Trump & Rodriguez Hold First Post-Maduro Call, Signal U.S.–Venezuela Oil Partnership

Washington’s sudden embrace of Rodríguez echoes the 1989 U.S. ouster of Panama’s Manuel Noriega—followed, after a brief showdown, by cooperative ties with the successor government of Guillermo Endara. Like the 2003 Coalition Provisional Authority’s control of Iraqi oil revenues, today’s U.S. management of Venezuelan crude signals a recurring pattern: military force to unseat a leader, rapid installation of a compliant interim figure, then resource leverage to shape domestic politics. The episode sits at the intersection of two long arcs: the 200-year-old Monroe-Doctrine reflex of U.S. dominance in Latin America and the 21st-century global scramble for secure energy amid declining conventional reserves. Whether Rodríguez can satisfy both domestic power blocs and U.S. demands will determine if this moment becomes a brief occupation footnote—like Haiti 1994—or a structural realignment akin to Saudi-U.S. oil cooperation forged in 1945. On a century scale, the precedent of outright extraterritorial arrests of sitting heads of state may normalize a new extrajudicial modality of great-power policing, with ripple effects for sovereignty norms far beyond Caracas.