Trump, Maduro & Putin: Geopolitical Shift?

US media reports that Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan president captured by the US on Sunday, is in a detention center in New York. Trump, who “stopped eight wars”, has done in South America what he did not want to do with Putin. On Saturday morning, seven explosions took place in several places in the capital of Venezuela. Donald Trump confirmed in his “Truth Social” that he was responsible for these events: “The US has successfully implemented a large-scale attack on Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolás Maduro, who has been captured and taken out of the country together with his wife.”

If victory is guaranteed

In a conversation with “nra.lv”, the director of the Latvian Center for Geopolitics Research, Māris Andžans, said that drug cartels and arms sales in Venezuela are formal reasons for such actions by Trump, but the basis is a set of geopolitical and ideological conditions, and they are based on the Monroe Doctrine. On December 2, 1823, US President James Monroe, delivering his annual speech to Congress, formulated the foreign policy positions that later got the name of the “Monroe Doctrine”. It was, in short and simple, the principle of “America for the Americans”. Namely, the USA does not believe that it should interfere in the mutual relations of European nations, but in turn expects that the European powers will not create spheres of influence on the American continent. And “Trump just reaffirmed that,” says Andjan.

“Trump never liked socialists and communists, and after 26 years, Venezuela was established as a socialist dictatorship. It’s about ideology,” Andzhan said. But this is not the main point. The main thing is oil, which Venezuela is extremely rich in.

And there is one more point. It turns out that any country that feels strong enough can attack a neighboring country and capture the president. “Yes, most of the time Trump takes controversial actions. They can set precedents. But the fact that Venezuela was an ally of Russia is a good thing from our perspective. That is, Trump is ready to act. Then Russia or China would think twice about their actions. But Trump only gets involved when there is a weak opponent and victory is guaranteed. In the case of Venezuela, there was obviously a traitor who revealed Maduro’s location.”

But what about the European Union? Its divisiveness is obvious. “It is not one country, and individual countries will not have a unified position against what is happening in the world. There will be no fewer wars. There are 50-60 armed conflicts going on in the world all the time. The escalation will continue. But to hope that Trump will capture Putin like Maduro… It will not happen. It is a different weight category. We can not dream about it.”

Drugs are just an excuse

Historian and political scientist Kārlis Daukšts in a conversation with “nra.lv” expressed his belief that the cause of Trump’s broad and sudden attack on Venezuela and its president is not drugs or something else. “Trump is interested in oil. No oil pipelines or refineries have been damaged. Another interesting sign is that Trump emphasized: ‘We will govern Venezuela.’ He has not yet chosen a somewhat logical transition to the state administration. Will the Americans be able to manage an existing governance structure? Although it is criminal, it is a real structure. But Trump’s most important message is: “I rule the world now.” And now I don’t give a damn about Canada, I don’t give a damn about Greenland either, and his job is to destroy Europe,” says Dauchts.

Dauchs has learned that a couple of days ago, Trump called Sirsky, the commander of the Ground Forces of Ukraine. A two-hour conversation took place, bypassing all diplomatic protocols and bypassing Zelensky. Main theses: Sirskis will be used as a beating boy; you are Russian, you are one nation, and what are you doing now; soon we will reveal Zelensky’s money transactions.

Dauchs believes that Zelensky is the most worried about the “Maduro case”: “Because the same thing can happen to Zelensky. But Putin keeps repeating that Zelensky is not legitimately elected to the state administration. In Moscow, the thought suddenly came out: you, Putin, have been fighting with Zelensky for four years, but the Americans “settled” it in one day. I don’t know how far the agreement between Trump and Putin is on this issue.”

Dachshita has been surprised by the statement of the representative of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs: it is imperialism that the United States continues its colonial policy (in relation to Venezuela). “The Chinese have invested about 70 billion dollars in Venezuela’s oil industry. I think there will be chaos now. The case of Maduro shows questions that have no real answers.”

As far as we know, Venezuela is an ally of Russia. How will the warm friendship between Russia and the USA continue now? “There is an interesting situation with those friendships,” Daukšts smiles, “Venezuelan oil reserves are the largest in the world, but Venezuelan oil has one peculiarity: it is very similar to Russian oil, it has many impurities. There are only two factories in the USA that can turn Venezuelan oil into gasoline. The Russians currently have a catastrophic shortage of gasoline. But when it comes to drugs, this is just an excuse.”

Dauchs makes a mockery of international law when talking about the kidnapping of Maduro and his wife, because after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, these so-called rights have received another blow. “And this strike is already becoming a dangerous precedent for other countries,” Daukšts believes, “one political scientist after another says that now we should start fearing Putin. I doubt it. But at the same time, nothing can be ruled out.”

“Latvia, like other EU countries, did not recognize the legitimacy of the Maduro regime after the stolen elections in 2024, because the choice of the Venezuelan people was not respected,” Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže said on the web, stating that “the EU calls on all parties to exercise restraint and respect international law, especially the UN Charter.” I don’t know why, but I suspect that “especially the UN” as a united organization of incompetents will not be able to change anything in the “reasonable concerns” of the USA, Russia, or Europe about the situation in Venezuela.