abduction

Washington, DC – United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has not been shy about his desire to see the toppling of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Infamously, the former Florida senator even posted a series of photos of slain deposed leaders, including a bloodied former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, as tensions with the US and Maduro’s government spiked in 2019.

But it wasn’t until the second administration of US President Donald Trump that Rubio’s vision of a hardline approach to Latin America and his longtime pressure campaign against leftist leaders was realised – culminating on Saturday with the illegal abduction of longtime Venezuelan leader Maduro.

Experts say Rubio has relied on an ability to capitalise on the overlapping interests of competing actors within the Trump administration to achieve this, even as his broader ideological goals, including the ousting of Cuba’s communist government, will likely remain constrained by the administration’s competing ambitions.

“It took a tremendous amount of political skill on his part to marginalise other voices in the administration and elsewhere who were saying: ‘This is not our conflict. This is not what we stand for. This is going to upset our base,’” Alejandro Velasco, an associate professor of history at New York University, told Al Jazeera.

Those agendas included US President Donald Trump’s preoccupation with opening Venezuela’s nationalised oil industry, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s desire for a more pugilistic military approach abroad, and adviser Stephen Miller’s fixation on migration and mass deportation.

“So that’s the way that Rubio was able to bring into line not quite competing, but really divergent agendas, all of them to focus on Venezuela as a way to advance a particular end,” Velasco said.

A hawk in ‘America First’

A traditionalist hawk who has regularly supported US military intervention in the name of spreading Western democracy and human rights abroad, Rubio initially appeared to be an awkward fit to be Trump’s top diplomat in his second term.

His selection followed a campaign season defined by Trump’s vow to end foreign wars, eschew US-backed regime change, and pursue a wider “America First” pivot.

But the actual shape of Trump’s foreign policy has borne little resemblance to that vision, with the administration adopting a so-called “Peace Through Strength” doctrine that observers say has resulted in more room for military adventurism. That has, to date, seen the Trump administration launch bombing campaigns against Yemen and Iran, strike armed groups in Nigeria and Somalia, and attack alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean.

The approach of Trump 2.0 has more closely aligned with Rubio’s vision of Washington’s role abroad, which has long supported maximum-pressure sanctions campaigns and various forms of US intervention to topple governments.

The US secretary of state’s personal ideology traces to his South Florida roots, where his family settled in the 1960s after leaving Cuba three years before the rise of Fidel Castro, in what Velasco described as an “acerbically anti-communist” political environment.

“I think for him, it started as a question of finally making real the hopes and dreams of Cubans in Florida and elsewhere to return to their homeland under a capitalist government,” Velasco explained.

“It went from that to what this could represent, if we think about it more hemispherically – a bigger shift that would not only increase, but in fact ensure, US hegemony in the region for the 21st century.”

‘Vacuum was his to fill’

After tangling with Trump in the 2016 presidential election, in which the future president deridingly dubbed his opponent “Little Marco” while Rubio decried him as a “con man”, the pair forged a pragmatic working relationship.

Rubio eventually endorsed Trump ahead of the 2016 vote, helping to deliver Florida. In Trump’s first term, Rubio came to be seen as the president’s “shadow secretary” on Latin America, an atypical role that saw the lawmaker influence Trump’s eventual recognition of Juan Guaido as interim president in opposition to Maduro.

Analysts note Rubio’s approach to Venezuela has always been directly aimed at undermining the economic support it provides to Cuba, with the end goal of toppling the island’s 67-year-old Communist government. Following Maduro’s abduction on Saturday, Rubio quickly pivoted to the island nation, telling reporters: “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned”.

Still, in the early months of Trump’s second term, Rubio appeared largely sidelined, with the president instead favouring close friends and family members to spearhead marquee negotiations on ceasefires in Gaza and Ukraine.

During this time, Rubio was slowly amassing a sizeable portfolio. Beyond serving as secretary of state, Rubio became the acting administrator of the Trump-dismantled US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the acting archivist of the US National Archives. Most notably, he became the acting director of National Security, making him the first top US diplomat to also occupy the impactful White House role since Henry Kissinger.

Rubio eventually found himself in a White House power vacuum, according to Adam Isacson, the director of defence oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

“Rubio’s somebody who understands Washington better than the Grenells and Witkoffs of the world,” Isacson told Al Jazeera, referring to Trump’s special envoys Richard Grenell and Steve Witkoff.

