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      On the ground in Venezuela after Trump’s ‘operation’ – podcast

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      Which forces are vying for power now that Nicolás Maduro has been removed from Venezuela? With Tom Phillips“I’m a bit of an insomniac. So at almost 2am, I was awake, actually, and the first explosion, I swear I thought it was an earthquake.”For Anna (not her real name), a journalist based in Caracas, it took some time for the realisation to dawn on her that the US had attacked Venezuela’s capital. “But then when the explosions continued in the following 20 minutes, one after the other, something deep down told me, you know, it’s the Americans.” Continue reading… More

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      The role the Caribbean played in helping the US to depose Maduro

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      Support for US action in the region seems to have laid the ground for regime change in Venezuela• Don’t get The Long Wave delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereHello and Happy New Year. We have started 2026 with a geopolitical shock as the Trump administration ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and imprisoned him on US soil. As many western governments struggle to respond to this violation of international law, for Caribbean countries, this is not an awkward diplomatic spot but a real moment of political fear, uncertainty, and regional fracture.One remarkable aspect of the Venezuela raid is how Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, has openly aligned with Donald Trump. Dr Jacqueline Laguardia Martinez, a senior lecturer at the Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies, told me that Trinidad and Tobago – one of the founding members of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), a regional grouping of 15 member countries – has “openly endorsed US actions under the pretext of combating transnational crime”. One way that has happened is through military cooperation. On 28 November, a radar appeared in a coastal neighbourhood of Tobago, described by the New York Times as “a state-of-the-art mobile long-range sensor known as G/ATOR, or Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar, that is owned by the US Marines and is worth tens of millions of dollars.” Along with the sophisticated equipment, US military jets and troops arrived on the island, which is only 7 miles from Venezuela. Continue reading… More

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      The Trump doctrine exposes the US as a mafia state | Jan-Werner Müller

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      The Venezuela incursion is in line with this logic, made even plainer as the US eyes GreenlandWhen a bleary-eyed Trump explained the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro this past Saturday, he invoked the Monroe doctrine: while the US president sounded as if he were reading about it for the first time, historians of course recognized the idea of Washington as a kind of guardian of the western hemisphere. Together with the national security strategy published in December, the move on Venezuela can be understood as advancing a vision for carving up the world into what the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt called “great spaces”, with each in effect supervised by a great power (meaning, in today’s world, Washington, Moscow and Beijing). But more is happening than a return to such de facto imperialism: Trump’s promise to “run the country” for the sake of US oil companies signals the internationalization of one aspect of his regime – what has rightly been called the logic of the mafia state. That logic is even more obvious in his stated desire to grab Greenland.The theory of the mafia state was first elaborated by the Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar in 2016. Such a state is less about corruption where envelopes change hands under the table. Instead, public procurement is rigged; large companies are brought under the control of regime-friendly oligarchs, who in turn acquire media to provide favorable coverage to the ruler. The beneficiaries are what Magyar calls the “extended political family” (which can include the ruler’s natural family). As with the mafia, unconditional loyalty is the price for being part of the system.Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University Continue reading… More

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      Venezuela ‘turning over’ $2bn in oil to US, Trump says, in move that could cut supply to China

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      Deal indicates Venezuelan government is responding to Trump’s demand that they open up to US oil companies or risk more military interventionDonald Trump has said Venezuela will be “turning over” $2bn worth of Venezuelan crude to the United States, a flagship negotiation that would divert supplies from China while helping Venezuela avoid deeper oil production cuts.“This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!” Trump said in a post online. Continue reading… More

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      ‘She was the brains, Maduro was the brawn’: Cilia Flores’s role in Venezuela

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      Flores, Nicolás Maduro’s wife, wielded far more power than just being a first lady and played a front line role in politicsBefore pleading “not guilty” at her first court hearing after she and her husband, Nicolás Maduro, were captured by US special forces, Cilia Flores made a point of adding, in Spanish: “I am first lady of the Republic of Venezuela.”But Maduro himself and others close to the couple agree that she was always far more than that. Before her rendition to New York, Flores wielded power comparable with – and at times greater than – that of other figures from the regime, including Delcy Rodríguez, the former vice-president who is now the country’s acting leader. Continue reading… More

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      Opposition leader Machado says she hasn’t spoken to Trump since attack as she vows to return to Venezuela – live

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      María Corina Machado tells Fox News she would share her Nobel peace prize with US president after removal of Nicolás MaduroDeposed Maduro pleads not guilty after capture in shock US attack on VenezuelaUS foes and allies denounce Trump’s ‘crime of aggression’ in Venezuela at UN meetingMy colleague Sibylla Brodzinsky has reported on the relationship between the US and Colombia, home to significant oil reserves. Here is an extract from her story:Colombia has long been a close partner of the US in the fight against drug trafficking and enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington but relations have soured dramatically since Trump came to office.Colombia’s narcotics trade is largely controlled by illegal armed groups such as the Gulf Clan, the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissident factions of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group, the majority of whose members demobilised after a 2016 peace deal … Continue reading… More

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      Europe’s failure to condemn Trump’s illegal aggression in Venezuela isn’t just wrong – it’s stupid | Nathalie Tocci

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      The more European countries act as colonies, unable and unwilling to stand up to Trump, the more they’ll be treated as suchThere is no two without a three, as we say in Italian. After their complicit silence on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and their tacit acceptance of the US/Israel attack on Iran, Europeans now hesitate to condemn the US’s audacious military operation to bring about regime change in Venezuela. With few notable exceptions – such as Spain, the Netherlands and Norway – most European leaders have fudged their response. Spain, in fact, has acted without its EU partners, condemning the US attack alongside a group of Latin American countries. European governments seem unable to utter in the same breath that, although Nicolás Maduro was an illegitimate dictator, the US attack to topple him is a gross violation of international law.The French president, Emmanuel Macron, the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, at least made reference to international law, while emphasising that they shed no tears for the end of Maduro’s regime. Others, such as the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, strangely talked about looking into the legality of the US military action, as if there were any doubt about its nature. Worse still, Trump-friendly Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni defined this act of external military intervention as “legitimate” self-defence against narco-trafficking.Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist Continue reading… More