US Launches Military Strike on Venezuela, Arrests Maduro in Bold Assertion of Monroe Doctrine
According to the International Desk of Webangah News Agency, Venezuela was targeted in a sweeping U.S. military operation early Saturday morning, January 3, 2025, with multiple airstrikes reported in Caracas. The attack, which Washington claims is part of a “counter-narcotics operation,” culminated in the detention of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, signaling a stark return to 19th-century colonial policies.
The operation represents the first major implementation of the Trump administration’s second-term National Security Strategy, which explicitly asserts U.S. dominance over the entire Western Hemisphere. Critics argue the move effectively ends any pretense of respecting national sovereignty in the region.
White House Press Secretary Susie Wiles had previously hinted at the December issue of Vanity Fair that President Trump was prepared to take extreme measures against Maduro’s government. However, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exposed the narcotics justification as a pretext, pointing to Trump’s recent pardon of a major international drug trafficker as evidence that the real motive lies in Venezuela’s vast oil reserves – the largest proven deposits in the world at 304 billion barrels.
Venezuela’s government condemned the attack as an undisguised resource grab, with Russian military experts warning of an “Iraq model” being applied – where security pretexts justify regime change followed by resource extraction. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham openly celebrated the operation as “breathing new life into the Monroe Doctrine,” while issuing warnings to Cuba about being next in line for intervention.
The military strike follows the December 4, 2025 release of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy document, which includes what’s being called the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” This policy explicitly declares the Western Hemisphere as U.S. territory and threatens military consequences for any nation asserting independence. Notably absent from the 2025 document are previous references to promoting democracy or human rights, replaced by frank discussions of economic interests and willingness to use lethal force.
Analysts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) describe this as a fundamental ideological shift in U.S. foreign policy, while the Brookings Institution notes the document frames mass immigration as a greater threat than China, Russia, or terrorism – potentially justifying further Latin American interventions. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) observes the complete disappearance of strategic clarity regarding great power competition from the 2017 document, replaced by overt economic objectives.
The Venezuelan government has vowed to resist what it calls a colonial war, asserting its people’s right to self-determination after more than 200 years of independence. The attack, conducted without the international justification campaign that preceded the Iraq War, represents a new level of disregard for international law according to critics, who compare it to the 1989 Panama invasion in its blatant assertion of hemispheric dominance.
