On with Kara Swisher - Venezuela after Maduro: Can Trump Control Caracas From Afar?

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

The arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday sent shockwaves across the globe. And although the targeted military operation was a success, the repercussions of ousting the authoritarian leader will be long-lasting and hard to predict.  To make sense of the new world order ushered in by President Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine,” we convened a panel of experts: an oil industry specialist, a national security journalist, and an historian of Venezuela. Luisa Palacios is the managing director of energy transition finance at the Center on Global Energy Policy and the former chairwoman of the Citgo Petroleum Corporation. David Sanger is the White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times. He’s played central roles on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, and he’s the author of four books, including his latest, “New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion and America’s Struggle to Defend the West.” Alejandro Velasco is a historian, a professor at New York University, the former executive editor of the NACLA Report on the Americas, and the author of “Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela.” Together, they unpack the Trump administration’s competing rationales for deposing Maduro; the feasibility of controlling Venezuela without American boots on the ground; the effect of “regime change” without actually changing the regime on the people of Venezuela; and the global implications for America’s credibility. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, everyone from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. In the wake of the Trump administration's military operation in Venezuela and the arrest of its authoritarian leader, Nicolas Maduro, the world is trying to make sense of this new reality. It raises questions like, who's going to rule Caracas? Is the U.S. on the cusp of entering another forever war? And is this the opening salvo in a new era of gunboat diplomacy throughout the Western Hemisphere? I myself am confused, and I'm a pretty good newsreader.

So to answer these questions that I have, and many do, we brought together a panel of true experts, an oil industry specialist, a national security journalist, and a historian of Venezuela. Luisa Palacios is the managing director of energy transition finance at the Center on Global Energy Policy and the former chairwoman of the Citgo Petroleum Corporation. David Sanger is the White House and National Security correspondent for the New York Times. He's played central roles on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, and he's the author of four books, including his latest, New Cold Wars, China's rise, Russia's invasion, and America's struggle to save the West. Alejandro Velasco is a historian, a professor at New York University, the former executive editor of NACLA report on the Americas and the author of Barrio Rising, Urban Popular Politics, and the Making of Modern Venezuela. This conversation is smart and substantive, and a little hard as it should be because it's very complex, so stick around. At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health,

from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup that provides a clear picture of your health today, and may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease and cancer. The healthier you means more moments to cherish. Take control of your well-being and book an assessment today. Medcan. Live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started.

It is all. Louisa, David, and Alejandro, thanks for coming on on. Thank you, Kara for having us. Thanks, much. Great to be with you. We're back with you, Kara. Great. Okay.

First, we're recording this on Tuesday after the world's had a few days to digest what happened in Venezuela over the weekend. Let's start by getting each of you to give us your top-line analysis of what we're seeing in Caracas. David, you go first, then Louisa, then Alejandro. Well, first, I think we've seen the real assertion in the real world. of the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. For those of you who skipped that day in 11th grade,

the Monroe Doctrine, of course, established a right for the United States to stop colonization in the Western Hemisphere. Teddy Roosevelt updated it to say that the United States could intervene to control the region. And Trump has done his own corollary, which came out in a national security strategy in November to basically argue that not only can the U.S. Act

to keep other powers out of the region, he was thinking China, whereas Monroe had been worried about Portugal and Spain, but also that it can intervene into the inner workings of other countries to defend its national interests without defining what those were. Now, we've heard four different explanations

for what he was doing in Venezuela. The first was retaliating for dumping gang members into the country. The second was stopping the drug trade. That was a little bit dubious. The third argument was briefly, this is about oil, but every time you raise this topic with the president, he would change the topic until after Maduro was gone. And the fourth argument that you heard was reestablishing American primacy in the region.

And now what you have heard in the days since Maduro was seized, in what Rubio, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, calls a law enforcement action, is a discussion that this may not be the end, that the U.S. could assert the same rights about Colombia, even about Greenland, a topic that came up a year ago when I asked the president before he was inaugurated at a press conference whether he was willing to use military force to take Greenland or the Panama Canal. We weren't discussing Venezuela at that time.

And the question now is, has Donald Trump returned the United States to a sort of 1890s use of force gunboat diplomacy, but also restored a sense of spheres of influence? Which would be splitting up the world? What message, yeah, what message would Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin take from this set of actions? Right. Louisa and then Alejandro. There is, at least for the history of Venezuela, there will be a before and after. after these events. I would agree with David that this also redefines U.S. Latin America relations in a way that, as he explained, establishes what does the Monroe Doctrine mean nowadays in Trump world. Right. He's calling it the Don Roe doctrine for some reason. But go ahead.

