What is the larger significance of America’s seizure of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife from a high-security compound in Caracas; their detention and flight to New York; and their arraignment in the US under charges of narco-trafficking? It is the biggest international news of the new year, though it may well be surpassed by events in Iran before long. We have to wait and see.
Maduro’s arrest has a domestic American as well as a larger world order dimension, with the former likely to prove more consequential than the latter. But before we analyse them, let us start with some key facts about Venezuela.
Venezuela’s new regime and why this wasn’t Bangladesh
Between 1958-1998, Venezuela was one of only three stable democracies in Latin America, a continent of 20 countries, large and small. Costa Rica and Colombia were the two other democracies. By 1999, with the rise to the presidency of Hugo Chavez, a former military officer, Venezuela’s democratic backsliding began, growing increasingly worse over time.
Citizen and press freedoms were severely restricted, and elections and election laws were manipulated to keep the incumbents in power. In 2013, Maduro, a former bus driver and later a trade union leader, became president soon after Chavez died of cancer. In 2024, Maduro was ‘elected’ president a third time, though independent observers had no doubt that his opponent was the actual and legitimate winner.
In the early hours of 3 January 2026, America’s military forces captured Maduro and his wife. However, they did not install the winner of the 2024 election in power. They chose instead to elevate Maduro’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez as the acting president and left the entire system more or less unchanged. This was, therefore, no Bangladesh-style regime change.
President Trump, and especially Secretary of State Marco Rubio, had pursued the ouster of Maduro in particular — a military objective in which they spectacularly succeeded, regardless of the consequences that might follow. Typically, it is not too hard to oust rulers, but it is awfully difficult to rebuild institutions and avoid chaos.
Let us now turn to the domestic American significance of these events.
Also Read: Epstein files and what they mean for the American anger against elites
MAGA’s core anxieties
The most noteworthy issue is the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement’s immense Hispanic or Latino anxiety, and the linkage being drawn in MAGA discourse between that and Trump’s Venezuelan moves. As is well known, the MAGA movement is the primary base of Trump’s power.
In India and Indian American circles, MAGA’s opposition to H1-B visas for Indians has become rather well known, but compared to Hispanic immigration, the India question pales into relative insignificance. Unlike Indians, Hispanics may largely be at the lower end of the labour force, but their demographic and political significance is huge. The population size of Indian Americans is at best 5 million, whereas Hispanics are about 68 million.
At roughly 20 per cent of America’s population, every fifth American today is a Hispanic. Hispanics or Latinos are now the largest US minority, surpassing African Americans. They have been the biggest beneficiaries of post-1965 immigration reform. Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California are all more than 30-35 per cent Hispanic; in some other, quite large states such as Florida, New York, and Illinois, the share is more than 20 per cent, or close to it.
Hispanics have also entered the cultural mainstream in a very noticeable way, and some artists are now serious American cultural figures. Among Hollywood films, Stand and Deliver (1988) and Selena (1997), both directed by Hispanic filmmakers, focused on Hispanic lives, while No Country for Old Men (2007), a winner of several Oscars, went deep into borderland conflict. But for MAGA, it is not the artistic contributions of Hispanics that count. What is of much greater concern is their rising numbers in the population, which are threatening, or have already threatened, White majorities in several states. Equally relevant, MAGA has consistently amplified the links between Hispanics and the criminal world, especially drugs and narcotics trafficking. And it is this charge that has brought Maduro to America’s prosecutorial shores. In his rationale for the intervention, Trump has also emphasised Venezuela’s vastly underused oil reserves, but the cultural and immigration issues concerning Hispanics are not to be ignored.
So long as the arrest does not lead to American boots on the ground for the purpose of ‘running Venezuela’, MAGA would not much mind what has happened. But if this opening salvo, which can be read as anti-crime and anti-Hispanic, leads to a longer-term American military presence, it is hard to imagine continued MAGA support for Washington’s Venezuelan venture. MAGA is simply more internally focused. The prospective profits from oil are not of great relevance to it.
Also Read: For Trump, India matters only for Indo-Pacific security
Does this break the world order?
Let us now turn to a key international question raised in some circles. Regardless of how dictatorial Maduro was, can he simply be ousted and arrested by an external power? Does the Venezuelan intervention critically undermine international law and the world order?
This question cannot be answered without paying attention to the US’ historical relationship with Latin America. Starting with the Monroe Doctrine (1823), the US has on many occasions openly and unilaterally intervened in Latin American politics. Until 1945, there was no world order based on international alliances. International politics was based on so-called ‘spheres of influence’. Many countries were occupied and run on imperial logic.
But even during the alliances-based post-1945 period, now lasting 80 years, the US ousted unfriendly presidents in Latin America, ranging from Marxists such as Chile’s Salvador Allende (1973) to Panama’s Manuel Noriega (1989). Indeed, like Maduro, Noriega was also arrested on drug-trafficking charges and brought to the US for trial, where he was convicted.
So, what happened in Venezuela on 3 January has precedents not just before 1945, but also after it. That does not make the intervention justifiable, but it does not mortally undermine the world order either.
It is the end of NATO in Europe and a Chinese capture of Taiwan in Asia, not Venezuela, that would fatally wound the basic edifice of the post-1945 world order. Is American foreign policy under Trump headed in that direction? The remaining years of his presidency are hugely significant. The world will soon know a lot more about its future shape.
Ashutosh Varshney is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Brown University. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)