Panama

WASHINGTON — President 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.

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.

Lee writes for the Associated Press.

The Panama Canal has become the focus of increased US pressure as the Trump administration tries to curb Venezuelan oil shipments. Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo breaks it down.

The reported capture of Venezuelan president evokes previous eras when other leaders were seized by the US.

President Donald Trump’s claim that the United States has captured his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro and his wife amid “large scale” attacks on Venezuela, has stunned the world.

Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez says the government does not know the whereabouts of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

In an audio message broadcast on state television on Saturday, Rodriguez said the government was demanding proof that Maduro and Flores are still alive.

The rapidly escalating developments follow repeated deadly strikes by US forces in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean on what Washington claims are drug-smuggling boats, and an attack on a docking area for alleged Venezuelan drug boats.

The reported capture of Maduro evokes previous eras when other leaders, such as Panama’s former military leader Manuel Noriega and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, were seized by the US.

Manuel Noriega

In another direct intervention into Latin America, the US invaded Panama in 1989 to depose military and de facto leader Manuel Noriega, citing the protection of US citizens in Panama, undemocratic practices, corruption and the illegal drug trade.

Before attacking Panama, the US indicted Noriega for drug smuggling in Miami in 1988, just as it has targeted Maduro.

Noriega forced Nicolas Ardito Barletta to resign in 1985, cancelled the elections in 1989 and backed anti-US sentiment in the country, before the operation took place.

The US foray into Panama was at the time the largest US combat operation since the Vietnam War. The US government trotted out various justifications for the operation, such as improving the lot of the Panamanians by hauling Noriega off to the US to face drug-trafficking charges.

When the general began to show signs of being less obliging to US regional designs, however, he was rendered persona non grata by Washington.

He was tried on the Miami indictment after being flown to the US and was imprisoned there until 2010, when he was extradited to France to face another trial. France then sent him back to Panama a year later.

Noriega died in prison in Panama in 2017, where he was serving a sentence for his crimes.

Saddam Hussein

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was captured by US forces on December 13, 2003, nine months after the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq started based on false intelligence of Baghdad possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Like Noriega, Saddam had for years been a key Washington ally, in his case, during the years of the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s that killed one million people.

The US also claimed in the build-up to the 2003 war, without basis, that Saddam supported armed groups like al-Qaeda.

However, no WMDs were ever found in the country.

Saddam was found hiding in a hole near his hometown of Tikrit.

He stood trial in an Iraqi court and received the death penalty, leading to his execution by hanging for crimes against humanity on December 30, 2006.

Juan Orlando Hernandez

The case of Honduras’s Hernandez demonstrates what some observers suggest is a hypocritical approach by the US.

Hernandez was captured in his home in Tegucigalpa in an operation by the US agents and Honduran forces in February 2022 – only days after he left his position as president of his country.

In April 2022, he was extradited to the US over his alleged involvement in corruption and the illegal drug trade, and in June of the same year, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

However, Hernandez was pardoned by US President Donald Trump on December 1, 2025.

Days later, Honduras’s top prosecutor issued an international arrest warrant for Hernandez, intensifying legal and political turmoil just days after the ex-leader walked free from a United States prison.