Exactly. I do think that this matters a lot for how specifically China defines its economic interest in Latin. America. To me, this also feels like a increase in the risk perception of any future investments of China. So there is an demonstrative impact of whatever is happening in Venezuela that will have repercussions in the region, not only from China's perspective, but also from the other countries in the region. That said, for Venezuela, it has significant implications of which we don't know yet because it is too soon to tell how this is going to evolve. It matters a lot for the history of U.S. Latin America relations,

which have been defined by the Chavismo and then the Madurismo. There was also a before and after. And so what remains to be seen is what is that next chapter going to look like. And it is a chapter that has been very really dominated by the oil relations. I would agree with David. In this framework of the reasons, the rationale behind the events, oil seemed to feature much more in the post events than it has had the feature before. However, what I would say is that to me, given that the U.S. is the most important producer of oil in the planet, this is not about ceasing all resources, but it is about who controls natural resources in general and how they're used. I think given that in my lifetime we have seen economic destruction, that really has not been seen in countries that have not undergone a civil war.

And so it is quite telling the history specifically of Venezuela, but there are specific issues related to the Venezuela case in particular, given the historical destruction that took place. the 25% of the population lives had to flee the country. Right. So there are things related to both domestic issues in Venezuela and the U.S. linked to the immigration that has taken place and the instability that that created not only in Venezuela, but that it was exported to the rest of the region. Rest of the region. Alejandro?

Yeah, first of all, thanks so much for having me on. I appreciate it. So for me, there are three sort of top line takeaways of the last three days. The first one is beyond everything that we've seen that seems to be unprecedented and extraordinary over the last few days. Or, as David was saying, a kind of return to 19th century, you know, policies. Yeah. There's also a strange kind of way in which the very idea of regime change is being refashioned, right? Because as dramatic and explosive, quite literally, as the events were on Saturday morning, nothing much has changed, right?

The regime remains pretty much intact. And Desi Rodriguez, the vice president is now president. That transition happened really quite seamlessly, very quickly. You know, the defense minister, the National Assembly was just inaugurated. And so, you know, if you speak with people in Venezuela, family and friends there, you know, what they tell you is what happened, right? You know, we had this sort of a specter of intervention and then it happened. and yet nothing much seems to have changed.

And that, of course, has led to tremendous amounts of anxiety, but also fear. Can we express ourselves? Can we not express ourselves? It's been a crackdown, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's amounting. So that's the first thing. We're seeing a kind of regime change operation that doesn't seem to have the changing

of the regime. And so what does that mean for how we think about that interventions going forward? The second component that I think is a huge takeaway here. of course, is where this leads a very already tattered notion of the international world order, right? That was in the wake of World War II, but certainly in the wake of the Cold War, really rested on bedrock principles, at least putatively, of sovereignty, right? There was no pretense of doing away with sovereignty in this moment. And as David and Lisa have said, that really seems to put us in a place in geopolitics where it's really,

mostly about, in fact, maybe only about who can exert the most degree of power at anywhere at any time. That seems to be the kind of geopolitical landscape that we have post, you know, post Saturday. It's almost just to

leap on what Alejandro said here, it's almost a virtual occupation, right? You can't think of this as like the American occupation in Japan where we had American troops on the ground or even Iraq, right? Where we were trying to do so. What we're trying to do is coerce an existing dictatorial government to do our bidding

by virtue of the fact that we're keeping an armada just offshore with the threat that the president's made a few times now that we could come in and what he calls a second wave. But he doesn't want to have anybody on the ground because that would look like a forever war to his MAGA base. I cannot recall a case where we have tried essentially to do an occupation from a far. From afar, a virtual one. That's an excellent point. Can you finish up there, Alejandro? Certainly what David is saying, I completely agree with.

But that also means that there's risk in this new kind of regime change, right, for the Trump administration. It's not just like they have carte blanche. If they're not actually willing to commit troops on the ground to affect the full regime change, The threat has to be enough. The threat has to be enacted. But the third point that I was going to make quickly is this also creates a kind of new rift in what is already a deeply polarized Venezuelan society in Venezuela and outside Venezuela. Right.

So you see expressions of support, of celebration, not just about the removal of Maduro, but the intervention of the United States among, you know, Venezuelans abroad. And there's a question among even opponents in Venezuela in Venezuela, in Venezuela. Wait a minute. If you're celebrating foreign intervention in that way, what is your sense of nationalism and where does that leave you in terms of your concern for us and for the country, right? So all of that is very much, you know, top line for me. So, David, you've called the American Operation America as a naked grab for oil, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio may have persuaded Trump by focusing on drugs and immigration. Trump may have wanted to distract from Epstein. There's all kinds of different things. Maduro also reportedly angered the administration by dancing on Venezuela and television. Let's play a bit of his anti-war song he danced you just days ago. All right, no crazy war. So based on your reporting, what are the real reasons for sending the military, from your perspective? It's a really great question. I mean, I think that

