The US invasion of Venezuela resulting in the overthrow of President Nicolas Maduro’s left-wing government, had four objectives – (1) putting a pliant government in place, (2) emphatically enforcing America’s “Monroe Doctrine” on the Western Hemisphere, (3) preventing Venezuela from using the Chinese Yuan in place of the US dollar for international trade (4) taking over Venezuela’s considerable oil resources.
Nicolas Maduro rose to prominence under the leadership of Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chavez. Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, succeeded Chavez in 2013. During the 26 years that Chávez and Maduro ruled Venezuela, their United Socialist Party of Venezuela, gained control of key institutions including the National Assembly, much of the judiciary, and the electoral council.
Maduro was declared winner of the Presidential election held in 2024, even though the opposition leader, Edmundo Gonzalez, had won by a landslide. Gonzalez had replaced María Corina Machado on the ballot paper after she was barred from running for office by Maduro.
In October 2025, Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy." Machado had defied a travel ban and made her way to Oslo in December to collect the award. She said that she planned to return to Venezuela with American help and replace left wing policies with free enterprise.
President Donald Trump blamed Maduro for the arrival of eight million Venezuelans in the US as refugees since 2013 as a result of an economic crisis and repression in Venezuela. Trump even accused Maduro of "emptying his prisons and mental asylums" and "forcing" its inmates to migrate to the US.
Trump also alleged that the influx of drugs, especially fentanyl and cocaine, into the US was a part of Maduro’s evil designs against the US. Trump placed a price on Maduro’s head.
However, counter-narcotic experts say that Venezuela is a relatively minor player in global drug trafficking, acting mainly as a transit country through which drugs produced elsewhere are smuggled. In fact, Venezuela’s neighbour, Colombia, is the world's largest producer of cocaine but most of it does not use Venezuela as a conduit.
On his part, Maduro said that Trump was using the drugs issue to depose him and get his hands on Venezuela's vast oil reserves
In October 2025, Trump authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela. On 15 December 2025, Trump signed an Executive Order designating fentanyl as a "Weapon of Mass Destruction", arguing that it was "closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic". Fentanyl is a synthetic drug which is 50 times more potent than heroin and has become the main drug responsible for opioid overdose deaths in the US.
However, fentanyl is produced not in Venezuela but mainly in Mexico and reaches the US almost exclusively via land through its southern border. Venezuela is not mentioned as a country of origin for fentanyl smuggled into the US in the DEA's 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment.
In September 2025, US forces began targeting vessels it accused of carrying drugs from South America to the US. There were 30 strikes on such vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific since then, killing more than 110 people. Regardless of objections, Trump declared a "total naval blockade" on all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. The US deployed 15,000 troops and a range of aircraft carriers, guided-missile destroyers, and amphibious assault ships to the Caribbean. The blockade hurt Venezuela as oil is the main source of foreign revenue for the Maduro government.
Venezuela has the world's largest proven crude oil reserves and profits from the oil sector finance more than half of its government budget. Under years of US sanctions, Venezuela signed several energy and mining deals with China, in addition to Iran and Russia. For Beijing, in particular, Venezuela is both an energy source and a foothold in the hemisphere.
However, experts say that the oil factor is exaggerated. They point out that in 2023, Venezuela produced only 0.8% of global crude oil, even according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). It currently exports about 900,000 barrels per day. But since China is the single biggest buyer of this, the US is irritated.
Another irritant had been Venezuela’s nationalizing its oil industries, though Venezuela paid US oil companies more than US$1 billion in compensation.
However, it was Venezuela’s leftism since Hugo Chavez rule that had been putting the US off. Chavez was voted to power in the December 1998 Presidential election. A firebrand who emulated Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Chávez harnessed popular anger over rampant corruption and poverty and promised major constitutional and economic reforms.
