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- [00:01]
A
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B
A special breaking news edition of History as it happens. It's January 3, 2026. When I woke up this morning, it took my eyes a few seconds to focus on the incredible New York Times news alert popping up on my phone. U.S. forces attacked Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolas Maduro.
- [01:19]
C
Late last night and early today, at my direction, the United States armed forces conducted an extraordinary military operation in the capital of Venezuela. Overwhelming American military power, air, land and sea was used to launch a spectacular assault. And it was an assault like people have not seen since World War II.
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B
After campaigning dishonestly that he would avoid unnecessary wars and regime change operations, President Donald Trump has spent the past year unilaterally and illegally striking other countries. But when it came to Venezuela, the question was always why? For months now, the administration's been preparing for something there by deploying naval assets to the southern Caribbean, by authorizing the CIA to begin covert operations inside Venezuela, and by blowing up the boats of alleged drug traffickers. Extrajudicial killings wasn't about democracy. Trump doesn't care about American democracy, let alone democracy in other countries. It wasn't really about drugs either, because Venezuela is not a major source of narcotics entering the United States. It was really about the oil.
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C
As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust. For a long period of time.
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A
They.
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C
Were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place.
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B
And the invasion and kidnapping of Maduro is also about US Power, US Hegemony and control in Latin America, a region where China has made major economic inroads, including in Venezuela's oil industry. My conversation with historian Alex Avigna Next. Alex Avigna, welcome to the show.
- [03:15]
A
Thanks for having me back, Martin.
- [03:16]
B
Yeah, I should say, welcome back. Here you are again. I was not planning on doing a breaking news podcast. I really don't do these. I think today warrants it. You know, as I mentioned at the top of the podcast, when I woke up this morning, I'm getting a little bit older, so it takes my eyes a few seconds to focus. And I was looking at my phone to see what these New York Times news alerts were all about, and I almost couldn't believe it. Yet at the same time, while this may be stunning, it is certainly not surprising the Trump administration's been preparing for this. What were your initial reactions?
- [03:52]
A
You know, my initial reaction is still one of surprise. As we've discussed previously, I had serious doubts as to whether the Trump administration was actually going to put boots on the ground. And what we witnessed last night is not like a massive invasion, which apparently, according to Trump, is still in the cards. There's still a possibility. But I am shocked that they actually put in special forces into Venezuela to do really unprecedented action in abducting the president of a sovereign nation and his wife. Right. Like capturing them in their bedroom, essentially, when they were sleeping and putting them on a US Warship and sending them to eventually going to end up New York. So I am shocked that we saw this type of military action. I thought maybe we'd continue to see an escalation of the bombings of these boats that we are told without evidence that are allegedly trafficking narcotics and maybe some sort of, like, airstrikes on different military and economic positions within Venezuela. But the fact that they actually sent in special forces to kidnap the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, is. Is a shock to me, man.
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B
I should preface the rest of my questions by saying this, although it is needless to say, but still, we don't know how this entire thing was pulled off with, say, the Venezuelan military putting up no resistance.
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C
And.
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B
And we don't know where this is going quite yet, but as of now, I mean, we've discussed patterns here. In one sense, this isn't unprecedented. That is the United States intervening when it wishes, where it wishes in Latin America.
- [05:20]
A
And even then, as we've discussed previously, Martin, this type of military operation in Latin America is relatively rare in the broader history, particularly since the 20th century, let's say late 19th, early 20th century. This is an unprecedented action. Right. I think in the 1970s, we had the US Congress step in and pass legislation that outlawed a US president from ordering the assassination of another Head of state. We don't have that here. But what we have here is a US President ordering, and I think we have to be careful with terminology. I am not going to concede the premise of the Trump administration that they're doing this as some sort of anti criminal operation. So I'm going to use words like kidnapping and abduction when we talk about what they did to the president of Venezuela. And in that situation, that is unprecedented. Though even we talked about this one of the previous conversations people have bandied about the Panama example. But even that there's different, right? Because there you did have a war operation with tens of thousands of US Troops sent into Panama to get the then dictator of Panama, Manuel Noriega, on charges of narco trafficking amongst an assortment of other charges. Here it was something much more, let's say molded or shaped by really war on terror logics, by using the type of soldiers that are stationed at Fort Bragg, what the journalist Seth Harp, you know, in his, in his recent book, calls the Fort Bragg cartel using those special operators to go into the country of Venezuela to kidnap the president. I mean, that is unprecedented. And if we watch the, you know, for people who watched Trump's press conference earlier today, I mean, he threatened a second, much bigger, a military wave, he referred to wave against Venezuela if Venezuela doesn't go along with what he, with his wishes. That's, that's really terrifying.
