The first coup of 2026 is in the books. In the early hours of January 3, the U.S. launched a large-scale military operation involving over 150 airplanes, which culminated in the swift capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is now imprisoned in New York. Hours after Maduro’s kidnapping, Donald Trump announced the U.S. would “run the country” for the foreseeable future.

Venezuela posed no threat to the United States, and under international law, there is no plausible justification for Trump’s attack. But it goes beyond that: By forcefully deposing a sitting president, the U.S. has eroded any pretense that the already-battered rules-based international order exists. While many of Trump’s critics in government and policy circles bemoan his flouting of procedure, Trump operates as a blatant imperialist — and is immensely proud of it.

There are multiple reasons for Trump’s actions in Venezuela — a desire to destroy the Latin American Left; White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s anti-immigrant crusade; Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s long-standing quest to topple Cuba, with Venezuela a first step to that end — but crude materialism is at the top of the list.

During a Saturday press conference announcing Maduro’s apprehension, which Trump astonishingly referred to as “an attack on sovereignty,” Rubio spoke of the operation in legalistic terms, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth waxed lyrical about the brave and manly “warriors” who carried it out. Trump returned over and over to his brazenly colonial intention to plunder Venezuela and profit from its valuable oil industry, one of his longtime fixations.

Trump’s removal of Maduro sets an incredibly dangerous precedent for Latin America. Trump and Co. have sent an explicit message to Latin American leaders, particularly leftists: Do our bidding or we will do with you as we please. The tactical success of the operation to remove Maduro will all but surely embolden Trump officials to consider, and likely attempt, similar actions elsewhere in the region and beyond. The most obvious next target is Cuba, which Rubio said is “in a lot of trouble” and Trump has said is “ready to fall.”

It’s critical to underscore that the U.S. invasion of Venezuela is a flagrant and entirely unacceptable act of neocolonial plunder, or as Sen. Bernie Sanders put it, an act of “rank imperialism.” As ABC News and Reuters have reported, the Trump administration has told Venezuela’s interim government that it must meet a set of nakedly neocolonial conditions before it can resume producing and selling oil: Sever economic and strategic ties with China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba, and expel them from the country; exclusively partner with the U.S. on oil production; favor the U.S. in sales of oil, particularly of heavy crude; and give the U.S. control over oil logistics to block rivals’ access to Venezuelan oil.

These reports come after Trump claimed on Tuesday that Venezuela’s interim authorities are “turning over” 30 to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S., and Trump himself will control the profits. On Wednesday, he also announced Venezuela would be forced to buy only American-made goods with money from “our new Oil Deal.”

While it should be obvious, it must be said: The U.S. has absolutely no right to “run” Venezuela or to control or profit from its oil industry. Venezuela’s oil belongs to Venezuela — not to Donald Trump, the U.S. government, or U.S. oil companies. Trump’s attack on Venezuela also resurrects the darkest days of naked U.S. imperialism. Trump is eager to make this explicit by celebrating the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine, and the imperialism it came to represent, has been used to justify innumerable U.S. interventions in Latin America, including the 1954 CIA-sponsored overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz the 1973 U.S.-backed coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende, and the more recent U.S.-backed coups in Venezuela in 2002, Haiti in 1991 and 2004, Honduras in 2009, Bolivia in 2019, and the 2016 parliamentary coup in Brazil.

The illegal, imperialist, and neocolonial character of the coup in Caracas is clear, but much about Trump’s actions is not — starting with the fact that this regime change operation hasn’t brought about a change of regime. While Maduro is gone, the Maduro regime appears relatively intact. Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, has become Venezuela’s acting president, and as of now it appears the Venezuelan military chain of command remains largely as it was before Maduro’s removal.

According to Trump, Rubio spoke with Rodríguez, and “she is willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.” (Tellingly, Trump also said she has been “quite gracious, but she really doesn’t have a choice.”) Rodríguez initially struck a defiant public tone, demanding Maduro’s restoration as president. A day later, however, she issued a conciliatory statement on Instagram, which read in part: “We invite the U.S. government to collaborate with us on an agenda of........

© The Intercept