01/05/2026
The US removing Maduro from power through capture and seizure under the guise of criminal prosecution and charging him with drug trafficking, or whatever it is they are specifically charging him with, isn’t what they would have you believe. This isn’t primarily a criminal case, or even a regime-change operation. It’s a signaling event, managed through legal process and insulated through private capital.
The US has pulled this stunt before multiple times, going into a country and removing the leadership in order to serve the desires of the US. It’s easier than diplomacy. Removal of the leader creates a vacuum and allows the US to put into place leadership that is more pliable.
Now its about exit positioning. We won’t stay there forever, just long enough to get what we want, which is their resources. Once the US has arranged for control and access to those resources we will exit, because we don’t care about their sovereignty or if democracy takes root and survives long term.
The administrative machine of Venezuela will remain intact, and it’s doubtful there will be any real push for meaningful reform. From the US perspective, any meaningful reform will introduce uncertainty. True democratic elections could jeopardize the self-serving deals the US wants to make and transparency will complicate the extraction of the resources we can’t wait to get our hands on.
Bringing Maduro to the US is purely optics. The US is using drug trafficking as a smoke screen and Maduro’s arrest provides retroactive justification for the extrajudicial killings of over a hundred people. The Department of Justice is unlikely to push for a trial because it would be procedurally inconvenient. A trial means discovery, meaning both sides present their evidence for scrutiny. Would the administrations narrative about drug trafficking hold up to the scrutiny of court? It becomes a moot point if there is a plea deal and there is a good deal of incentive for the administration to push for one.
Process avoidance in the form of a plea deal is the ideal outcome for the administration. Once there is an admission of guilt, no matter how small, they will always have that to point to as justification for all of the bombings and nameless people killed at sea. Once there is an admission of guilt, their justifications will no longer need to hold up to the scrutiny of a court trial.
It’s procedural containment of the actions that violate international law buried in bureaucracy indefinitely. Realistically, it doesn’t matter to them if their actions are ever formally found to be in violation of international law. All the administration needs, is to control the narrative long enough for deals to be signed.
Those deals won’t be with the US government. Any deal with the US government is subject to transparency through the Freedom of Information Act and the National Archives and Records Administration. Instead, transparency can be avoided through the use of private equity deals made with US corporations with the blessing of the US government. No transparency needed there.
It’s not just about the oil and rare earth minerals themselves. The real deals have to do with downstream assets, such as refineries, and storage and distribution infrastructure, because you don’t need the raw materials for financial dominance. You can control the pricing regardless of who owns the actual resource when you control the choke points in the production process.
The long-term goal is the rare earth minerals. We don’t need to rush in and extract them now. We can control those without immediately putting in large investments. The deals to be made revolve around exploration rights, exclusive off-takes, processing capacity, export certification, and priority supply clauses. These deals once put into place will keep the US in control of the entire process for a long time and would require a lot of work to reverse.
The administration has put forth the narrative of going into Venezuela over Fentanyl, Co***ne, and drug trafficking. We took out another sovereign country’s leader claiming that Maduro and his wife are narco-terrorists. Don’t get me wrong, Maduro isn’t a nice guy or a great leader to be looked up to. The objection I have is that we have gone into a sovereign nation due to domestic political incentives.
Maduro is not a sympathetic figure, and nothing here requires defending his governance. Yet, authoritarian as he may be, the underlying reality remains: the United States removed the sitting president of a sovereign nation to satisfy domestic political incentives and strategic priorities. This reflects a worldview built around zones of influence, in which Venezuela is treated as territory within U.S. reach rather than an autonomous state. Control over Venezuela’s oil and rare earth resources strengthens regional leverage, but the broader message extends beyond resources: it signals that sovereignty is conditional, and that power, not law, ultimately determines outcomes.