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C
And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so. So we were prepared to do a second wave if we needed to do so. We actually assumed that a second wave would be necessary. But now it's probably not.
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B
We don't know whether the remainders in the regime, the holdovers, are going to do us bidding or not. Let's return to that in a second. Because you brought up Panama. I have a question here for you about that. According to news reports today, the Trump administration's internal legal justification did point to a 1989 memo written by the then chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Bill Barr. He was around back then and that formed the legal basis for invading Panama by ignoring the UN Charter to arrest Noriega. But you're saying there are some important differences here, even though both cases there may have been illegalities. I mean, I think there's no question what happened here is illegal in Venezuela.
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A
Yeah, I mean, I think one big difference is that there was a large amount of evidence that Noriega was involved in illicit narco trafficking. How do we know that? Because he was doing that in conjunction with U.S. operations and Designs, particularly when it came to funding the Contras to undermine and to attack the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. So we know that Noriega was involved in at least allowing the flow of drugs or money laundering operations. We know that because the US at some level was involved in that because he was an ally. As we've discussed before, the evidence that they've presented against Maduro as the head of a non existent drug cartel is really shady. I briefly kind of glanced through the indictment and there's. I don't recall even seeing any mention of fentanyl. I did see mention of him allegedly possessing illegal machine guns, which as a president of a. Right, but there's. I don't remember seeing mention of fentanyl in this indictment. So that's one big difference. Right. Like Noriega we do know was involved primarily because he was doing it for US biddings and his own personal enrichment. The evidence against Maduro is much shakier and a lot of it has to do, as we've talked about before. What I would say is that at least as described, this Cartel de los does not exist.
- [09:17]
B
It's more of an informal, informal type of setup, if anything.
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A
If it exists, yes. It is an informal setup that doesn't involve the entirety of the Venezuelan state organized as some sort of hierarchical drug cartel that is then sending fentanyl and cocaine into the United States, which again, we know, we've talked about this. There's zero fentanyl coming from Venezuela into the United States. And the cocaine that does pass through Venezuela from Colombia, the vast majority of that goes to Europe.
- [09:44]
B
Yeah, sure, we know it's not about democracy. Of course. Donald Trump doesn't care about American democracy, let alone democracy anywhere else. We know it's not really about drugs, despite all this talk, as you say, this imaginary cartel. Whereas Noriega was a drug trafficker and a CIA asset for quite a long time. It's really about the oil and US power. We'll get to those two issues in a second. But for now it doesn't look like, at least right now, this is a regime change operation because the vice president under Maduro, Delsey Rodriguez is presumably in charge. We're not quite sure yet. So it's not gonna be Machado who won the Nobel Peace Prize and who presumably expected she would win the real prize. She was after running the country. After all, she is the oppos. She did not win the most recent election. It was her candidate who won the election before Maduro insisted on staying in power. But anyway, Delsey Rodriguez is apparently running the country now. Who knows? Trump says the United States is gonna take care of the country until there can be a transition, until such time.
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C
As we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. And it has to be judicious because that's what we're all about.
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B
Who's Delsey Rodriguez and what do you make of her initial statements that, sorry, Venezuela is going to maintain its sovereignty here?
- [11:08]
A
She's an attorney by training. She comes from a really interesting political family. Her father was a guerrilla fighter in the 1960s and 1970s, founded a Marxist political party in, in Venezuela who was actually captured by Venezuela secret police in the late 70s and essentially tortured to death. I mean, so she's experienced the type of state terror and violence that characterize venezuela under this two party system that dominated the country from the late 1950s up until they lost the presidential election to Hugo Chavez in the late 90s. Right now she is taking power because she, according to Venezuela's constitution, the vice president assumes power in the absence of the president. She is the vice president. Like you said, Martin, there's a lot of misinformation or just lack of information. There was a narrative circulating that she somehow had cut a deal with Mar. I think actually Trump's people were saying that she had cut a deal with them. But then I just watched a press conference with her, a statement to the nation where she's. At least what she's telling the people of Venezuela is the opposite, that they're demanding the return of Maduro. They're demanding the respect and the defense of Venezuelan sovereignty and self determination, which is really what's at stake in this situation. Listen, Machado, we've talked about this as well. Machado comes from an extremely right wing oligarchic political trajectory in Venezuela that has consistently used classist, racist discourse and ideas while in power. She's kind of been whitewashed and no pun intended, but also gone through a transformation that's turned her into this Nobel Peace Prize winner. But in the country, she has, like, she has a long history of doing some pretty shady stuff in Venezuela. So of course even Trump recognizes that she has no ability to actually take power if they wanted to send her in now.