because there was an active indictment against him, they had an easy pretense for the first part of the operation. And as usual, it's the, that showy part of the operation that everybody is sort of focused on. And it was done with remarkable efficiency. I think the president and Secretary Hankseth are probably right in saying no other country could have pulled that off in two and a half hours the way they did. What that doesn't explain and what the indictment doesn't explain is how you then make a claim to run the country, be in charge, and have access at your own definition to the oil. Right. If you're just trying to arrest a guy. Right. And that's where the pretense or the legitimate goal of arresting him, similar to the Noriega event in Panama, 1989, runs into the reality of the new Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and the seizure of the land. And that's the part the administration hasn't even made a particular effort to defend. One last quick point here. If they had wanted to have the pretense of restoring democracy, then they would have said, you know, that Edmando Gonzalez, the winner of the 20, 24,

election is now restored as president because the United States recognized him as a legitimate winner of the election in 2024. Right. But they made no effort to even try to go do that. To put him there. We'll get to who's running the place in a minute. But Louisa, as you've noted, one of Trump's mainstated rationale is his claim that Venezuela, quote, stole American oil.

Briefly walk us through the U.S.'s involvement in the Venezuel oil industry, both before and after it was nationalized in 1976. I don't know that he's referring to the 1976 nationalization of oil. I think he's referring more to the 1990s, exploitation of assets. I think that's where we're really talking about. And, yes, there were significant investments that took place in Venezuela exactly the same companies that were nationalized in the 1970s. They've come back in the 1990s and invested, yes, billions of dollars.

The U.S. companies were not the only ones. There were major European countries, regional Latin American companies, and they were all expropriated. There are about the 60 international arbitration claims against Venezuela and the Venezuelan regime. But it doesn't end there. I mean, those are the 60 that we know about. But at the same time, there have been 5,000 companies from also private companies in Venezuela by Venezuelans that have been nationalized, expropriated, or confiscated.

So those claims have to do, or that statement in my view, is the interpretation is that this is about the unpaid claims. of all those expropriations that took place in the 1990s. But some of those have been written down by those companies, too. The assets have been already accounted for. Some of them, some of the 60 have been written down. Some of them have been negotiated. Some of them have been paid. You still have about $20 billion in unpaid expropriated claims.

But he goes further than that, right? Go ahead. You know, what he's saying is not, obviously, who knows what he means at the end of the day. But what he's saying is not just about assets and companies. That is our oil. It goes back to, you know, the kind of dark humor jokes of like, you know, how did you, how did American oil end up underneath the sand of Iraq or something like that, right? It's much, it goes beyond that and it speaks to what David was describing before,

which is much more about a sense of this is our hemisphere and, you know, we therefore can do what we want. the energy, stability, and independence, not of the United States, but of the hemisphere means that our resources of the hemisphere fall under our orbit. That's an entirely, I mean, I don't want to still lose sight of the legal claims, Louise is mentioning, but I think this goes beyond that. We'll be back in a minute. Support for the show comes from Quince. People love to say New Year and New Me, and honestly, that sounds like a lot.

No need to start from scratch, I say. Why don't we start with a new wardrobe and said from Quince? Quince has all the staples covered, from soft Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like designer pieces without the markup, to 100% silk tops and skirts for easy dressing up. To perfectly cut denim for everyday wear, their wardrobe essentials are crafted to last season after season. And like everything from Quince,

each piece is made with premium materials in ethical trusted factories. then priced far below what other luxury brands charge. I've gotten lots of items from Quince myself, and I'm just bringing out my down cape, which I wear for a very short time as it starts to get cold because it's really warm, it's cozy, and it looks really good. It looks like I'm wearing a very fashionable blanket. I'm excited to be wearing it in the coming days

as the weather gets colder and colder. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com slash Kara for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash Kara to get free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com slash Kara.

Support for On with Kara Swisher comes from Grooons. If you're looking for a health goal that you can actually stick to, you might want to check out Grooons. Grooons is a simple daily habit that deliver real benefits with minimal effort. Their convenient, comprehensive formula packed into a snack pack of gummies a day. This isn't a multivitamin, a greens gummy, or a prebiotic. It's all of those things, and then some, at a fraction of the price. And bonus, it tastes great.

Grooons ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. While generic multivitamins contain only seven to nine vitamins, Croons, have more than 20 vitamins and minerals and 60 ingredients, which include nutrient dense and whole foods. That includes six grams of prebiotic fiber, which is three times the amount of dietary fiber compared to the leading greens powders and more than two cups of broccoli. It's a daily snack pack because you can't fit the amount of nutrients Grooons does into just one gummy. Plus, that makes it a fun tree to look forward to every day.

