Venezuela latest: Opposition leader Machado vows to return and demands elections despite Trump criticism

The Monroe Doctrine has gained new relevance following President Trump’s surprise capture of Venezuela’s president and his assertion that the U.S. will temporarily “run” the South American nation.

“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal,” Trump said after the January 3 military operation, which saw Delta Force swoop into Caracas, capture President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, and transport them to New York to stand trial on narcoterrorism charges. “But we’ve superseded it by a lot, a real lot.”

What exactly is the Monroe Doctrine?

It originates from an 1823 address to Congress by President James Monroe during which he articulated a new U.S. policy for the Western Hemisphere.

“The three main concepts of the doctrine—separate spheres of influence for the Americas and Europe, non-colonization, and non-intervention—were designed to signify a clear break between the New World and the autocratic realm of Europe,” according to the U.S. State Department.

At the time, many nations in South America had just attained independence from European empires, and Monroe, America’s fifth president, sought to prevent European meddling and assert U.S. influence on the continent.

“The Monroe Doctrine was about forestalling extraregional seizures of territory,” according to an expert from the U.S. Naval Institute. “It sought to deny great powers such as Great Britain and Imperial Germany a pretext for wresting away real estate they might use to build naval bases in the United States’ environs.”

Over time, the U.S. government’s reading of the doctrine evolved, allowing for a much wider application.

President Theodore Roosevelt added a corollary “which inverted the original meaning of the doctrine and came to justify unilateral U.S. intervention in Latin America,” according to the State Department.

Over the past century, it’s been used to justify repeated U.S. intervention in Latin America, including in Chile, Colombia, Argentina and Panama.

Donald Trump has escalated his rhetoric regarding US influence in the Western Hemisphere, renewing calls for an American takeover of Greenland and threatening military action against Colombia.

These assertive statements, made on Sunday, follow a US military operation in Venezuela and were accompanied by his top diplomat, Marco Rubio, declaring Cuba’s communist government to be “in a lot of trouble”.

The remarks from Trump and Secretary of State Rubio, coming after the ousting of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, underscore the administration’s intent to adopt a more expansive role across the region.

With thinly veiled threats, Trump is unsettling both allies and adversaries throughout the hemisphere, prompting a pointed question globally: Who will be next?

Gunfire was earlier heard near the Venezuelan presidential palace.

U.S. officials have denied any responsibility, and Sky News has reported that it was the result of a misunderstanding between government forces.

The movement of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has demanded the release of all political prisoners held in the country.

“Those who unjustly hold the civilian and military political prisoners should free them immediately,” the Vente Venezuela movement said of political detainees, whom a leading local rights group puts at 863.

The Independent’s political editor David Maddox writes:

It’s not often that you have a cabinet minister say the quiet bit out loud. But in his candid interview on the Today programme on Tuesday morning, Wes Streeting summed up the dilemma that the UK and the rest of Europe face in dealing with Donald Trump.

On one hand, they want to defend an international rules-based order and can see perfectly well that the US’s military strike on Venezuela and capture of president Nicolas Maduro was likely to have been illegal.

On the other hand, they do not want to poke the bear and anger Trump into doing something rash, which would harm them.

And as Sir Keir Starmer joins French president Emmanuel Macron and other world leaders on Tuesday, including representatives of the Trump administration in Paris, this dilemma will hang over their conversations like a Damoclean sword waiting to crash down.

A C.I.A. intelligence assessment deemed that Maduro’s senior allies, rather than opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, are better suited to maintain short-term stability in Venezuela, according to reports.

The Wall Street Journal revealed that a C.I.A. intelligence assessment had determined that Maduro’s key allies, including Delcy Rodriguez, who was sworn in as president on Monday, would be the best positioned to lead a temporary government in Caracas and maintain short-term stability.

The analysis influenced Trump’s decision to back Rodriguez instead of Machado.

Machado and Edmundo González, her stand-in candidate who won more than two-thirds of the vote in the 2024 election, would struggle to gain legitimacy and would face significant resistance from pro-regime security services, drug-trafficking groups and political opponents, the report argued.

According to The New York Times, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had argued Machado taking power would further destabilise the country, a view supported by classified C.I.A. intelligence, a person familiar with the document told the outlet.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has spent months trying to gain Donald Trump’s favour – but the U.S. president looks set to leave her in the lurch.

Two White House sources told The Washington Post that the President had lost interest in supporting Machado after her decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

Machado dedicated the award to Trump after her win, but by accepting it in the first place she was guilty of the “ultimate sin”, one said.

“If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” they added.

Speaking on Fox News last night, Maria Corina Machado was glowing in her praise of U.S. president Donald Trump.

It is a transparent attempt to gain Trump’s favor after he said explicitly on Saturday that he did not view Machado was a suitable next president for the country, claiming she did not have enough support.

There have been suggestions that Trump is upset by Machado’s 2025 Nobel Peace Prize win, an award he so desperately wanted.

Machado dedicated the award to Trump during her victory speech in December, and is now continuing a campaign of flattery.

“Actually, I spoke with President Trump on October 10th, the same day the prize was announced. Not since then,” she said.

She admitted she had not offered to give him the prize.

“It hasn’t happened yet,” she said, “but I certainly would love to be able to personally tell him that we believe, the Venezuelan people, because this is a prize of the Venezuelan people, certainly want to give it to him, and share it with him.”