After Trump’s illegal Venezuela coup, there are two dangers: he is emboldened, but has no clue what comes next | Rajan Menon

DDuring his presidential campaign, Donald Trump pledged to end the “forever wars,” abandon “nation-building” interventions and focus instead on reviving a U.S. economy that he said had been deindustrialized by a flood of imports. Even if Trump’s election victories cannot be attributed to anything, his “America First” narrative certainly struck a chord.

But Trump’s use of force to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, his full support for Israel’s demolition of Gaza, and his bombing of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities show that he is no less willing than his predecessors to resort to military interventions.

Trump already had Maduro in his sights. He offered a $50 million bounty for information leading to his capture, blocked Venezuelan ports to stop sanctioned oil tankers and accused Maduro of being involved in drug trafficking. Still, it’s a safe bet that few outside the administration expected Trump to walk into a country, grab its president, and take him to the United States.

Maduro will be tried for drug trafficking and conspiracy to commit “narcoterrorism,” a vague formulation worrisome enough to justify a decision of questionable necessity and legality. The Trump administration has not provided evidence linking Maduro to drug trafficking, nor has it proven that Venezuela poses a clear and present danger requiring armed attack.

Venezuela has many problems, including drug gangs and authoritarian rule, but they hardly justify what Trump did. If poor governance and repression by foreign leaders justify their removal, Trump has a long list of offenders to choose from, some of whom benefit from U.S. economic and military support.

Trump’s decision cannot be justified by the self-defense provisions of international law. Venezuela has never threatened to attack the United States (it does not have the capability), much less attacked them. It’s the opposite: the United States attacked Venezuela and took measures, such as a naval blockade, usually used in war.

Trump says the U.S. Constitution authorizes his intervention — that as commander in chief, he has a duty to protect U.S. personnel in harm’s way. But Venezuela has not put any U.S. personnel in danger, let alone harmed them. Moreover, Trump was building a case to tighten the screws on Maduro, and the Venezuelan leader would have been foolish to provide him with an argument. casus belli.

Trump’s most prominent accusation against the Venezuelan government is that its drug traffickers have, with Maduro’s complicity, flooded the United States with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, which is also used to relieve severe pain. Even a dose of 2 milligrams can prove fatal.

The illegal use of fentanyl and other opioids in the United States is certainly rampant and deadly. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that deaths related to overdoses of synthetic drugs, primarily fentanyl, increased from 782 in 2000 to 72,776 in 2023. However, they are estimated to have dropped to 47,735 in 2024. Even so, the Trump White House estimates that the costs attributable to “illicit opioids, primarily fentanyl” (including deaths, treatments, crime and loss of work productivity) totaled $2.7 billion in 2023.

The question, however, is what Venezuela has to do with all this. Almost all of the fentanyl smuggled into the United States comes from Mexico, via China, which supplies the precursors, a fact the Trump administration itself concedes. The president nevertheless told an audience of senior military officers in September that the United States was attacking boats off the coast of Venezuela because they “were filled with bags of white powder containing mostly fentanyl.”

And Trump claims that Maduro is directly linked to the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua, adding that he is “threatening invasion” of the United States – but, again, without providing evidence and ignoring the fact that the gang has no army. Furthermore, Maduro’s government has gone on the offensive against this group in recent years. The president also insists that Venezuela “previously stole” oil and land that belonged to the United States and would get those “assets” back. Like his other allegation, this one is devoid of facts.

Venezuela began nationalizing its oil industry in 1976. Hugo Chávez, who served as president from 1999 until his death in 2013, expanded this policy. He ordered in 2007 that PDVSA, the state oil company, take a majority stake in projects in the oil-rich Orinoco region, including those of US oil giants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, both of which shut down operations rather than comply, unlike Chevron, BP, Norway’s Statoil and France’s Total. But there is no reason to claim that the U.S. government or any U.S. oil company literally owned Venezuela’s oil or land and that it was stolen.

The possible consequences of Trump’s intervention are worrying for at least two reasons.

First, we cannot know what will follow Maduro’s removal. Venezuela’s state institutions, including security services, remain intact and an interim president is in place — Delcy Rodríguez, vice president since 2018. But if street protests turn into clashes between the people and the state, the situation could quickly spiral out of control, just as it could if Trump’s interventionist agenda expands and encounters resistance.

Venezuela’s main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, praised the US pressure to oust Maduro well before his capture. Today, she salutes Venezuela’s “hour of freedom”. This could provide Trump with cover to go further, however, as for Machado herself, he says she “doesn’t have the internal support or respect” to govern. He has already announced that the United States will “run” Venezuela temporarily, suggesting he plans to do more than just put Maduro in the dock. The same can be said about the fact that he assumed the right to open Venezuela’s oil sector to investment by American companies.

Second, the Iranian government is facing a nationwide uprising, and Trump has warned that “we are locked, loaded and ready to go” if the regime begins killing protesters. Some have already been killed. It is unclear whether Trump’s Venezuela strategy will prompt him to attempt regime change in Iran. But if he embarks on Iranian upheaval, the consequences – for Iran, the United States and Iran’s neighbors – will be far more dangerous than anything that could happen to Venezuela. And Trump is simply unpredictable.