Kick off the new year right and save up to 52% off with the code Kara at grooms.com. That's code Kara, K-A-R-U-N-S-C-O. Let me ask you also to the history of Chavismo, the left-wing anti-imperalist populist movement, started by Hugo Chavez and the country's dissent into this. Why don't you start, Alhundred, just very briefly, explain what Chavismo is? So Chavismo was a political project, or who knows where it is now, political project that started, whose namesake was Hugo Chavez, who was a military officer in Venezuela. who staged the unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992

at a moment when Venezuela's economy was not in good shape when its institutions were deemed as very corrupt by many. Then he spent a couple of years in jail. He was pardoned, it was released, and then mounted a successful electoral campaign basically on the premise of we're going to refound the country along more participatory lines. We're going to have folks who had not been included

in the previous political systems or felt like they had not been included in the political system, now we're going to participate. Now, you mentioned, of course, that I think what we think of Chavismo today as anti-imperialist socialist is, in fact, the case. But it's an evolution into that process. When Chavez first came into office, his primary premises were participatory democracy, creating a more participatory state,

and rebuilding the oil economy that had been privatized or reprivatized, as Lisa said in the 1990s. It was only later that we began to see as revenues began to come in after 2003, 2004, the invasion of Iraq, the tremendous growth of China and the sort of sucking of world resources by China, that Chavez's tuned, switched much more vocally to socialism, and especially after an attempted coup against Chavez in 2002 with U.S. support, anti-U.S. anti-imperialism, right? And then that became the major sort of hallmark of Chalizan.

Chavez died, still very popular, he just won massively elections in 2012, he was sick of cancer at the time. He dies in 2013. He appoints Nicolas Maduro who wins snap elections with a tiny razor-thin margin. That also coincided with the collapse of oil prices in 2014. And that was a moment when what remained of Chavismo in terms of distribution of resources to the poor, you know, some semblance of participatory politics, that begins to collapse, and the reality is that that was all set up by the availability of oil. Without oil, the only thing that Maduro really had to go on was concentration of power through repression alone. So this regime became absolutely repressive only on the basis of wanting to stay in power. And of course, it created

this very tense situation where more repression meant we don't want to leave power. Right. So But Trump, David, said that U.S. will run Venezuela. Marco Rubio walked that back and said the U.S. will be running policy, and it'll use leverage to enforce its will. And then Trump doubled down and said the country had to be, quote, nurse back to health and that he was in charge. Both agree that Delci Rodriguez, Maduro's former vice president, and now the interim president should run Venezuela as an American client state, essentially. What's happening here and what vision will win out, I guess? How should we understand the strategy if the goal is to entrench the Maduro regime, just without Maduro?

So I think hard to read between the two of them because one thing we've learned about Secretary of State Rubio is that he tries very hard

not to show any daylight between himself and the president and that's been his big struggle because he obviously came to office with some quite different views.

He appears to a one out in this case. He was the one pressing for acting against Maduro and so forth. But I think he was trying to give this less of an imperialistic tinge. And the president always wanting to go sort of demonstrate his own power and American power, you know, feels like he's got to get out

and say, we're in charge, which is exactly what he said on Air Force One coming back from Florida. Yeah. So the question is, can you be in charge without being on the ground? And for now, they're going to try that experiment, clearly, because we're not on the ground, other than we think a relatively small CIA presence, but we don't have big American troops on the ground. But if things get out of control, if acting president Rodriguez cannot control these events, if Americans are denied access to the oil fields, if they have access to the oil fields, but somebody has to secure those fields and the Americans, it's hard for me to imagine how you assert control without being on the ground in some form.

Right, right, you'll be forced. And that's the mystery of the next few months, maybe few years. For what's going to happen. So go ahead, Louisa. No, I think it's too soon to say what is going to happen next to me. We started a transition, and this is the first inning. We just, and this is going to be a very long game. I just don't know.

We don't know yet where we're going. That said, the most important producer in Venezuela, the most important non-state-owned producer in Venezuela is Chevron. Chevron produces 25% of Venezuela's oil production. So the U.S. is present in the ground. And there are foreign companies like Repso, E&I, and Shell that are present on the ground. So it's not like everyone left. Some people decided to stay and some of the companies that remain there.

I think this is about also Venezuela is exporting about 800 to 900,000 dollars per day, most of which go to China through black market routes in a highly discounted way. robbing the Venezuelan people of access to the old rents. And so I do think that there is a scenario, whether, and I think David is completely correcting this, this is to me what we need to see next, is how that relationship between the U.S. government and interim president Rodriguez pans out.

