Could the United States be seeking to remove Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro?

If a recent interview published in Vanity Fair is anything to go by, the answer is yes.

The interview has made headlines this week, where US President Donald Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles said her boss "wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle" — an Americanism referring to a plea for mercy. 

It’s in reference to a months-long campaign by the US to destroy purported Venezuelan drug boats in the Caribbean.

Early on, it seemed as though drugs were squarely in Trump's sights. He has long-sought to shutter the US to drug-runners, and this week declared fentanyl, a target of both his presidential terms, a weapon of mass destruction.

It had also been suggested that the attacks were a pretext for strong-arming more resources — oil and rare earths — from Venezuelan hands. Trump has now ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers.

But Wiles’ interview has shifted the view, or at least diminished speculation on the administration’s intentions. It seems Maduro, who has controlled Venezuela as president since 2013 despite repeated efforts to bring about democracy, is squarely at the center of Trump’s campaign.

"I don’t think that was the objective in January this year when they [the second Trump administration] came in," said Paul Hare, a retired UK diplomat and former Ambassador, now acting director of Boston University’s Center for Latin American Studies.

"The idea was to do a deal on deportations with Maduro, maybe get some oil concessions for Americans and, do a kind-of-business-deal which would allow him to remain in power."

Taste for change?

Toppling Maduro is no simple feat, but a potentially easier fix for the Trump administration than battlegrounds in Ukraine and Gaza.

It would also align with the second Trump administration’s national security strategy, which reestablishes a firm focus on its sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere — a region that encompasses the Americas and, at its periphery, western Europe. 

Jesus Renzullo, a Latin American politics analyst at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, said Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio — a noted foreign policy hawk and a strong opponent of the Maduro regime — may see an opportunity to extend pressure to Cuba as well.

Cuba is a militarily and economically weaker dictatorship and relies heavily on Venezuela for energy supplies.

"Venezuela is the only wildcard that Cuba still can rely on that is close in [its] territory, that is close in the region," said Renzullo, "Cuba would be really, really hindered and they would suffer economically."

Renzullo thinks the US would need to ratchet up its pressure on Venezuela dramatically to force a change in leadership, before others could begin to consider the administration turning its attention elsewhere.

"The fact that they are being blockaded is not enough. Caracas has suffered way bigger sanctions during the 'maximum pressure' in 2019 and they survived that," Renzullo said.

 

And Hare doesn't see a bigger play to intervene in Latin America from the Trump Administration beyond the Maduro regime.

"Maduro is illegitimate, but I think it’s seen much more as a special case, and I don’t think it would be followed on with further aggression to other countries," Hare said.

"I think they [the Trump administration] are genuinely concerned with the illegality of Maduro’s presence."

An eye to legacy, and reclaiming voters

While the regime change cat may be out of the bag thanks to Wiles' Vanity Fair interview, the motivation may not be as clear-cut.

The Trump Administration, notably through Rubio, has been supportive of Venezuela's opposition, led by newly minted Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Corina Machado.

Machado likewise has been vocal in her support of Trump's intervention in the Caribbean.

For Trump, however, his plan may be less about installing democracy in Venezuela, as past US presidents may have sought, but rather the honor of removing a personal rival.

"It’s not about oil," said Jim Marckwardt, a retired US Army lieutenant colonel, now faculty co-lead for the Americas at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "And the other thing it's not about, and I would argue this specifically in the case of the Trump Administration, it's not really about democracy either."

That might come as a surprise, given that Trump recognized pro-democracy opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s leader in 2019.

But Maduro remained in power and had again staved off attempts to force him out of office, even after the 2024 Venezuelan election, which was independently observed to have been won by his opponents.

Instead, Marckwardt said, Trump wants to build his legacy.

"2019 is when the Venezuela crisis kind of exploded with Juan Guaido, and it wasn't resolved then. Biden hasn't resolved it, and there’s a lot of evidence that Trump does care about his legacy," Marckwardt said.

"He's tried to resolve the issues with the Gaza Strip… he's working pretty, pretty hard trying to work a peace process between Ukraine and Russia, and so one that’s a little closer to home in this hemisphere is Venezuela, and I would [say] arguably an easier one to solve."

Trump has also seen his popularity slide in opinion polls since his reelection, including with the Latin American diaspora that helped propel him back to the White House, and make up significant voter blocs in Trump’s Florida stronghold.

"This is an easy way to appeal to that diaspora specifically, that have a large concentration of voting power within Florida, so part of it is also that — is appeasing that electorate."

Edited by: Andreas Illmer