President Trump’s plans for Venezuela have been a slow-building mystery, but the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, is feeling the heat.
The U.S. military has deployed warships, surveillance planes and an attack submarine to the Caribbean. It has attacked boats from Venezuela that it has claimed, without evidence, were smuggling drugs, killing 17 people. The administration calls Maduro a cartel leader and a “fugitive of American justice.” Some current and former U.S. officials contend that the unstated goal is to force him from power.
In other words, regime change.
It sounds like the kind of foreign conflict Trump once campaigned against. But my colleague Julie Turkewitz, who just spent a week in Venezuela and has years of experience reporting on the region, told me that Trump might not be thinking about the country in those terms. (You can watch our conversation in full here.)
The question that could determine Maduro’s fate is whether the Trump administration sees a regime change effort in Venezuela as the kind of “foreign war” the president has pledged to avoid, or as an operation to protect America’s interests in its own backyard.
‘You turn Venezuela into Haiti’
There are plenty of Venezuelans who would be happy to see Maduro go. He has been accused of major human rights violations, including torture and forced disappearances. He lost the 2024 election, according to independent vote monitors, and held onto power anyway. In recent weeks, one of Venezuela’s opposition leaders, María Corina Machado, has said she would welcome the U.S. military’s help to remove him from office.
But during Julie’s time in Venezuela, she spoke to many people who didn’t feel the same way. In a part of the world where the U.S. has a long history of military intervention and support for dictatorships, there is a visceral rejection of the idea of American-imposed change.
Local diplomats and business leaders warn that military action could unleash bloodshed and chaos. If the government collapsed, armed actors in the region — including the military, Colombian guerrilla groups and paramilitary gangs — could join a battle for the spoils. And in Venezuela, with its oil, gold and other minerals, there are many spoils, Julie points out.
“You kill Maduro,” one businessman told her, “you turn Venezuela into Haiti.”
After long-running wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the combination of the words America and regime change raises alarm bells, both inside and outside the U.S. Venezuela’s government may be trying to leverage that. The country’s vice president told Julie that the American people “do not want war in the Caribbean.”
Sphere of influence?
As a presidential candidate, Trump promised not to involve the U.S. in foreign wars.
But he also campaigned on deporting undocumented immigrants back to Latin America and fighting drug smuggling. And he made inroads among Hispanic voters who strongly opposed socialist governments like those in Venezuela and its ally, Cuba.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been pushing for regime change in Venezuela. “We’re not going to have a cartel, operating or masquerading as a government, operating in our own hemisphere,” he told Fox News.
This focus on America’s “own hemisphere” suggests that administration officials think of Venezuela differently than, say, Ukraine or Iraq, Julie told me. They might see it as a country that plays a direct role in the issues they care most about, in a location that’s close to home — a country in America’s sphere of influence.
The military buildup off the coast of Venezuela, while striking, is just one example of the Trump administration’s interventionist approach to Latin America. It has threatened to take over the Panama Canal and to bomb Mexican drug labs. It has thrown itself into Brazilian domestic politics on behalf of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Last week, it offered a $20 billion loan to prop up the political fortunes of President Javier Milei of Argentina.
Some of this seems to be driven by ideological affinities: Trump sees Bolsonaro and Milei as allies, and Maduro as an enemy. But an aggressive focus on America’s backyard may soon be official U.S. doctrine. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reportedly preparing to release a new national defense strategy. It prioritizes “protecting the homeland and the Western Hemisphere.”
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MORNING READ
Fashion Week is back in Kyiv. But fashion, like everything else in Ukraine, has been marked by the war.
Some designers highlighted models who were missing limbs. In a country with many injured soldiers and civilians, it makes sense to create adaptive outfits with zippers, snaps, Velcro and rubber waistlines. “It sends out a big message,” said Dmytro Tereshchenko, 21, a former soldier who started modeling after losing his leg.
AROUND THE WORLD
What they’re chanting in … Turkey
A hip-shaking, hair-flipping Turkish girl group called Manifest sings silly songs about love and romances gone bad. In April, the band released a catchy single called “Ariyo” — and things started getting a little more serious.
Fans quickly realized that the song’s chorus fit well with the anti-government protest chant “Hak! Hukuk! Adalet!” (“Rights! Law! Justice!”), a refrain heard during mass demonstrations this year against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. Soon, audiences at the group’s concerts were chanting along.
The government began an investigation into Manifest for public indecency. An adviser to Erdogan called the band members “immoral, indecent, shameless creatures.” Judges barred them from leaving the country, and blocked access to some of their concert videos.
Under pressure, Manifest has canceled its countrywide tour, but the group doesn’t appear to be discouraged: It has new music coming soon.
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You’re done for today. See you tomorrow! — Katrin
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