Sovereignty Under the Barrel: Maduro, Monroe, and Oil

The framework Washington invokes is old. On December 2, 1823, President James Monroe used his seventh annual message to Congress to warn European powers against new colonization or intervention in the Americas. He declared the hemisphere off limits to their ambitions. The statement was later called the "Monroe Doctrine." It became a durable claim that the United States holds a special role in the Western Hemisphere. The State Department's own history office traces that claim from 1823 to the present.

For most of the 20th century, Venezuela was a close US partner and a reliable oil supplier. That changed with the rise of Hugo Chavez. He was an army officer who led a failed coup in 1992, then won the presidency at the ballot box in December 1998 with 56 percent of the vote. Chavez promised to direct Venezuela's oil wealth toward the poor. He rewrote the constitution in 1999 and built a governing model he called the Bolivarian Revolution. In 2002 a coup briefly removed him, and he returned to power within 48 hours. The episode hardened his distrust of Washington.

Chavez used record oil prices in the 2000s to fund social programs and to bring key industries under government control. He asserted tighter state control over the national oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA. Chavez died in 2013. His vice president, Nicolas Maduro, took office and continued the project. The oil money then ran out. Production fell year after year due to underinvestment, mismanagement, and later US sanctions. The economy collapsed into hyperinflation and shortages.

The exodus followed the collapse. More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2014. The United Nations refugee agency and its regional platform for Venezuelan migrants, known as R4V, call it one of the largest displacement crises in the world. Most went to other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Large numbers later moved toward the United States. Venezuela's internal crisis became a regional and US political issue.

Washington escalated its pressure in stages. The first Trump administration imposed sweeping sanctions on PDVSA in 2019 and recognized opposition figure Juan Guaido as interim president. That recognition failed to dislodge Maduro. The Biden administration eased some sanctions in 2023 in exchange for an election pledge, then re-tightened them when the pledge was not honored. The Congressional Research Service is the nonpartisan research arm of the US Congress. It documents this long arc of sanctions as the core of US policy toward Caracas.

The election of July 28, 2024, became the breaking point. Venezuela's government-controlled National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner with 51.2 percent against 44.2 percent for the opposition's Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia. It did not publish the underlying vote tallies. The opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, said it had collected most of the printed tally sheets from the voting machines. In its account, the sheets showed Gonzalez winning by a wide margin. Then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States concluded Gonzalez had won the most votes. Several governments in the region demanded a transparent count.

A second fight unfolded next door, over land and oil. Venezuela revived a long territorial claim to the Essequibo region. The area makes up more than two-thirds of neighboring Guyana and sits beside some of the most valuable new oil discoveries on earth, developed by a group led by ExxonMobil. In December 2023, Caracas held a referendum asserting the claim. In March 2025, a Venezuelan navy vessel entered Guyana's waters and approached an ExxonMobil operation. Venezuela also moved to include the disputed territory in its own 2025 elections. Guyana had filed its case at the International Court of Justice in 2019. It called Venezuela's actions a threat and likened them to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Through the second half of 2025, the United States moved from sanctions to force. In September 2025, the US military began striking boats in the Caribbean that the Trump administration alleged were carrying drugs. It tied the boats to groups it had designated as terrorist organizations, including the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The strikes continued for months and killed scores of people. In November 2025, the State Department designated the "Cartel de los Soles" as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. It described the cartel as a criminal network headed by Maduro and senior Venezuelan officials. In December 2025, Trump ordered a blockade of sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers, and the United States seized vessels.

Then came the raid. In the early hours of January 3, 2026, US special operations forces struck Venezuelan air defenses and military sites. They captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at his Caracas compound. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said at least 150 aircraft supported the operation. The forces flew the couple to the assault ship USS Iwo Jima and on to New York, where both were indicted in federal court on drug-trafficking charges. Trump said the United States would "run" Venezuela until a "proper transition" could take place. He called the policy the "Donroe Doctrine." The sections that follow set out how each party defends or contests what has happened.

1. The United States government

   A long-stated doctrine and a counter-narcotics mission, now enforced

   The Trump administration frames the campaign two ways: as overdue enforcement of principles the United States has held since 1823, and as a fight against drugs flowing toward American communities. Officials point to the federal indictment that accuses Maduro and his circle of running a "cycle of narcotics-based corruption" that moved cocaine toward the United States. They treat Maduro as a fugitive narco-trafficker rather than a head of state. The boat strikes and the capture, in their account, simply removed him. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington research center, notes that the operation matched the 2025 National Security Strategy's declared intent to "restore American preeminence" in the hemisphere and to deny rivals strategically vital assets there. In the administration's account, two decades of sanctions and diplomacy had failed. Only hard power moved Maduro.

2. The Maduro government

   An illegal invasion of a sovereign state and the seizure of its elected leadership

   The government Maduro led, and its remaining officials in Caracas, reject the entire premise. They call the operation an act of aggression against a sovereign nation. Before the capture, Maduro's government filed a formal complaint with the United Nations Security Council describing the earlier US boat strikes as "extrajudicial killings." Its defenders say the National Electoral Council certified the 2024 result and Venezuela's Supreme Court upheld it, which made Maduro the lawful president. Seizing a head of state and flying him abroad for trial, they argue, breaks the most basic rules of sovereignty. They cast the oil focus as the real motive, and the drug charges as a pretext for taking control of the world's largest crude reserves.

