refining capacity depends on heavy crude as a result.
Increasing production in Venezuela, which has been hindered by poor management under Maduro’s leadership, would therefore lead to substantially lower fuel prices at home — counteracting America’s persistent inflation and decreasing cost of living whilst enabling further cuts to interest rates. All of this is crucial for Trump’s success in the upcoming midterm elections. Trump himself has explicitly touted the prospect of American oil companies gaining access to Venezuelan reserves for this purpose.
Increasing global oil output will not just decrease prices for the United States, even if it does monopolise some degree of the supply (as doing so would reduce US demand in the rest of the market). It will reduce prices across the world, putting particular strain on the Russian economy at precisely the time Trump most requires leverage over Vladimir Putin to secure a peace deal in Ukraine which is politically acceptable at home.
There are other geopolitical advantages presented by a new US-led regime in Venezuela. The biggest importer of Venezuelan oil today is China, who have been stockpiling resources to increase their resilience against trade shocks since Trump returned to power. In the recent National Security Strategy document, curtailing Chinese access to natural resources, particularly oil, was a key motivation for wanting Europe to take a more active role in the management of the Middle East whilst the US pivots westwards, lest a power vacuum allow Chinese influence to grow. Halting or at least reducing Chinese access to Venezuelan fuel supplies will help achieve the same goal. Of course, the NSS also makes clear that the administration’s new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine not only commits them to opposing non-hemispheric influence in the Americas, but also to removing hostile regimes within the continent. Taking out Maduro is clearly consistent with that line. Venezuela is also a major supplier of oil to Cuba, much of it virtually for free, in exchange for sending medical personnel to Venezuela. The Cuban economy is currently in its greatest ever crisis; Trump will have been lobbied hard by Cuban-Americans to force its collapse. Now that this ‘lifeline’ is gone, and with so little trouble removing Maduro, will Cuba be Trump’s next target?