- [12:46]
B
Yeah, he said she doesn't have the respect of the people. Although she is a nice lady on.
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C
Monday, I think it'd be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country. She's a Very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect.
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B
Well, the New York Times reported recently that she had been giving a talk. Well, I got the article right here. Standby. Here it is. Machado made her pitch by live video to a business conference in Miami attended by American executives and politicians, including President Trump himself. She said, I'm talking about a $1.7 trillion opportunity, referring to Venezuela's enormous oil and gas reserves. So as I was trying to say, she's been calling for the toppling of the government of her own country and trying to sell this to the United States as a business opportunity. So it really is about the oil and other things, American power. In his remarks today, Alex, Trump said, hey, you know, the Venezuelan economy is a mess. Its oil industry is a disaster. It should be pumping things three times as much oil as it actually is. Isn't it true that it's US Sanctions that began under Obama and that Trump worsened, if you will, sanctions on Venezuela's economy and specifically its oil industry that has hurt that country? Right.
- [14:04]
A
Yeah, I think. And this is one of the really important things to keep in mind. It was Obama who designated Venezuela back in 2015 as a national security threat to the United states. During Trump 1.0, Trump intensified ramped up economic sanctions against the country that, according to reporting by people like Jeff Stein at the Washington Post from earlier this year or last year, created an economic disaster in Venezuela two or three times worse than the US national depression of the 1920s and 1930s. And also, the oil industry in Venezuela has been sanctioned for a long time as well, particularly since 2006, 2007, when then President Hugo Chavez ordered all foreign oil companies working in Venezuela to essentially become majority owned by the state oil company. And under those terms, Most of the US oil companies left, like ExxonMobil and others, because they didn't want to agree to the changing terms of what the oil industry was going to look like in Venezuela. An oil industry that had been nationalized all the way back in 1976. That's what Trump and his. His supporters, his cabinet members, and some Venezuelan exiles living in the U.S. when they talk about Chavismo, stole, stole from the U.S. venezuelan land and Venezuelan oil. They're talking about these changes that occurred in 2006, 2007. But I also read it as they're talking about something that happened in the 1970s, and there's something that happened throughout the global south when countries said, look, we should have some sort of sovereignty over strategic natural resources within our country. Although I think this Year prior to what happened today. It looked like, from what I've read, economic force forecast actually pointed towards some level of, of growth in Venezuela. Not now, obviously. I think this, this attack will probably change that.
- [15:44]
B
And again, you know, Donald Trump, the U.S. administration's complaining about how Venezuela's economy is a mess. Well, the sanctions contributed to that. And I have an article, yeah, I have an article here from the Lancet saying that the sanctions also killed thousands of Venezuelan people because of the harsh poverty that was resulting from that. Why did Venezuela nationalize its oil industry in the 70s?
- [16:09]
A
It's part of a larger, at least within Latin America, part of a larger trajectory that really we could go back to the 1910 Mexican Revolution where Latin American countries, as a way to industrialize their countries on more fair terms against a previous economic model that was more export oriented and reliant on foreign capital, they decided to say, look, valuable resources that are in our country should actually be used for the benefit of the vast majority of people in this country. So you have Mexico nationalized their oil in the 1930s. Another famous example is what Chile under Salvador Allende did with Copper in the 1970s. It's this idea that a country's natural resources should be held in common and should be used to further industrialization of these countries, development of these countries, and for the benefit of the masses, not for foreign oil companies, companies or other natural resource companies operating in those places.
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B
You know what this smacks of, or I'm hearing echoes of, maybe not a great analogy, but Guatemala in the early 1950s, when the Arbenz government, who was an elected leftist in Guatemala, decided to nationalize property, property or land, I should say agricultural land that wasn't even being used at the time by what is today Chiquita Banana. Keep that in mind the next time you go to the grocery store. It was United Fruit Company, and United Fruit Companies didn't want this to happen. I'm not saying that oil companies are behind what Trump is doing here. They may stand to benefit from it. We'll see.
