In the early morning hours of January 3rd, 2026, the United States attacked Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro. What led to this? And what does it mean for us?
What exactly happened in Venezuela?
Around 2AM local time on January 3rd, the US airstriked against Venezuela. The main target was Venezuela’s capital Caracas and surrounding areas: Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira. During this operation, US forces captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and took them to the US, where they were charged with drug trafficking. At the same time, US President Donald Trump announced that the US would “govern Venezuela until a safe transfer of power is possible.”
The official pretext for Trump’s invasion was the alleged involvement of Maduro and his wife in drug smuggling from Venezuela to the US. Drugs do indeed flow from Latin America to the US, where they cause significant problems. Over 100 000 Americans die from overdoses each year. Still, although being part of this drug route, Venezuela is more of a transit country. Neighboring Colombia is a much larger source of drugs.
This isn’t the first time Trump has used drug-smuggling claims to justify his controversial (and costly) projects. He previously used the same argument to defend building the US-Mexico border wall and his mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. The drug narrative is his way to rebrand geopolitical issues as domestic issues for his “America First” voters. And it is no different in the case of Venezuela.
A more realistic reason is Venezuela’s oil reserves – the largest in the world. Trump had been pressuring Venezuela since his first term, but during his second term, he escalated. In March 2025, he raised tariffs on countries importing Venezuelan oil. Since September 2025, the US has been attacking Venezuelan ships that were allegedly smuggling drugs. For the same reason, the US have deployed a large fleet to the Caribbean, which was then used in the invasion.
What´s the deal with Venezuela?
After World War I, huge oil reserves discovery in Venezuela, led to an economic boom. Until the 1970s, Venezuela was the second largest oil producer in the world (after the US).
At that time, Venezuela was ruled by dictator Juan Vicente Gómez (1908 – 1935). Although he managed to attract foreign investors (like Shell) with favorable business conditions (for them – not so much for Venezuela) and bring money for the modernisation of the country and building infrastructure, he was also very repressive (which attracted the investors, because a tough political regime = a stable regime). In the end, Venezuela earned only a fraction of what foreign companies earned from its oil. And most of this fraction ended up in the hands of a few – leaving most people poor. Venezuela’s economy also became too dependent on oil, which later backfired.
Although Gómeze’s democratic successor, Rómulo Betancourt increased taxes on oil production to bring more profit for Venezuela, the dependence on oil remained. In 1973 Venezuela changed this dependence on profit. Together with other OPEC countries they deliberately fabricated so called “Oil crisis” by reducing oil production. This lead to higher oil prices and therefore bigger profit for themselves (supply determines demand)
What is OPEC?
OPEC = Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was founded in 1960 by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Its goal was to control oil prices and prevent Western companies from exploiting oil-rich countries. Today, OPEC has 13 members and decides how much oil is sold – and thus how much we pay for gasoline.
In 1975, president Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974-1979, 1989-1993) nationalized the Venezuelan oil industry by creating PDVSA (Venezuela’s state oil company). This brought in more money,but also led to reckless spending, debt, and corruption. When oil prices crashed in the 1980s, Pérez implemented money-saving measures: cutting social spending, privatizing state companies, and raising prices. This led to the “Caracazo” protests, which Pérez brutally suppressed (killing hundreds). It backfired politically and helped his opponent, the charismatic Hugo Chávez (1999–2013), who promised to fix social inequality, rise to power.
Chávez indeed reduced extreme poverty by introducing social programs like free healthcare, food subsidies, or low-income housing. But he also weakened democracy by centralizing power, changing the constitution to rule indefinitely, silencing opposition media… Like his predecessors, he relied on oil revenues – so when prices collapsed, Venezuela had nothing else to fall back on. But instead of adjusting spending in these times (like his predecessors), Chávez just printed more money. This seemingly covered up the problem and allowed him to continue spending on his populist projects. But it gradually plunged Venezuela into hyperinflation…
After Chávez died, Nicolás Maduro came to power in 2013 – mainly due to the residual charisma of Chávez, who recommended him as his successor. Maduro himself did not have any of that charisma that would delude naive people to support his populist promises despite the ever-worsening economic situation. Imagine Chávez’s rule, but remove all the policies that had even a slight positive impact. What’s left is an authoritarian government, corruption, human rights violations (the UN reported 5,287 people killed for “resistance to authority” in 2018), rigged elections (2018), shortages of food and medicine, rising unemployment and crime, and millions fleeing the country.
Given this, it’s not surprising that many Venezuelans currently welcome the US intervention. It has rid them of a dictator. But we shouldn’t forget to ask:
Which person rid Venezuela of this dictator?
Because that person is Donald Trump, who is far from a democratic leader himself. Since last year’s election, Trump has made a number of controversial decisions that undermine US democracy, both at home:
- Violating the US Constitution by ending the birthright citizenship which guarantees an automatic American citizenship to anyone born in the US
- Ending diversity programs, which were helping people disadvantaged by their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, or age to get treated fairly
- Cancelling measures protecting the rights of LGBT+ people
- Organizing mass deportations of undocumented immigrants in expedited processes
- Building an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” – humanitarian organizations reported inhumane and unsanitary conditions, and the center was eventually closed.
and abroad:
- Withdrawing from the World Health Organisation
- Making claims to Greenland
- Humiliating Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, while being very accommodating to Russia, the aggressor in the conflict.
- Not only violating the obligation to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu (suspected of war crimes) if he enters US territory – as required by the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant – but also sanctioning ICC judges for issuing the warrant.
- Repeatedly praising authoritarian leaders like Kim Jong-un, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Putin…
Moreover, Trump is a convicted felon for falsifying business records (making him the first convicted president in US history), and his name appears in the Epstein files.
Does Trump have the (legal) right to do this?
The short answer is: no.
According to the United Nations Charter, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.“
In plain English: No UN member country can threaten or attack another country’s borders or independence.
The US might try to find a loophole, like claiming Maduro’s regime poses an “imminent threat” through “narco-terrorism.” But international law requires the threat to be real and immediate (like an actual attack on the US or its allies). There’s no evidence of that. And so far, Trump isn’t even trying to justify the invasion legally.
Why should we be concerned?
Because this isn’t just about Venezuela, the US is the world’s most powerful country on which we are all dependent in some way (either economically, technologically, or politically).
Because the world already experienced similar US interventions that have not brought anything good, and left countries destabilized, with doors wide opened for the rise of undemocratic regimes:
- in Guatemala a CIA-backed coup in 1954 led to decades of civil war and genocide
- in Chile the US helped overthrow Salvador Allende in 1973, leading to Pinochet’s dictatorship
- the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, resulted in chaos, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and the rise of ISIS
- NATO’s 2011 intervention to Libya left the country in a state of civil war and lawlessness
Still, all these interventions had one thing in common: their authors at least tried to justify them. Trump doesn’t even bother – and that should worry us.
Because this sets a dangerous precedent: If the US can invade a sovereign country, what’s stopping other powerful countries from doing the same to maybe even your country – who knows…