“At the same time, other powerful figures inside the White House, like Stephen Miller and [Director of the Office of Management and Budget] Russ Vought haven’t cared as much about foreign policy,” he said, “so the vacuum was his to fill.”

Meanwhile, Rubio showed his ability to be an “ideological weather vane”, pivoting regularly to stay in Trump’s good graces, Isacson said. The National Security Strategy released by the White House in December exemplified that approach.

The document, which is drafted by the National Security adviser with final approval from the president, offered little in tough language towards Russia, despite Rubio’s previous hard lines on the war in Ukraine. It supported the gutting of US foreign aid, despite Rubio’s years-long support for the system. It offered little of the human-rights language with which Rubio had earlier in his career styled himself as a champion.

It did, however, include a “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, which dovetailed with Rubio’s worldview by calling for the restoration of US “preeminence” over the Western Hemisphere.

A pyrrhic victory?

To be sure, the toppling of Maduro has so far proved a partial, if not pyrrhic victory for Rubio, far short of the comprehensive change he has long supported.

In a news conference immediately following Maduro’s abduction, Trump doused support for exiled opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who has hewed close to Rubio’s vision for a future Venezuela. Several news agencies have since reported that US intelligence assessed that installing an opposition figure would lead to widespread chaos in the country.

Rubio has so far been the point man in dealing with Maduro’s former deputy and replacement, Delcy Rodriguez, who has been a staunch supporter of the Hugo Chavez-founded Chavismo movement that Rubio has long railed against. Elections remain a far-off prospect, with Trump emphasising working with the government to open the oil industry to the US.

The secretary of state has not been officially given a role connected to the country, but has earned the less-than-sincere title in some US media of “viceroy of Venezuela”.

On news shows, Rubio has been tasked with walking back Trump’s claim that the US would “run” the South American country, while selling the administration’s oft-contradicted message that the abduction of Maduro was a law enforcement action, not regime change, an act of war, or a bid for the country’s oil.

“I think he’s sort of lying through his teeth,” Lee Schlenker, a research associate at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera.

“Even he doesn’t seem to believe a lot of the sort of rhetorical and discursive pretexts that have been deployed about drugs, about narco-terrorism, about a law enforcement-only operation, about just sort of enforcing a Department of Justice indictment,” he said.

Having to work with Rodriguez, and reportedly, Venezuela’s security czar and Minister of Interior Diosdado Cabello, has been a “bucket of cold water on Rubio’s broader illusions”, Schlenker added, noting that Rubio’s end goal still remains “the end of the Chavista project”.

Rubio is also likely to face further reality checks when it comes to his expected attempts to pitch the overthrow of what he will likely argue is a weakened Cuba.

The island, without the economic resources of Venezuela and no known drug trade, is seen as far less appealing to Trump and many of his allies.

“Compared to Venezuela,” Schlenker said, “there are a lot more reasons why Trump would have less interest in going after Cuba.”

Condemnation comes as Nicolas Maduro appeared in a court in New York and pleaded not guilty to drug charges.

Denmark and Mexico, also threatened by US President Donald Trump, warn that the US violated international law.

Members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), including key US allies, have warned that the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife by US special forces could be a precedent-setting event for international law.

The 15-member bloc met for an emergency meeting on Monday in New York City, where the Venezuelan pair were also due to face drug trafficking charges in a US federal court.

Venezuela’s ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada, condemned the US operation as “an illegitimate armed attack lacking any legal justification”, in remarks echoed by Cuba, Colombia and permanent UNSC members Russia and China.

“[The US] imposes the application of its laws outside its own territory and far from its coasts, where it has no jurisdiction, using assaults and the appropriation of assets,” Cuba’s ambassador, Ernesto Soberon Guzman, said, adding that such measures negatively affected Cuba.

Russia’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said the US cannot “proclaim itself as some kind of a supreme judge, which alone bears the right to invade any country, to label culprits, to hand down and to enforce punishments irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and non-intervention”.

Notable critics at the emergency session included traditional US allies, Mexico and Denmark, both of whom Trump has separately threatened with military action over the past year.