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A
I think historians have generally agreed now, or there's some sort of historiographical agreement on Guatemala in the 50s that it was both the agrarian reform program that was passed by, by the Arbenz presidential administration that instigated US Intervention under Eisenhower, particularly since people really in Eisenhower's cabinet had once worked for United Fruit Company, the Dulles brothers. It also had to do with the fact that Arbenz was not doing what the United States wanted Guatemala to do in the 1970s. In the 1950s. Sorry. In the midst of this Cold War, that agrarian reform program that Arbenz instituted was almost identical to what Japan instituted after World War II that was lauded by the United States. It's an agrarian reform program that was, it was designed to foment capitalist development that was lauded by the World Bank. So part of what happened here is, yes, United Fruit Company played some role in instigating US Intervention, but it was also the idea that Guatemala was exercising this national and economic sovereignty in the Americas to develop how it saw fit according to the desires and needs of its own people. And that the US Saw as some sort of intolerable insult to what they envisioned for the United States during the Cold War. And I think that's what we see today, and we heard it today in Trump's press conference. This is about U.S. dominance over, quote, unquote, their backyard. And any country that is going to represent some level of challenge, it doesn't have to be a huge amount. They are going to get the Venezuela treatment. He's already threatening Mexico and, you know, they've been threatening Cuba. So this is, this is a really scary moment. I don't think they're going to stop at Venezuela.
- [19:14]
B
I don't think Greenland should be very comfortable either. I mean, seriously, at this point. So final thing here, I'll Note that in 2019, there are reports about this today, the Trump administration had the military do war games to try to measure what would happen if Maduro was toppled. And the results of these estimates were not good. There'd be a lot of violent chaos in Venezuela with political factions, potentially armed guerrilla factions fighting it out for control. I mean, we really can't say what comes next here. But I doubt, I severely doubt that all the statements I've heard today from the administration that this is just going to go swimmingly. I highly doubt that it's going to go as well as anyone anticipates.
- [19:59]
A
That's a safe bet that this is not going to unfold and develop in the way that the Trump administration has, has framed it. Today was their mission accomplished moment. The quote, unquote interesting part is going to be it begins now for an administration that is so anti immigrant, they're hell bent on implementing a foreign policy in the Americas that foments more refugees and more undocumented migration to the United States. We could be cynical and say, hey, maybe this is, they want this type of like, loopback effect to like, justify their domestic policies and terrorizing and brutalizing migrants and refugees. If they actually do a Second wave and they put American boots on the ground. It's going to be a catastrophic situation, obviously, for Venezuelans. They're going to respond with the way that they've been responding since the sanctions were ramped up by Trump. They're going to move, and they're not just going to move to United States, they're going to move to other Latin American countries where they've already had a big political impact in places like Chile, in places like Colombia, in places like Ecuador, and then obviously in the United States. So this is a really dangerous, really risky moment. The other option, because Trump has also shown this, is that he gets bored or he pulls back and we might just see Delsey Rodriguez stay as the president of Venezuela. And if that's the case, then he's going to get hit from the right, from South Florida by the Machados, who want not just the eradicate, you know, the toppling of Maduro. They want, in their words, is to eliminate Chavismo. Right. That's what they want. These people who are living in South Florida, they want to be able to return to Venezuela and completely destroy a political project that has been in existence since the early 2000s. If Trump doesn't follow through with that, then he's going to alienate them as well. So this is. It's a really weird situation that. Yeah, it's not a moment to make predictions, but to, like, watch and monitor.
- [21:42]
B
Yeah. And the oil companies presumably would benefit from more access to the Venezuelan crude market, but they don't have an appetite for risk if there's violence or chaos in the country. Took American oil companies many years to re enter Iraq because of all the violence that happened after the 2003 invasion. Maybe what we're seeing here is what Trump said during his remarks. This is the Donro Doctrine. Or did he call it the Don Row document? Yeah, something the Don Row, yeah.
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A
Would you think that was purposeful? I felt like he was like, kind of losing it, but that is kind of what we're seeing, right?
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B
Well, he was reading his remarks. Yeah, Reading his remarks, and it was not clear to me that he even knew what the Monroe Doctrine was.
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C
All of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy dating back more than two centuries and not anymore. All the way back. It dated to the Monroe doctrines. And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we've superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Dunro document. I don't know.
- [22:53]
A
But that other part of Trump's press conference where he said, I can't remember how he said it, but he basically said the other US Presidents had forgotten about the Monroe Doctrine. But we haven't, and we're going to implement it. And that's that augurs something really dark for the entire region, not just Venezuela.
- [23:10]
B
This has been a special breaking news episode of History as it happens. Start Start the new year off right. Become a subscriber. Go to historyasithappens.com and subscribe through Supercast. You'll be able to listen to the podcast in the exact same place you listen to it now. For $5 a month or $50 for an entire year, you'll enjoy ad free listening, Bonus content, and 247 access to the entire catalog of more than 500 episodes. Check it out at history as it happens.com Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to Libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today.