And therefore, what happens to sanctions and what happens to the old blockade? At this moment, Venezuela's production is about to decline. It's all exports have declined by 50% because the U.S. has a blockade right now in Venezuelan coast. And so I do think that the U.S. has a lot of leverage. A lot of leverage here because it is going to become significantly worse for everyone. And so I do think that if they start to play ball in the sense that there is some

kind of a working relationship established there, there are some things that could bring alleviation for Venezuela. Well, now, Trump has said that Venezuela's oil infrastructure can be rebuilt in 18 months or less, but a lot of industry insiders that have spoken up to different reporters are skeptical that oil CEOs will want to risk investing in Venezuela, especially in oil prices are low, and America isn't committing those troops on the ground. No, totally a great care. I mean, Venezuela used to produce 3.5 million bears per day.

day, it is producing one million bars per day. So you have seen a collapse of the oil industry, but it still produces one million bars per day. If you were to redirect those oil exports from illicit routes to, for example, the U.S. Gulf Coast, you can triple foreign currency revenues just by doing that. You don't really need to, while you wait for an increase in oil production. I would agree that it's going to take a while. It's going to take a lot of investments in order it will rebuild the oil industry. So Alejandro, you said that Deli Rodriguez may have been back channeling with Trump administration in order to sell out Maduro in exchange for its backing.

That could be one reason why the Trump administration has sidelined Nobel Prize winner Maria Karina Machado, although, according to one report, it's because she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, even though she dedicated it to him and recently said again that he deserved it. But explain why you think Rodriguez may have sacrificed Maduro to save herself, and where are the power centers and how will she navigate them in order to make it? maintain this position? What we're saying today in terms of the oil deals that the Trump administration seems

to be exacting on this interim government are no different from the reports that Maduro had been giving to the United States if they could stay in power. And so in terms of the reporting before Saturday and the kind of negotiations that were going on behind the scenes, the only sticking point was, are you going to give your yourself up? Are you going to end up in a golden exile, et cetera, et cetera? And so at some point, if you think about the conditions on the ground and what was on the table, the fact that Maduro was the sticking point must have seemed to those in power that we are not willing to go down with this figurative ship, if we can just get rid of him and then do the same thing that we

were offering before. Now, to David's point, absolutely, and Risa as well, it all will depend on whether, you know, Resi Rodriguez and the rest of the power players in Venezuela play ball. But they have a stake in playing ball, right? If there is a kind of, if they're able to thread this line between doing Trump spitting, but at the same time maintaining a kind of sense of sovereignty and independence, there could be significant, you know, short-term and quick improvements in the lives of Venezuela is that then they could reap the benefit of if eventually there were some snap elections, you know, six months, nine months, 12 months down the road.

And they can say, hey, we still have the primary leverage here, and that is that we control the institutions, we control the armed forces, we control the police, we control the paramilitaries, right? Do you want chaos or do you want this continued ramp of upward improvement? Because there are a lot of paramilitary activity. Absolutely. And so, you know, to my mind, yes, of course, the U.S. is the most powerful army in the world. They have all this counter intelligence operations, both covert and conventional. You know, as I was watching the videos, you have to assume that at least like one soldier somewhere might have tried to shoot a little AK-47 against, you know, one of the helicopters that was low-flying. There was none of that. No. So it felt like that. Right. It felt rather cooked. So, David, speaking of that, Trump and Rubio might be able to achieve their goals through Rodriguez, perhaps. Maybe she kicks the Chinese, Iranians, and Russians out, stops sending oil to Cuba, stops cocaine traffickers, and lets in American oil companies. But it's also not hard to imagine total economic collapse and dissented to chaos and violence. What happens then?

I mean, is the American military prepared to occupy a Latin American country? Well, I think one of the things we've learned about President Trump is he does not like the idea of leaving American troops on the ground, right? Though he did mention it. He's like, I have no problem. He's mentioned it. He's willing to use the threat. He said, I'm not scared of it, right? But the fact of the matter is he got a lot of blowback from the MAGA forces when he was doing the Iran attack.

And the Iran attack was the most standoff attack you could imagine. We were aiming at three facilities, hit them from afar, buried the uranium, went home, had dinner. Right. Right. Doing this to a country, though, where you've decapitated it and you have a long-term project of the kind we've been discussing here, one that is not going to be a matter of months, but a matter of years by every description I've heard, that's a different thing. thing, because when that's going out of your control, the temptation is to say, well, the only way we can control this is by sending in troops or advisors or something like that. And, you know, that's how we got down the long, slippery road to Vietnam, right? We had a government that we

thought was friendly in place, but they needed advice, and then they needed military help, and then we needed to launch our own operations. Now, I'm not saying that this is going to turn into the next Vietnam, but there is a slippery slope risk that did not exist when you're taking out nuclear sites. When you're doing Iran, right, that you're not being specific. So, Louisa, what extent are American oil companies willing to make these long-term advances? I referenced it before in a risky political environment like this that includes the possibility of violence. I would assume they would want guarantees to move forward. Okay, that's an excellent question, because it is not only about assurances of security.