Mexico’s ambassador, Hector Vasconcelos, said that the council had an “obligation to act decisively and without double standards” towards the US, and it was for “sovereign peoples to decide their destinies,” according to a UN readout.

His remarks come just days after Trump told reporters that “something will have to be done about Mexico” and its drug cartels, following Maduro’s abduction.

Denmark, a longstanding US security ally, said that “no state should seek to influence political outcomes in Venezuela through the use of threat of force or through other means inconsistent with international law.”

“The inviolability of borders is not up for negotiation,” Denmark’s ambassador, Christina Markus Lassen, told the council in an oblique reference to Trump’s threat that the US would annex Greenland, a self-governed Danish territory.

France, another permanent member of the UNSC, also criticised the US, marking a shift in tone from French President Emmanuel Macron’s initial remarks that Venezuelans “can only rejoice” following Maduro’s abduction.

“The military operation that has led to the capture of Maduro runs counter to the principle of peaceful dispute resolution and runs counter to the principle of non-use of force,” said the French deputy ambassador, Jay Dharmadhikari.

Representatives from Latvia and the United Kingdom, another permanent UNSC member, focused on the conditions in Venezuela created by Maduro’s government.

Latvia’s ambassador, Sanita Pavļuta-Deslandes, said that Maduro’s conditions in Venezuela posed “a grave threat to the security of the region and the world”, citing mass repression, corruption, organised crime and drug trafficking.

The UK ambassador, James Kariuki, said that “Maduro’s claim to power was fraudulent”.

The US ambassador, Mike Waltz, characterised the abduction of Maduro and his wife as a “surgical law enforcement operation facilitated by the US military against two indicted fugitives of American justice”.

The White House defended its wave of air strikes on Venezuela, and in the waters near it, and Maduro’s abduction as necessary to protect US national security, amid unproven claims that Maduro backed “narcoterrorist” drug cartels.

One in three Americans opposes the Venezuelan leader’s abduction by US forces, a poll shows, while others are unsure.

Americans are evenly split in their support for the US military operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, an opinion poll has found.

Thirty-three percent of Americans support Maduro’s abduction, compared with 34 percent who are against it and 32 percent who are not sure, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Monday.

Supporters of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party are much more likely to support the military operation, with 65 percent in favour, compared with 11 percent of Democrats and 23 percent of independents.

On the question of who should govern Venezuela, Americans lean against Washington taking control of the country, according to the poll.

Forty-three percent oppose Washington governing Venezuela until a new government is established in Caracas, compared with 34 percent in favour and 20 percent who are unsure.

Americans lean against the US stationing troops in Venezuela – 47 percent to 30 percent – according to the poll.

More Americans than not also oppose the Trump administration taking control of Venezuela’s oil fields, with 46 percent against the idea and 30 percent in favour.

On the question of whether the US could become “too involved” in the Latin American country, 72 percent are very or somewhat concerned.

Trump said on Saturday that the US would “run” Venezuela, though officials in his administration have sought to downplay the prospect of Washington occupying the country.

On Sunday, Trump threatened further military action against Venezuela if it “doesn’t behave”.

Maduro, who was abducted in a raid by US special forces over the weekend, on Monday made his first court appearance to face charges related to “narcoterrorism”, drug trafficking and weapons possession.

Maduro pleaded not guilty to all charges, declaring himself the victim of a kidnapping and a “decent man”.

“I am still president of my country,” Maduro told a US federal court in New York through an interpreter.

Maduro, his wife, Cilia Flores, son Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, and three others face the possibility of life in prison if convicted.

On Monday, Maduro’s deputy, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president.

“I come with pain over the kidnapping of two heroes who are being held hostage: President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores,” Rodriguez said during a swearing-in ceremony at Venezuela’s National Assembly.

Delcy Rodriguez, formerly Venezuela’s vice president, has been formally sworn in to lead the South American country following the abduction of Nicolas Maduro in a United States military operation.

On Monday, Rodriguez appeared before Venezuela’s National Assembly to take her oath of office.

Speaking before the legislative body, composed largely of government loyalists, Rodriguez reaffirmed her opposition to the military attack that led to the capture and removal of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

“I come with pain over the kidnapping of two heroes who are being held hostage: President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores,” Rodriguez, 56, told the assembly.

