Written by: Meline Tarpinyan
Edited by: Penelope Cramer
In January of 2026, the CIA undertook a mission dubbed “Operation Absolution Resolve,” in which they captured the sitting president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and brought him to New York to face charges of narco-conspiracy and cocaine trafficking into the US.
This move, one of the latest shocking foreign policy endeavors of the Trump administration, stirred reprisal across hostile and allied countries alike for its blatant violations of international law. For many, it marked an accelerating shift by the United States away from adherence to UN norms, reflecting an increasingly zero-sum, battle-royale-style approach to global politics that prioritizes unilateral gain over multilateral moral responsibility.
However, in practice, Trump’s strategy of overthrowing Maduro and replacing him with a more US-friendly leader for the securement of natural resources, under the justification of drug trafficking concerns, is not much different from previous strategies used to support American interests. As Grandin’s piece in The Nation states, “Donald Trump isn’t so much escalating the war on drugs as escalating its escalation.” In other words, Trump’s policies are not an isolated case of unethical meddling for US interests, but rather a continuation of a long history of similar policies in the region.
The U.S. has long engaged in regime change in Latin America to secure economic interests, legitimized by shifting ideological frameworks ranging from the Monroe Doctrine to the Cold War and the war on drugs. In 1954, for example, the CIA worked with the US-based United Fruit Company to overthrow democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala after his land reforms threatened private-sector power. Although the intervention was justified as “spreading democracy,” the operation sparked a decades-long civil war and cost over 200,000 lives.
Trump’s rhetoric draws from traditional security frameworks, with his administration pointing to Maduro’s alleged involvement in cocaine trafficking and authoritarian governance as a rationale for the military action. The recent operation in Venezuela mirrors historical precedent such as the coup in Guatemala, where regime change and economic intervention are again framed as necessary while serving strategic and economic interests.
However, the Trump administration’s approach deviates from previous ones in its stark transparency about plans to seize oil reserves and its undeniably direct role in pursuing that goal. In January, the American president signed an executive order titled “Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil for the Good of the American and Venezuelan People,” declaring that the US would take custody of Venezuelan oil-related funds in the name of stability and security. Unlike mid-to late-twentieth-century CIA-led covert coups that installed US-friendly governments, this approach openly and directly controls economic outcomes in pursuit of US interests.
The US’s actions in Venezuela may have come as a shock to the world, but they are not an isolated case. Following decades of US intervention in the Western Hemisphere, Trump did not fundamentally change US foreign policy in the region; rather, he escalated existing strategies, combining traditional justifications and practices with more aggressive and overt ones. What distinguishes this moment is that economic control, legal authority, and the threat of force are now asserted openly, highlighting the enduring interventionist framework of US foreign policy—this time more aggressive, openly transactional, and distinctly Trumpian.