It is about rule of law. It is about sanctity of contracts. It is about governance. It is about having visibility. These are 10-year, 20-year types of investments. You don't make investments just because in the next six months, it seems that it's going to be stable. You actually need to have visibility all throughout the project.

And these are really very large capital investments that need to be made. You also need assurances that your people are going to be safe. You need assurances that the corruption that has been linked to this industry is going to be in check. There's American industries, a lot of these industries or these companies are publicly listed. They have really, really significant commitments on many of these practices. And so simply they need more than just assurances. And it's going to take a while. And also it depends on markets.

It depends on the price of oil and the visibility about all demand and all of these kinds of things. And by the way, they do have other places to invest. There are many opportunities, even in the region. Venezuela is not even the first producer, old producer in Latin America. It is number five. Yeah, Alejandro. It's just baffling, right, to think about what would be required not only to jumpstart or re-jumpstart the oil industry, but as Lisa was saying, all the assurances in the rule of law

in safety personnel. Now, to me it seems, and I'd love to hear, Luis's thoughts on this, that the key player, of course, is the military. And the military is so entrenched in every sector of Venezuela's economy, certainly the oil industry, that the tradeoff here for them is, are we willing to not take a cut of the entire patrimonial state that we've had before? Are we willing to take a cut from the corruption as long as we're able to stay in power? Again, the only leverage, it seems to me, that the Venezuelan authorities have now is that they can keep control. If they cannot do that, then what is the point of, you know, even having

this pretense of staying in regime? Right. So one of the things that's lost here to me in this whole thing is the people of Venezuela. There's no timeline for elections and Trump seems uninterested in restoring democracy. He never even mentioned it. It's usually they do, even if it's a pretense. Just because it sounds good. Sounds good. And you never believe it. They did it in Iraq. They did in Iran. They've done it in Afghanistan. Afghanistan. Rodriguez launched a crackdown under a state of emergency announced Monday, arresting journalists and repressing any celebrations over Maduro's arrest. She's done a little tough guy stuff. David, first, your assessment of how Venezuelans living inside the country would react to all these scenarios, a prolonged Rodriguez presidency and American occupation, and then, you know, free elections, which would bring back the candidate who did win the election. Well, you have two real Venezuela experts. And also Machado. is sort of the wild card.

You have two real Venezuela experts here, so I will not pretend to be expert on its inner workings. But there are a lot of people in Venezuela who are perfectly happy to see the back of Maduro, and I'm sure we're delighted to see him walking in cuffs into the hearing and the arraignment. But those same people may also react poorly just a few months from now if they believe that in fact this was all done in order to steal what they consider to be the one great resource of the country. You know, in the George H.W. Bush presidency

and the George W. Bush presidency both were accused of going to war in the Middle East in order to get oil. And neither of them actually got any oil. Right. Right. In this particular case, the president has been the one who was actually laid that out as an objective himself. And it seems rather remarkable. But to him, it's unremarkable because what's American power for?

It's for our commercial benefit. Right, which has been a theme throughout. Go ahead, Louisa, and Alejandro. Yeah, no, I appreciate David's comments. I think it would be very important for benefits. as in the days and weeks to come, that they feel that they can return to the country, that they feel that they're these are expatriates, people of the left, yes, I mean, 25% of the population. So there are people that are, that be in exile that don't even, for one or two months,

it's, it's a, this is their influx kind of population. But I would say that the lives of the day to day people, that they can go out to the streets, that they can find food, that they can feel that they don't live in a police state. Venezuela, since last year's elections, the repressive apparatus of the state has gone into steroids. And so it is extremely relevant for both Venezuelans at home and Venezuelans abroad to believe that there are steps taken to dismantle the police apparatus of the state and that we are heading towards, as I said, that this is a transition and we're heading towards a different kind of political system. I do think that Venezuelans will be, are going to give the benefit of the doubt about announcing elections today. But that has a window

of opportunity that is not, in my view, not very large. Yeah, Alejandro. Yeah, I wonder about how large that window of opportunity is. And I do think, just from the expressions of, you know, support or opposition over the last few days to the events over the weekend, as I was mentioning before, how deep this new fissure might be between Venezuelans abroad, some Venezuelans abroad, I should say. I mean, as I think Lisa was pointing to, there's a huge variation of expat Venezuelan. Yes, some, you know, exiled, some have to lead by force. Some who have left more recently are darker skin, poorer, and they don't really align very much with the lighter skin, wealthier, more professional, you know, Venezuelans who left,

you know, five, 10, 15, 20 years ago, right? And so there is that to think about. And I do wonder to what extent Riligas and Trump in particular, because of their primarily material interest, are thinking, well, that window could be extended. And in fact, it may be to our interest to extend that window, we can show some kind of economic recovery to the point that Risa was making about being able to better access food, to better access services, et cetera, et cetera. If there's a sense of material improvement, I do wonder that it may not backfire on Midakurina Machado and others that they haven't, for instance, condemned or even slightly said much