“I swear to work tirelessly to guarantee the peace, spiritual, economic and social tranquillity of our people.”

A former labour lawyer, Rodriguez has been serving as acting president since the early-morning attack that resulted in the abduction. Explosions were reported before dawn on Saturday in the capital, Caracas, as well as at nearby Venezuelan military bases and some civilian areas.

Monday’s swearing-in ceremony was overseen by Rodriguez’s brother – the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez – and Maduro’s son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, who held a copy of the Venezuelan Constitution.

Other members of Maduro’s inner circle, including Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino, were also in attendance.

The ceremony took place as Maduro, her predecessor and former boss, faced an arraignment proceeding in a New York City courthouse.

Federal prosecutors in the US have charged Maduro with four counts related to allegations he leveraged government powers to export thousands of tonnes of cocaine to North America.

The charges include narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, the illegal possession of machine guns and other destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess such guns and devices.

Maduro and his wife have pleaded not guilty to the charges, and their allies, including Rodriguez, have denounced the pair’s abduction as a violation of international law, as well as Venezuelan sovereignty.

In court on Monday, Maduro maintained he remained the rightful leader of Venezuela, saying, “I am still president.”

The administration of US President Donald Trump, however, has signalled that it plans to work with Rodriguez for the time being, though Trump himself warned that her tenure as president could be cut short, should she fail to abide by US demands.

“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told The Atlantic magazine in a Sunday morning interview.

A day earlier, in a televised address announcing the attack, Trump had said his administration plans “to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition”.

On Air Force One on Sunday, as he flew back to Washington, DC, Trump doubled down on that statement.

“Don’t ask me who’s in charge, because I’ll give you an answer that will be very controversial. We’re in charge,” he told reporters.

He added that Rodriguez is “cooperating” and that, while he personally has not spoken to her, “we’re dealing with the people who just got sworn in”.

The Trump administration’s seeming willingness to allow Rodriguez, a former labour lawyer, to remain in charge has raised eyebrows.

Rodriguez, who served as vice president since 2018, is known to be a stalwart “chavista”: an adherent of the left-wing political movement founded by Maduro’s mentor, the late Hugo Chavez. She has held various ministerial roles under Maduro, including leading the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

But Trump’s allies in the Republican Party have argued that keeping Rodriguez in place is simply a practical reality.

“We don’t recognise Delcy Rodriguez as the legitimate ruler of Venezuela. We didn’t recognise Nicolas Maduro as a legitimate ruler,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton told CNN on Sunday.

“It is a fact that she and other indicted and sanctioned officials are in Venezuela. They have control over the military and security services. We have to deal with that fact. That does not make them a legitimate leader.”

While on Air Force One, Trump largely avoided committing to new elections in Venezuela, indicating he would instead focus on “fixing” the country and allowing US oil companies access to its vast petroleum reserves.

One reporter on the aeroplane asked, “How soon can an election take place?”

“Well, I think we’re looking more at getting it fixed, getting it ready first, because it’s a mess. The country is a mess,” Trump replied. “It’s been horribly run. The oil is just flowing at a very low level.”

He later added, “We’re going to run everything. We’re going to run it, fix it. We’ll have elections at the right time. But the main thing you have to fix: It’s a broken country. There’s no money.”

Recent presidential elections in Venezuela have been widely denounced as fraudulent, with Maduro claiming victory in each one.

The contested 2018 election, for example, led to the US briefly recognising opposition leader Juan Guaido as president, instead of Maduro.

Later, Maduro also claimed victory for a third term in office during the 2024 presidential race, despite election regularities.

The official vote tally was not released, and the opposition published documents that appeared to show that Maduro’s rival, Edmundo Gonzalez, had won. Protests erupted on Venezuela’s streets, and the nonprofit Human Rights Watch reported that more than 2,000 protesters were unlawfully detained, with at least 25 dead in apparent extrajudicial killings.

The opposition has largely boycotted legislative elections in Venezuela, denouncing them as rigged in favour of “chavistas”.

Monday’s swearing-in ceremony included the 283 members of the National Assembly elected last May. Few opposition candidates were among them.

Venezuelan officials say US air strikes killed at least 40 people, destroyed parts of the capital and violated their national sovereignty with the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro. Venezuelans are divided between fear of ongoing US intervention and celebrating his removal.

