MAGA goes south: Trump’s plan for Venezuela

Last week, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, closed in on the coast of Venezuela. The warship’s move from the Mediterranean saw it join “Operation Southern Spear”, the Trump administration’s rebrand of its almost year-long “counter-narcotics” mission in the Caribbean Sea. So far, this has involved striking “smuggling boats” in international waters, which has resulted in over 80 civilian deaths. Now, the US has designated the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) a foreign terrorist organisation, dubiously claiming the network is headed by Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro. With speculation swirling that the designation is a precursor to military strikes, several major airlines have suspended flights to the country.

The message is obvious even if the plan is not: something bigger than drugs is going on here. Nobody, however—likely including President Donald Trump—seems to know exactly what that is. Does the president want regime change in Venezuela or just access to the country’s oil? Will he use the massive firepower he has accumulated or is it just a threat? Will he try to sell military action to a sceptical MAGA base or is the risk of this looking like “Trump’s Iraq” too great?

The answers depend on what the president decides will bring him the biggest “win”. These wins revolve around what feeds his primordial instincts: his extractivist tendencies and fixation on “the art of the deal”, and his desire to show strength at home and abroad. Within the administration, two factions are campaigning to convince him their way on Venezuela will give him what he craves. These are the “restrainers”, associated with the vice-president J.D. Vance, who favour deals by diplomacy; and the hawkish “primacists”, associated with the secretary of state Marco Rubio, who want regime change.

The primacists appear to be in the lead right now: besides the military build-up and terrorist designation, in early October Trump cut off all diplomatic channels with Venezuela, thereby disrupting the restrainers’ route to find him his win. The primacists have made a deal-based case of their own to sweeten the idea of regime change. But so far, it looks like “showing strength at home” is what has given the primacists the edge, ironically with the help of some restrainers and one of their longstanding narratives.

My win is bigger than yours

The restrainer case to date has been relatively simple: as bad as Maduro may be, the survival of his regime is a lesser evil than a lengthy and costly invasion. The non-military alterative also comes with a deal—and extractive benefits. Before Trump cut off diplomatic channels, US negotiations with Venezuelan officials had reportedly resulted in an offer from Maduro to provide US companies near-exclusive access to Venezuela’s oil and minerals. Trump himself has acknowledged that Maduro offered “everything” to head off escalation.

In the primacist narrative, however, Maduro’s offer is not a reason to settle. It is instead evidence of his weakness. Trump already authorised covert operations and lethal interdictions at sea; now—as far as the primacists are concerned—the US needs to maintain momentum towards political change in Caracas, not strike a bargain that strengthens the regime. Their extractive argument is more sweeping than that of the restrainers: it is not enough just to secure oil access through licences for US firms, only regime change would allow Venezuela’s oil sector to open up under a new government and push Russian and Chinese companies out of the country. The primacists thus seem to be offering Trump a strategic win they claim he cannot achieve from a narrow deal, and it would come with a story about American leadership the president can sell at home and abroad.

Restrainers outside the administration remain vocally against any entanglements in foreign theatres. But restrainers in government, such as Vance, have undermined their own position by adopting a primacist narrative that weaves the evils of the Maduro regime into a domestic story

Indeed, it is the domestic audience that seems to be the clincher here. Restrainers outside the administration remain vocally against any entanglements in foreign theatres. But restrainers in government, such as Vance, have undermined their own position by adopting a primacist narrative that weaves the evils of the Maduro regime into a domestic story. In this telling, Trump is waging a war for American lives against a regime exporting criminals and drugs into the US, which is a slippery slope to legitimisation of regime change. Vance, for example, famously quipped that he doesn’t “give a shit” whether people call the boat strikes war crimes and is all for using the military to kill “narco-terrorists”.

The irony is that restrainers have long used the narrative that the US needs to focus on the southern border to argue for reduced US presence in Europe and Middle East, since this would free up resources for domestic priorities. Primacists have now weaponised this to argue that securing the border requires them to overthrow regimes that export insecurity to the US. The terror designation of Cartel de Los Soles underscores the cross-factional alignment of domestic narratives on this topic.

The primacists are nevertheless playing a dangerous game, since regime change is unlikely to give Trump the kind of win he covets. Analysts suggest the biggest win for Trump would be for Maduro to step down of his own accord, as a result of outside pressure and internal revolution. Such a scenario assumes quick, surgical, non-escalatory US strikes that would make some big explosions, give Trump a show of strength and result in the quick installation of Venezuela’s Nobel-prize winning opposition leader as the new president. But experts and former US national security officials suggest such a win is unlikely without escalation to ground forces. This would be hard to contain, and likely result in regional destabilisation with a side-order of American casualties.

The art of the fudge

As Trump likes to say, “nobody knows” whether air strikes will happen or not. Still, it is highly unlikely that Trump would deploy the ground forces necessary for successful regime change. And, as restrainers have pointed out, a failed regime change operation would be detrimental not just for Trump’s foreign policy image, but for the MAGA movement’s support for the president.

US military overstretch in Iraq was at the core of the MAGA backlash against Republican interventionist foreign policy. For the MAGA base, the parallels with Venezuela are uncanny—not least the dubious intelligence around the “narco-terrorist” accusations. Restrainers also point out that only 33% of voters who supported Trump in 2024 support military action on Venezuela.

The outcome is likely to be a fudge: something that does not satisfy either faction but gives Trump an opportunity to declare victory and move on. Unlike previous presidents, and similarly to his modus operandi as a casino investor, Trump seems relatively unconcerned about committing enormous resources to performative adventures. This means he probably does not feel imprisoned by the massive concentration of military firepower as an inevitable trajectory towards military escalation with Venezuela. As the US strikes against Houthis in Yemen earlier this year showed, he is willing to take the threats to the brink—even start a military campaign—and then just abandon it, moving on to something shinier elsewhere.

The collateral damage of such a fudge would depend on how far Trump goes. Military escalation with Venezuela would erode his legitimacy with his base, and shatter the stability and regional order in the western hemisphere (not to mention deprive the European theatre of resources to which it has become accustomed). Moreover, Vance’s efforts to make foreign policy an issue in the midterms, by going after his primacist critics on Ukraine, would be entirely undermined if the US fell into an escalatory trap in the Caribbean. But pulling out completely would undermine Trump’s domestic narrative of saving American lives through a “war on narco-terrorists”. So, one potential compromise is continued strikes on alleged drug boats and a deal with Maduro that Trump can frame as a win. Or maybe it isn’t—nobody knows, after all.