Trump’s vague claims of the US running Venezuela raise questions about
planning for what comes next
[January 07, 2026]
By MATTHEW LEE
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has made broad but vague
assertions that the United States is going to “run” Venezuela after the
ouster of Nicolás Maduro but has offered almost no details about how it
will do so, raising questions among some lawmakers and former officials
about the administration’s level of planning for the country after
Maduro was gone.
Seemingly contradictory statements from Trump and Secretary of State
Marco Rubio have suggested at once that the U.S. now controls the levers
of Venezuelan power or that the U.S. has no intention of assuming
day-to-day governance and will allow Maduro’s subordinates to remain in
leadership positions for now.
Rubio said the U.S. would rely on existing sanctions on Venezuela’s oil
sector and criminal gangs to wield leverage with Maduro’s successors.
The uncertainty on definitive next steps in Venezuela contrasts with the
years of discussions and planning that went into U.S. military
interventions that deposed other autocratic leaders, notably in Iraq in
2003, which still did not often lead to the hoped-for outcomes.
‘Disagreement about how to proceed’
The discrepancy between what Trump and Rubio have said publicly has not
sat well with some former diplomats.
“It strikes me that we have no idea whatsoever as to what’s next,” said
Dan Fried, a retired career diplomat, former assistant secretary of
state and sanctions coordinator who served under both Democratic and
Republican administrations.
“For good operational reasons, there were very few people who knew about
the raid, but Trump’s remarks about running the country and Rubio’s
uncomfortable walk back suggests that even within that small group of
people, there is disagreement about how to proceed,” said Fried who is
now with the Atlantic Council think tank.
Supporters of the operation, meanwhile, believe there is little
confusion over the U.S. goal.
“The president speaks in big headlines and euphemisms,” said Rich
Goldberg, a sanctions proponent who worked in the National Energy
Dominance Council at the White House until last year and is now a senior
adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish think
tank.
Goldberg does not see Rubio becoming “the superintendent of schools” but
“effectively, the U.S. will be calling the shots.”
“There are people at the top who can make what we want happen or not,
and we right now control their purse strings and their lives,” he said.
“The president thinks it’s enough and the secretary thinks it’s enough,
and if it’s not enough, we’ll know very soon and we’ll deal with it.”
If planning for the U.S. “to run” Venezuela existed prior to Maduro’s
arrest and extradition to face federal drug charges, it was confined to
a small group of Trump political allies, according to current U.S.
officials, who note that Trump relies on a very small circle of advisers
and has tossed aside much of the traditional decision-making apparatus.
These officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss their
understanding of internal deliberations, said they were not aware of any
preparations for either a military occupation or an interim civilian
governing authority, which has been a priority for previous
administrations when they contemplated going to war to oust a specific
leader or government. The White House and the State Department's press
office did not return messages seeking comment.
Long discussion among agencies in previous interventions
Previous military actions that deposed autocratic leaders, notably in
Panama in 1989 and Iraq in 2003, were preceded by months, if not years,
of interagency discussion and debate over how best to deal with power
vacuums caused by the ousters of their leaders. The State Department,
White House National Security Council, the Pentagon and the intelligence
community all participated in that planning.
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In this photo released by the White House, President Donald Trump
monitors U.S. military operations in Venezuela, with Secretary of
State Marco Rubio at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Saturday, Jan.
3, 2026. (Molly Riley/The White House via AP)
In Panama, the George H.W. Bush administration had nearly a full
year of preparations to launch the invasion that ousted Panama's
leader Manuel Noriega. Panama, however, is exponentially smaller
than Venezuela, it had long experience as a de facto American
territory, and the U.S. occupation was never intended to retake
territory or natural resources.
By contrast, Venezuela is vastly larger in size and population and
has a decadeslong history of animosity toward the United States.
“Panama was not successful because it was supported internationally
because it wasn’t,” Fried said. “It was a success because it led to
a quick, smooth transfer to a democratic government. That would be a
success here, but on the first day out, we trashed someone who had
those credentials, and that strikes me as daft.”
He was referring to Trump’s apparent dismissal of opposition leader
Maria Corina Machado, whose party is widely believed to have won
elections in 2024, results that Maduro refused to accept. Trump said
Saturday that Machado “doesn’t have the support within or the
respect within the country” to be a credible leader and suggested he
would be OK with Maduro’s No. 2, Delcy Rodríguez, remaining in power
as long as she works with the U.S.
Hoped-for outcomes didn't happen in Iraq and Afghanistan
Meanwhile, best-case scenarios like those predicted by the George W.
Bush administration for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq that it would be
a beacon of democracy in the Middle East and hopes for a democratic
and stable Afghanistan following the ouster of the Taliban died
painfully slow deaths at the tremendous expense of American money
and lives after initial euphoria over military victories.
“Venezuela looks nothing like Libya, it looks nothing like Iraq, it
looks nothing like Afghanistan. It looks nothing like the Middle
East,” Rubio said this weekend of Venezuela and its neighbors.
“These are Western countries with long traditions at a
people-to-people and cultural level, and ties to the United States,
so it’s nothing like that.”
The lack of clarity on Venezuela has been even more pronounced
because Trump campaigned on a platform of extricating the U.S. from
foreign wars and entanglements, a position backed by his “Make
America Great Again” supporters, many of whom are seeking
explanations about what the president has in mind for Venezuela.
“Wake up MAGA,” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has
bucked much of his party’s lockstep agreement with Trump, posted on
X after the operation. “VENEZUELA is not about drugs; it’s about OIL
and REGIME CHANGE. This is not what we voted for.”
Sen. Rand Paul, also a Kentucky Republican, who often criticizes
military interventions, said “time will tell if regime change in
Venezuela is successful without significant monetary or human cost.”
“Easy enough to argue such policy when the action is short, swift
and effective but glaringly less so when that unitary power drains
of us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, such as occurred
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam,” he wrote on social media.
In addition to the Venezuela operation, Trump is preparing to take
the helm of an as-yet unformed Board of Peace to run postwar Gaza,
involving the United States in yet another Mideast engagement for
possibly decades to come.
And yet, as both the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences ultimately
proved, no amount of planning guarantees success.
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