In a move that stunned the world, the United States bombed Venezuela and toppled President Nicolas Maduro amid condemnation and plaudits.

In a news conference on Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, President Donald Trump praised the operation to seize Maduro as one of the “most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history”.

It was the riskiest and most high-profile military operation sanctioned by Washington since the US Navy’s SEAL team killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a safe house in Pakistan’s Abbottabad in 2011.

News of the 63-year-old Maduro being abducted took over the global news cycle.

After months of escalation and threats over Maduro’s alleged involvement in shipping drugs to the US, the Trump administration had increased pressure on Caracas with a military build-up in the Caribbean and a series of deadly missile attacks on alleged drug-running boats that had killed more than 100 people and whose legality has been heavily questioned by the United Nations and legal experts.

The US had also previously offered a $50m reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest.

But while the military was conducting operations in the Caribbean, US intelligence had been gathering information about Maduro, his eating habits, and special forces covertly rehearsed a plan to remove him from power forcibly.

Here’s everything we know about how Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were “captured”.

How was Maduro abducted?

The operation, named “Absolute Resolve”, was carefully rehearsed for months, according to General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who spoke at Trump’s news conference.

Trump also told Fox News that US forces had practised their extraction of Maduro on a replica building.

“They actually built a house which was identical to the one they went into with all the same, all that steel all over the place,” Trump said.

At 11:46pm local time on Friday (03:46 GMT on Saturday), Trump gave the green light.

On Friday night, Caine said, “the weather broke just enough, clearing a path that only the most skilled aviators in the world could move through”, with about 150 aircraft involved in the operation, taking off from 20 different airbases across the Western Hemisphere.

As part of the operation, US forces disabled Venezuela’s air defence systems, with Trump saying the “lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have”, without elaborating.

Several deafening explosions rang out across the capital, with Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, describing it as part of a “massive joint military and law enforcement raid” that lasted less than 30 minutes.

US helicopters then touched down at Maduro’s compound in the capital at 2:01am (06:01 GMT) on Saturday, with the president and his wife then taken into custody.

There has been no readout on whether there was an exchange of fire, in a chaotic scramble, or if they were taken without a struggle.

At 4:29am (08:29 GMT), just two and a half hours later, Maduro was put on board a US aircraft carrier, en route to New York. Trump later posted a photograph of the Venezuelan leader on his Truth Social social media platform, blindfolded, wearing a grey tracksuit.

After departing the USS Iwo Jima, US forces escorted Maduro on a flight, touching down in New York’s Stewart Air National Guard Base at about 4:30pm (21:30 GMT).

How many people were killed in the US strikes on Venezuela?

The US strikes hit Caracas as well as the states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira, according to the Venezuelan government.

To Linda Unamumo, a public worker, the US attacks caused an explosion that was so strong it destroyed the roof of her house.

“Even up until a little while ago, I was still crying … I was crying because I was so scared … I had to leave my house with my daughter, with my family, and go to another house, a neighbour’s house. It was really traumatic. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, really,” she told the AFP news agency.

While official casualty counts have yet to be released, an official told The New York Times newspaper on condition of anonymity that at least 40 people had been killed in the attacks.

According to Trump, a few US members were injured in the operation, but he believed no one was killed.

What’s next for Venezuela?

During his news conference on Saturday, Trump announced that the US would “run” the country until a new leader was chosen.

“We’re going to make sure that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain,” he said. “This is a very dangerous attack. This is an attack that could have gone very, very badly.”

The president did not rule out deploying US troops in the country and said he was “not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to”.

Trump also, somewhat surprisingly, ruled out working with opposition figure and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who had dedicated her prize, which he so wanted to win himself, to the US president.

“She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country,” he said.

The Constitutional Chamber of Venezuela’s Supreme Court ordered Vice President Delcy Rodriguez to serve as acting president following the US’s abduction of Maduro.

The court ruled that Rodriguez will assume “the office of President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in order to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defence of the Nation”.

The court also said it would work to “determine the applicable legal framework to guarantee the continuity of the State, the administration of government, and the defense of sovereignty in the face of the forced absence of the President of the Republic”.

Trump had said earlier on Saturday that the US would not occupy Venezuela, provided Rodriguez “does what we want”.