In April 2002 there was a coup attempt against Chavez, but it failed after large crowds gathered to demand that he be reinstated within two days. But Chavez cracked down on political rivals and turned his model democracy into an authoritarian state. He also turned against the US, accusing President George W. Bush of being behind the coup.
Chavez reasserted State control over Venezuela’s oil industry, rolling back the country’s previous steps toward privatization and forcing foreign companies to accept minority stakes in new joint ventures dominated by the State-owned oil firm. When US oil giants Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips refused to give up, Chavez seized their assets.
After Chavez’s death in March 2013, his protégé, Maduro, continued his policies. Mounting isolation and punishment by the US followed. Maduro grew increasingly reliant on Russia, China and Cuba, all antagonistic to the US.
The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 provided the ideological cover for Trump’s intervention in Venezuela in January 2026.
President James Monroe (1817 -1825) had declared that the Western Hemisphere, including South America and the Caribbean, was off limits to European powers. Trump’s National Security Strategy for 2025 (NSS 2025) announced that he had launched a “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Trump’s version of the Monroe doctrine is about China and Russia, and not Europe.
Although Venezuela is not named anywhere in NSS 2025, the strategy alludes to the fact China has made inroads with like-minded leaders in the region such as Maduro. The NSS 2025 sought to deny China and other powers access to key strategic assets in the region, such as military installations, ports, critical minerals and cyber communications networks. Trump doctrine provided for a robust US military presence not only to fight Latin American drug cartels and protect sea lanes, ports and critical infrastructure from Chinese intrusions and influence.
Trump is using the internal political divisions in Venezuela to his advantage. The Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, is pitching a post‑Maduro future to US investors in Venezuela.
She said that US companies would 0have a “US$1.7 trillion opportunity” when she privatises Venezuela’s oil, gas and infrastructure.
Though some Western oil firms, including the US company Chevron, are still active in the country, their operations have shrunk significantly as the US had widened sanctions and targeted oil exports, aiming to curb Maduro's access to a key economic lifeline.
However, Venezuelan oil resources are not as big deal as they are touted to be. Venezuela produces an estimated 860,000 barrels per day, but that is barely a third of what it was 10 years ago and accounts for less than 1% of world oil consumption. Also, restoring Venezuela's oil industry to its former glory would be a heavy lift, analysts say involving billions of dollars for a decade.
Perhaps the most important aim of the US invasion of Venezuela is to stop the Chinese Yuan and other foreign currencies from driving the US dollar out of international transactions.
The US fears that Venezuela’s oil trade with China which is in Yuan could be the precursor of a process to marginalise the US dollar internationally.
In 2018, Venezuela had announced that it would "free itself from the dollar" and started accepting Yuan, Euros, Roubles, and anything but US Dollars for oil. It was petitioning to join BRICS, were South Africa was pushing for non-US Dollar trade. Venezuela was building direct payment channels with China bypassing SWIFT entirely. And it was sitting on enough oil to fund de-dollarization for decades.
America has been enforcing dollar dominance both by deals and treatment with an iron fist. In 1974, Henry Kissinger made a deal with Saudi Arabia – all oil sold globally must be priced in US dollars. In exchange, America provided military protection. This single agreement created an artificial demand for dollars worldwide because every country needed dollars to buy oil. This let the US print an unlimited amount of dollars while other countries had to work for it.
Opponents to the scheme fell like nine pins. In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq would sell oil in Euros instead of dollars. In 2003 Iraq was invaded, Saddam was overthrown and executed for having “Weapons of Mass Destruction” in 2006.
In 2009, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya proposed a gold-backed African currency called the "Gold Dinar" for oil trade. In 2011, NATO bombed Libya and Gaddafi was sodomized and murdered. The Gold Dinar died with Gaddafi.
With five times more oil than Iraq and Libya combined, Venezuela has been an obvious target. Nicolas Maduro was overthrown and taken prisoner by US commandos and flown to the US, in a swift and smooth surgical operation on January 3, 2026. Mercifully his life has been spared.