about, you know, a U.S. intervention in Venezuela. We'll be back in a minute. So I want to wrap up talking about some of the larger implications of the new reality. Trump coined this gunboat diplomacy as the Donnell Doctrine, as I mentioned. How is that going to affect the U.S. ability to constrain China and the Pacific, specifically in Taiwan? This has implications all over the world, presumably, of sort of, carving up the world, which does seem like a history lesson I had in 11th grade. First, it's true for all second-term presidents, but particularly presidents that lose control

of one or both houses, that they turn to foreign policy, right? It's the place where they can set a legacy, and it's a place where they feel like they have the least constraints. And if we've learned anything about Donald Trump, it's he doesn't like constraints, right? And now has none. And for now has none. But if he gets some in Congress, and his domestic agenda gets stalled out, he's going to become the all foreign policy president. And it's happened to others before. The second is, I thought that his very specific warning

to the president of Colombia sounded pretty menacing. For Cuba, it was sort of interesting. His answer was, oh, I don't need to do anything there because after we've cut off their funding from Venezuela, they're toast anyway. So we're just going to let them collapse. lapse on their own. And he may not be wrong on that one. You guys will have to correct me on that. And Greenland? So Greenland, I spent some time there this summer, this past summer.

There's nothing to invade. It is a giant ice cap with a series of population centers, pretty small, along the coast. The president, if he really wanted to take control of Greenland, has a legal, easy way to do it that does not require the use of the Delta forces. He can actually exercise provisions that are in the treaty signed in 1951. We had a series of, I think, 16 or 17 bases there at the height of the Cold War. We abandoned most of them. I went to see some. It's not pretty what happens to buildings in a Greenland winter if they're unoccupied, it would take some money to go get these air bases back and running. But the United States has the right under the treaty to go do that. And one of the astounding questions is,

why haven't we done that? Not during Trump, but earlier. Right. And so there's an easy way out. It's interesting that he would rather inflame the NATO allies by describing all the non-easy ways out. Which is typical, correct? So Trump has threatened Colombia, and Rubio is very clear about using Venezuela to affect regime change in Cuba. They seem keen to remake Latin America in their image. How does that compare to earlier periods of U.S. intervention? What lessons should we be paying attention to, first Louisa, then Alejandro? What I've seen, and this is more from the financial and economics point of view,

is that President Trump has given a lot of benefits to those that he could. considers his allies. And we saw it with a rescue package to Argentina that really made a difference for President Milley. I have to say that he also used the tariffs, you know, indistinctively. So it was not clear to me that he was making too much of a difference. But it is clear that there is much more interest now in Latin America and its natural resources. And it's not about oil and gas. To me, we're seeing now a different kind of natural resource come to bear, which is critical minerals and mining. We have seen how China has used this ample reserves and control over critical minerals and refining of mining, which it has a huge monopoly or very big monopoly position

or big position, even against the U.S. And in that sense, it has become a weak point of U.S. productive capabilities. And so I do think that we are seeing Latin America not only a place of U.S. political influence, but also a place of natural resource. opportunities, and that will continue to play out, including how to think about Latin America from an infrastructure and logistical perspective, because we saw it with the Canal of Panama. And so there are things that are now entering into the sphere of national security that were not necessarily there in past presidencies.

Alejandro, briefly? Yeah, I mean, that's such a good point because the other major player here, and I think David referenced them before, is Marco Rubio, specific. specifically having to do with the Western Hemisphere. In fact, he was asked in the Sunday talk show, I was like, what's your interest in Latin America? Well, I've always been interested in the hemisphere. It's my thing.

And now, of course, it's the broader world, the Secretary of State. I think the issue here is that there are these two visions, right? There's one that's primarily material, and it involves everything that Lisa was saying, not just hydrocarbons, but other types of minerals and resources that are drivers of the 21st century. Yeah, Lutnik kept bringing them up. He'd chirpen them.

Exactly. But there's another one that I think is more vestigial, and it's strange that it would be coming from Rubio rather than from Trump, which I do think, and I'm happy to be contradicted, that it has less to do with materials and it has much more to do with ideology. I think that if you read really closely the national security strategy document that they released a few weeks ago, it is primarily an ideological document. It is about remaking the hemisphere in particular, and then the world more broadly. not just in our image, but basically to say that we assert our dominion, our power, our dominance over this part of the world, right? And so.

