"Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Could Change the World. Here’s How."
It's still an open question as to how Trump plucking Nicholas Maduro out of Venezuela on Saturday to face criminal charges will change the world but has Politico already been changed by President Donald Trump since most of the thirteen experts, regional analysts to national security veterans, it sought input from the next day were surprisingly upbeat about what could happen next?
The first expert cited was Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who stated that Trump's actions in Venezuela on Saturday sends a clear message to the "axis of authoritarians."
...The fact that President Trump launched this operation hours after Nicolás Maduro met with China’s special envoy sends a clear and unequivocal message to China and its role in the Americas. It also sends the message that the ‘axis of authoritarians’ is strong during peacetime, but not decisive for one another in moments of greatest need, when it comes to questions of regime security.
Even critics of the action on Saturday such as Tufts university professor Daniel W. Drezner also sounded like Trump might accomplish his (icky) goals:
In the summer of 2024, I cautioned in POLITICO that a second Trump administration would be likely to increase, not decrease U.S. military adventurism: “Even though the term is directed at him a lot, Trump is not an isolationist — he is a mercantilist who prefers using force in this hemisphere.” The use of force to depose Nicolás Maduro is a pretty strong data point supporting this contention.
...I strongly suspect that the Trump administration will use this Maduro action to threaten the leaders of recalcitrant allies and weak adversaries that they might be next on the chopping block — and such threats might actually work.
Former New York Times foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer wondered about the collapse of Cuba due to being cut off from Venezuelan oil: "Rubio hopes that without Venezuelan oil, Cuba’s political system will finally collapse. That would turn both countries into submissive clients — or into bloody battlegrounds where a new generation of Latin Americans will seek to defy what the Nicaraguan rebel leader Augusto César Sandino called 'the eagle with larcenous claws.'"
Here are yet more plaudits from those cited. Many are so positive as to perhaps leave readers scratching their heads that they are being published in Politico:
The nighttime U.S. air assault and special operations raid that nabbed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife was impeccably planned and executed. President Trump is rightly proud of the results; Maduro, a man who outlasted the first Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy, will soon find himself in a U.S. courtroom as a criminal defendant.
If Maduro’s capture tells us anything, it’s that Trump is dead serious about implementing his so-called Trump Corollary in the Western Hemisphere. In less than a year, Latin America has transformed from a perpetual backwater of U.S. grand strategy to one of its main theaters. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy codified the Western Hemisphere as not only a core U.S. security priority but Washington’s exclusive domain, where non-hemispheric powers aren’t welcome.
...The U.S. ousting Maduro potentially kills multiple birds with one stone: It could increase oil supply in the U.S. and reduce oil prices, curb drug trafficking, dislodge China, Russia, and Iran from their strategic beachhead, and weaken other regional adversaries like Cuba and Nicaragua.
... even the loudest critics of the operation will have strong incentives to quietly appease Washington. Many Latin American governments are likely to invest more in counternarcotics and migration control.
Yes, there are naysayers in the group of experts but the overall impression is one of a surprisingly positive reaction to Saturday's actions in Venezuela. And to think it was all published in the same periodical that a few months ago went completely over the edge in an Epstein files frenzy of stories in the desperate hope that it would spell big trouble for Trump. If Politico can be changed or at least modified in their hostile attitude towards Trump, it is entirely plausible that the world too can be changed by Trump.
