Trump rolls the dice on nation-building with vow to ‘run’ Venezuela

Trump said the U.S. would run Venezuela, a Latin American country of 29 million people with a faltering economy, for an indefinite period. “We’re going to run it, essentially, until a proper transition takes place," he said.

He provided few details about how the White House would take control of the country without putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground—an option Trump didn’t rule out. He said even less about whether a viable plan is inn place for governing Venezuela after deposing its president and sending him to the U.S. to face criminal charges, other than to insist the U.S. would seize the oil industry and sharply increase production.

For a president who has for years denounced his predecessors for seeking to transform foreign countries they didn’t understand, it was a stunning about-face. The move left open the possibility of a deeper—and expensive—U.S. effort, particularly if the remnants of Maduro’s regime choose defiance instead of accepting Trump’s demands.

Even if a U.S.-backed government takes over in Caracas, extending its control over the rest of the country will likely pose numerous challenges. The Trump administration might need to contend with a violent backlash while delivering on Trump’s demands for the country to restore former U.S. oil assets.

“Out with the old is one thing, in with the new is something very different," said Richard Haass, a former State Department official who engaged in Venezuela diplomacy during the George W. Bush administration. “Now we own it."

Trump framed his plan as a benevolent intervention, one that would take account of the needs of ordinary Venezuelans and encourage millions of exiles to return. But he didn’t say who Washington would recognize as the country’s next leader, despite his administration’s previous support for the opposition led by Nobel Prize winner and opposition leader María Corina Machado.

“I think it’d be very tough for her to be the leader," he said. “She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country." Venezuelans in July 2024 elected Edmundo González, a retired diplomat backed by Machado’s coalition, as president. Before Trump’s press conference, Venezuelan opposition leaders had called for people to take to the streets and urged the military to abandon the old regime. “Today we are prepared to enforce our mandate and take power," Machado said.

Trump said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken to Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who by law would take Maduro’s place as president, and suggested that she would cooperate with the U.S. Trump indicated that Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would be involved, among others.

Some lawmakers criticized the shift. “We are ‘running’ Venezuela now," outgoing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) said on X, adding to criticism of Trump’s foreign engagements. “America First!!!"

Said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.): “The idea that Trump plans to now run Venezuela should strike fear in the hearts of all Americans. The American people have seen this before and paid the devastating price."

Until Trump’s news conference Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, the Venezuela operation appeared to be more in line with the one-off military actions that have defined his second term. American forces grabbed Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from a fortified compound in Caracas and flew them by helicopter to a U.S. Navy vessel in the Caribbean. U.S. authorities say Maduro will be brought to trial on drug-trafficking charges in New York City.

Trump didn’t mention the bloody interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq more than two decades ago. Each began with similarly hopeful vows that the U.S. could wipe away years of mismanagement, violence and corruption and produce something resembling stable countries. In neither case were the hopes realized.

In Venezuela, Trump said he and his national security team would oversee a U.S.-led government and that the administration was “designating various people" to administer the country, take over its oil industry using U.S. companies and rebuild its “rotten" infrastructure.

“We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela and doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind," he said, declining to rule out putting U.S. troops on the ground. “We’re not afraid of it," he said.

Trump allies have frequently cited the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama as a model for what could happen in Venezuela, with some Republican lawmakers referring to deposing Maduro as “Panama 2.0."

But while American forces removed Gen. Manuel Noriega and extradited him to face U.S. drug charges, the operation in the tiny Central American country led to the installation of a new government in days. The American invaders faced off against defense forces that were more similar to a militarized police.

Venezuela is more than twice the size of California, with a Caribbean coastline stretching 1,700 miles. Through a mix of repression and coercion, the regime has consolidated its rule and driven much of the opposition into exile. The armed forces, whose top leadership has remained loyal to the regime through various uprisings over the years, has some 125,000 members.

Some 64% of Venezuelans, including some eight million exiles abroad, think their country would be better off without Maduro as president, according to a recent poll by AtlasIntel.

The seizure of the oil industry would enable the U.S. to “take a tremendous amount of wealth" out of Venezuela, which would be divided among the Venezuelan people and the U.S. as compensation for nationalization of U.S. holdings in the energy sector, Trump said. He was likely referring to the expropriation without compensation of Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips projects nearly two decades ago.

Maduro’s lieutenants remained in the country. They said early Sunday that they were unified, hunkered down and ready to ride out any American incursion. They include the country’s No. 2 most powerful official, Diosdado Cabello; the defense minister, Vladimir Padrino; and the head of the National Assembly and Maduro’s top negotiator, Jorge Rodriguez, who is the brother of the vice president, Delcy Rodriguez.

“They have not broken us," Padrino said in a video message.

Write to Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com, Juan Forero at juan.forero@wsj.com and Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com