3. The Venezuelan opposition

   A stolen election finally answered, and a path back to democracy

   The opposition led by Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia argues that Maduro forfeited any legitimate claim to power when he refused to publish the 2024 tallies. In their account, those tallies showed Gonzalez winning decisively. Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for what the Nobel Committee called "her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy." She remained inside Venezuela in hiding despite threats. In this view, Maduro's removal opens the first real chance in years for a democratic transition and the return of millions of exiles. It also offers a chance to rebuild an oil industry the opposition has long said was hollowed out by mismanagement.

4. Guyana

   Relief from a neighbor that menaced its territory and its oil

   Guyana's government, led by President Irfaan Ali, spent two years warning about Venezuela's revived claim to the Essequibo region. It saw the claim as a threat to its territory and its offshore oil boom. Ali called Maduro an "outlaw" acting "recklessly" and compared Venezuela's pressure to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. With Maduro removed, Guyana's supporters argue, the most immediate military threat to its waters and to the ExxonMobil-led operations there has receded. That gives the small country room to keep expanding a production surge that has reshaped its economy.

5. Russia and China

   Defending sovereignty and non-intervention against a great-power land grab

   Russia and China are the principal outside backers of Caracas. They frame the US operation as a dangerous breach of international law and of the principle that one state may not topple another's government by force. Russia condemned the attack at the United Nations and voiced "solidarity" with Maduro. Both governments have invested heavily in Venezuela. The Council on Foreign Relations reports that Beijing has lent Caracas tens of billions of dollars over the past decade in exchange for future oil. In their telling, the United States is doing what the Monroe Doctrine always meant: asserting domination over weaker neighbors, and dressing a resource grab in the language of law enforcement.

1. Of the United States government

   Extrajudicial killings, an unauthorized war, and a "you break it, you own it" trap

   The strongest objections to the US approach come on law, war powers, and the aftermath. United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk called for the boat strikes to stop. He warned they risked the extrajudicial killing of people aboard. Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union argued that killing suspects at sea, without trial or a clear legal basis, violates international law. Critics in Congress and beyond noted that the strikes proceeded without congressional authorization for war. So did an operation that removed a foreign head of state. Analysts at CSIS invoked the "Pottery Barn" principle: you break it, you own it. They warned that taking ownership of Venezuela's transition could draw the United States into a long and costly commitment with no clear exit.

2. Of the Maduro government

   A documented record of repression, a hollowed economy, and disputed votes

   The case against the Maduro government rests on the record it built over more than a decade. Independent monitors and the opposition documented the refusal to publish the 2024 vote tallies, the arrests of opponents, and the forcing of Gonzalez into exile. The United States and several Latin American governments concluded that the opposition, not Maduro, had won the most votes. Oil output collapsed from almost 3.5 million barrels a day in 1998 to about 800,000 by December 2025. Hyperinflation followed, and more than 7.7 million people fled. Critics hold up those numbers as the measurable result of the model Maduro inherited and ran.

3. Of the Venezuelan opposition

   Sidelined by Washington and tied to a contested intervention

   The opposition faces pointed criticism from two directions. Inside Venezuela and across the region, opponents of the intervention argue that a democratic future imposed after a US military strike carries a stain. Any government it produces, they say, will be dogged by it. CSIS noted the striking absence of the Venezuelan opposition from Trump's own account of who would run the country. Critics also note that Trump spoke of US designees running Venezuela, not of handing power to Gonzalez or Machado. That raises two questions: how much real authority the opposition will hold, and whether figures who backed the operation can claim a clean democratic mandate.

4. Of Guyana

   A windfall built beside an unresolved legal dispute and a fragile peace

   Guyana's position is not without complication. The Essequibo dispute remains before the International Court of Justice, which has yet to issue a final ruling. Guyana's control of the contested region therefore rests on a legal claim that Venezuela still rejects. Critics note that Guyana and Venezuela signed the Argyle Declaration on December 14, 2023. The two countries agreed to avoid force and keep the status quo while the court decided, and a future Venezuelan government could revive the claim. A deeper question follows: does Guyana's reliance on US security guarantees, in exchange for its oil partnerships, expose the small nation to the same great-power leverage it now welcomes?

5. Of Russia and China

   Bankrolling a government that drove its own people out, and losing the bet

   The backers of Caracas draw their own criticism. Opponents argue that Russia and China propped up a government whose policies emptied the country. Their loans and oil deals, critics say, kept in power a leadership that US courts accused of trafficking and corruption. Russia's Rosneft and Chinese state lenders extended credit secured against Venezuelan oil. The Council on Foreign Relations reports those positions are now at risk. By tying themselves to Maduro, critics contend, Moscow and Beijing both enabled the crisis and exposed their own investments. The Atlantic Council notes that Maduro's removal leaves their stakes in Venezuela uncertain.