TN Ashok
New Delhi, Jan 6 (UNI) When Nicolás Maduro was extracted from Caracas under U.S. military escort in January 2026, the operation closed one chapter of Venezuela’s long authoritarian decline, and opened several new and more unsettling ones.
For Washington, the removal of a leader accused of narcoterrorism, electoral fraud, and systemic repression was framed as a decisive blow against hemispheric instability. For Latin America, it revived old anxieties about sovereignty, precedent, and the return of a muscular American interventionism unseen since the Cold War. And for Venezuela itself, the question remains painfully unresolved: what comes after the dictator?
Maduro’s departure did not produce the clean democratic reset that some U.S. officials appeared to expect. Instead, it exposed the fragility of Venezuela’s political opposition and the absence of a universally credible successor.
Washington’s reported reluctance to endorse María Corina Machado — a Nobel Peace Prize laureate widely admired abroad — underscores that dilemma. According to officials familiar with the discussions, President Donald Trump privately dismissed her as lacking sufficient domestic authority to unify the country. “A very nice person,” he reportedly said, “but not respected enough on the ground.”
Machado’s advisers strongly dispute that characterization, pointing to her sustained popular support, international recognition, and moral authority after years of resistance to chavista repression. Yet admiration and governability are not the same — a distinction that now looms over Venezuela’s uncertain interim phase.
In the absence of a clear civilian leader, attention has turned to Delcy Rodríguez, the interim president installed following Maduro’s extraction. Her appointment, however, has drawn immediate scrutiny. Critics accuse Rodríguez of deep entanglements with the same cartel-linked networks that flourished under Maduro, raising fears that Venezuela may simply be exchanging one authoritarian structure for another — potentially more opaque and more criminalized.
For many Venezuelans, this is not liberation. It is limbo.
The Maduro operation has sent tremors far beyond Venezuela’s borders. In Colombia, officials have quietly reinforced military readiness along key corridors, wary that instability could spill across a frontier already strained by refugees, armed groups, and narcotics trafficking. While no formal threat has been issued, Bogotá understands the lesson of January 2026: Washington is willing to act unilaterally when it deems regional security at stake.
Mexico, too, finds itself under renewed pressure. Trump has repeatedly linked cartel violence to U.S. fentanyl deaths and has publicly suggested that Mexico’s sovereignty cannot serve as a shield for transnational crime. Though no intervention appears imminent, the rhetoric alone has unsettled a country whose relationship with Washington balances cooperation with deep historical mistrust.
Latin America’s deeper instability — chronic inequality, institutional weakness, and the entrenchment of criminal economies — forms the backdrop to these fears. Dictators fall, but the conditions that produce them remain.
Perhaps most surprising are reports that Russian and Chinese naval vessels have been sighted near Greenland — a development Western analysts interpret less as an immediate military threat than as strategic signaling.
Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Danish kingdom, has long occupied an outsized place in U.S. strategic thinking. Its Arctic location, rare earth potential, and proximity to emerging polar shipping routes make it a focal point in the intensifying great-power competition.
If confirmed, the presence of Russian and Chinese ships would represent a deliberate response to Washington’s assertiveness in Venezuela — a reminder that interventions in one region reverberate globally. The message is implicit but unmistakable: escalation will not remain confined to the Western Hemisphere.
President Trump’s foreign policy since returning to office has been animated by a belief that deterrence flows from unpredictability and strength. The Maduro extraction, in this view, was not merely about Venezuela — it was a demonstration aimed at adversaries watching closely from Beijing, Moscow, and beyond.
That posture has already spilled into economic coercion. Trump has warned India of new tariff hikes unless it curtails purchases of Russian oil — even as he publicly described Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “a very nice man.” The contradiction is characteristic: personal warmth paired with strategic pressure.
India, caught between energy security and geopolitical alignment, now faces a dilemma shared by many mid-sized powers. Compliance risks domestic backlash and economic pain; defiance risks punitive measures from Washington. The episode underscores how the post-Maduro moment has emboldened a more confrontational American stance — not only militarily, but economically.
Beijing and Moscow have condemned the Venezuela operation as a violation of international law, framing it as evidence that the so-called “rules-based order” applies selectively. Yet their protests ring hollow to many observers.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s threats toward Taiwan have weakened their moral authority. Still, their alignment with Venezuela before Maduro’s fall — through oil, arms, and diplomatic cover — means they now see the U.S. move not as an isolated action, but as a strategic encroachment.
The result is a tightening spiral: each side cites the other’s hypocrisy, and norms erode further.
Supporters of Trump argue that decisive action was overdue — that decades of sanctions and diplomacy failed to dislodge Maduro, while Venezuelans suffered. In this reading, only strength restores democracy, however controversial the means.
Critics counter that democracy imposed at gunpoint rarely endures. Iraq and Libya loom large as cautionary tales: regimes removed, states shattered. Venezuela, with its collapsed economy and militarized politics, risks following a similar trajectory unless civilian legitimacy emerges quickly.
The deeper question is whether the United States can claim to defend popular sovereignty while bypassing international institutions and regional consensus. For much of Latin America, the memory of U.S.-backed interventions remains raw — and trust is fragile.
Maduro’s fall may mark the end of one dictatorship, but it has not resolved the structural crisis of governance in Venezuela — nor the broader instability of the region. Instead, it has accelerated a reckoning over power, sovereignty, and the limits of intervention.
Is Washington restoring order — or redrawing the rules by force? Are cartels and authoritarianism being dismantled — or merely rearranged?
For now, the answers remain elusive. What is clear is that the post-Maduro era is not a conclusion, but a beginning — one fraught with uncertainty, risk, and the unmistakable return of great-power politics to the Americas.
The dictator is gone. The struggle over who truly governs — the people, or those who claim to act for them — has only just begun.
