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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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      US seizes two oil tankers in international waters – video

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      Footage posted by US Southern Command and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, appears to show the US military intercepting a Venezuela-linked tanker in the Caribbean Sea on Wednesday. It was released on the same day US forces also intercepted and seized the Russian-flagged Marinera in the north AtlanticEurope – live updatesUS politics – live updates 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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      ‘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

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      With Trump’s military action in Venezuela, the US has made every other country less safe | Volker Türk

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      This weakens the only mechanism we have to prevent world conflict, namely the UN. The international community must stand up for the rule of lawVolker Türk is UN high commissioner for human rightsThe US military operation in Venezuela undermines a fundamental principle of international law, agreed after the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust: states must not use force to pursue their territorial claims or political demands.I am deeply disturbed by these events – and by some of the reactions I have seen. A narrative is emerging that seeks to justify the US military intervention as a response to the Nicolás Maduro government’s appalling human rights record.Volker Türk has been the UN high commissioner for human rights since 2022 Continue reading… More

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      For Americans, 2026 started with two starkly different visions for the country | Moira Donegan

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      Zohran Mamdani’s optimistic inauguration contrasted in every single way with Trump’s brazen invasion of VenezuelaThe new year opened with a pair of scenes that illustrated the great divide within the US and the stakes of the ongoing contest over its future. On 1 January, in a star-studded inauguration ceremony of uncommon pomp and optimism, Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist, was sworn in as the new mayor of New York and delivered a speech that declared the era of small government and centrist inhibition to be over, and a new dawn of ambitious social welfare programs to begin.The new mayor’s inauguration is the culmination of a decade of growth from the Democratic party’s insurgent left wing, and results from a feat of organizing within the country’s largest city that relied upon mass mobilization from downwardly mobile and economically disenfranchised millennial and gen Z voters. It was hailed as a generational shift in US politics, inaugurating a new, 21st-century vision for the party. Continue reading… More