But you heard Stephen Miller screaming about it. Yeah, no, exactly. And so precisely. And so, you know, I don't think it's not limited to, you know, to material interest. I do think that there's a larger ideological project led by people like Miller, specifically Rubio, that say, hey, we can get rid of Venezuela's government. We can rid of Cuba's government. Any left. this government in the region, that is going to be a clarion call for the rest of the region that the left cannot come to power. Right. One of the things that reminded me of when he was screaming was the man spent too much time on Roman podcasts, history of Rome podcasts. So I'll end with the last, each of you asking a comment of something historian speaking of history, Timothy Snyder wrote, The Act of War is more about regime change in the United States than it was about anything in Venezuela. If it only succeeds as fascism, if Americans allow it to do so. I'd love to hear from each of you, first, David, then Louisa, and

finally Alejandro about what he's saying here. You've sort of referenced as a lot to do with the United States, then Venezuela. David first? Well, this does have a lot to do with the United States and stepping away for a moment from the authoritarian question and just sort of pointing back to what Alejandro was just saying. Focusing on the Western Hemisphere makes sense to that part of the Trump base that worries about whether or not the United States has spread its arms too far. But we've shown that we know how to do adventurism within our own neighborhood here as well. But it's also a narrowing of American interests. I mean, the Monroe doctrine was written in an era when we had a couple of dozen ships and 3,500 American sailors,

Right? That's a fifth of what we put just in the Caribbean just to do this operation, right? America's economic future remains in the Indo-Pacific. And retreating us to this region, important as a region around us, is just mystifying in a world of global power. And doesn't make sense in an era of cyber power, in an era of AI, in an era of space weapons. I mean, things that do not see regional boundary. Right. Then the second question that you're asking is, what does it say about American authoritarianism? Well, it certainly speaks to a president who both at home and abroad has had a much more expansive view of presidential power.

And I think history suggests that once you let that out of the box, it's really hard to stuff back in. but at some point the president's going to run into some limits and you're beginning to see it even within the nervousness in his own party and the split in the MAGA world and also

as Scott Gallo always says biology is undefeated on some level it's like there's a time frame here this is what you're talking about all right Louisa and then Alejandro let me give it a completely

different angle I think global and the multipower competition between the U.S., China, and Russia, instead of elevating everyone towards different kinds of values, has just normalized or has led to a different kind of way to interacting the global economy. And so that's one. The second thing is, to me, as somebody that comes from Latin America, And let's not forget that we're talking about events of events in Venezuela.

One of the most important deceptions or I think in my view is that the left in Latin America was supposed to be about human rights. It was supposed to be about social development. It was supposed to be about many things. And unfortunately, the recent history, and there's no other place that has exemplified. this as Venezuela has shown a completely different view of those original ideals. And so I do think it says a lot about social democracies. And so what kind of political system is stable in Latin America? Why has those experiments of social democracies that were so relevant, even in Venezuela, in the 1960s and 1970s, why did they derive in authoritarian regimes?

Why didn't anything that the Venezuelans ride, election after election after election, why wouldn't sanctions lead to changing in behavior? So there are a lot of things that we, I think, are encountering in terms of the limits of the tools of foreign policy or tools of economic statecraft that used to work in the future. And that tells me that there's something about how what this new world dollar represents and the kinds of political systems that it derives and the kind of economic or state craft kinds of tools that are going to be present in the future.

Great. Alejandro, finish up? Yeah, that's really powerful. Although I think most of the literature from economists and others that suggest that sanctions have never been a tool of political change, maybe one or two exceptions. But I think to Snyder's point that, you know, what this shows more is regime change,

here than it does elsewhere, and that it's really dependent and incumbent upon the United States, public, really, and not just the public, of course, but other public elected officials, how far they're willing to actually go in allowing this new kind of power play by the Trump administration what it means for the United States and the world to go on? It's a moment of, and, you know, the press conference that he gave on Air Force One with Lindsay Graham next to him. Like, it seemed like he was literally groveling in his joy. I'm sorry, that was groveling.

It was grovelling, right? You know, we have, I think, been saying that the Republican Party is now Trump's party. But this really, I think what he's Snyder is pointing to is a moment of how far are you willing to go to sacrifice, not just control over the White House, but really over the U.S. position globally. I mean, is the project of the city on the hill dead finally forever and evermore? That's really what's at stake. Can how could China, if Xiaoping tomorrow goes and takes out in Taiwan, under what position of credibility could the United States say that was wrong? There's none.

And Europe, too, right? I mean, they're kind of wishy-washy positions on what happened over the weekend. It really calls into question the viability of everything that sort of liberal order has been standing on, and it's allowed to go on and continue, then absolutely it will be consolidated and we're in the throes of an entirely new world. All right. On that note, this has been really substantive. I truly appreciate all of your thoughts. Thank you so much. Thanks. Great to see you, Kay. Thank you for having us, Tara. Thanks, everybody. Today's show was produced by Christian Castro Roussel, Michelle Eloy, Megan Bernie, and Kalin Lynch. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer

of podcasts. Special thanks to Catherine Barner. Alia Jackson engineered this episode, and our theme music is by Trackademics. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Caras Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Carous Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.