The Real Donroe Doctrine

Seeking cash and an ego boost, not regime change

For Americans of a certain age, the snatch and grab abduction of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president, brings back memories of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in some ways with good reason.

Almost everyone now sees Iraq as a cautionary tale about the lies of the powerful: We were taken to war on false pretenses. Almost everyone also thinks of Iraq as a prime example of the power of delusional thinking on the part of the powerful themselves. Slogans of the time — “We will be welcomed as liberators”; “Mission Accomplished” — are now routinely used ironically, to denote foolish projects doomed to catastrophic failure. And Donald Trump’s Venezuela adventure is another tale of lies and delusion.

But in other ways the Trump/Venezuela story is very different from the Bush/Iraq story.

Two days after the abduction, it’s clear that Trump wasn’t seeking regime change, at least not in any fundamental way. He’s more like a mob boss trying to expand his territory, believing that if he knocks off a rival boss he can bully the guy’s former capos into giving him a cut of their take.

If that sounds harsh, bear in mind that before Trump stepped in, Maduro and his fellow Chavistas — the movement founded by Hugo Chavez — faced strong opposition from domestic pro-democracy forces led by María Corina Machado. Edmundo González, a Machado ally, clearly won Venezuela’s 2024 election, only to have Maduro steal it. So, if Trump wanted regime change he would be supporting Machado and her movement.

But in his triumphal Saturday press conference, Trump sneeringly dismissed Machado, declaring that “it’d be very tough for her to be the leader, she doesn’t have the support. She doesn’t have the respect.”

Instead, he appeared eager to support Maduro’s second-in-command, Delcy Rodriguez, implying that she was ready to cooperate with his designs. Indeed, during the press conference and afterward Trump repeatedly declared that he was already “running” Venezuela.

But it took only a few hours for Rodriguez to make him look like a fool: Later that day she and other leading members of the Maduro government denounced U.S. actions and declared on TV that Maduro is still president of Venezuela.

Oops. By Sunday Trump was threatening to punish Rodriguez for her defiance.

How did Trump make such a big miscalculation? Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants like Pete Hegseth, who has repeatedly described him as “the greatest president of my lifetime.” He lives in a self-aggrandizing fantasy world — a world in which he has a 64 percent approval rating and is a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Washington Post reports that Trump turned on Machado because she committed the “ultimate sin” of accepting her genuine Nobel prize.

Anyway, the core of Trump’s fantasy involves imagining that he really is the character he played on The Apprentice, a master of the Art of the Deal.

Given Trump’s belief that he can always out-deal, out-bully and out-cheat everyone else, it’s easy to see how he interpreted some conciliatory conversations with Rodriguez as a signal that she would be his obedient puppet.

Trump’s self-image as the ultimate dealmaker explains why he was so ready to believe, falsely, that he controlled Venezuela. It also explains his insistence that by, as he imagined, seizing Venezuela, he had gained a valuable prize in the form of its oil. “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.” Many Trump critics share his view that there’s a lot of money to be made from Venezuelan oil and condemn his intervention as an attempt to steal that money.

But you know who doesn’t think there’s a lot of money to be made in Venezuela? Oil companies. They see a dilapidated infrastructure that would cost billions to repair. They don’t see a stable political environment above ground. And while Venezuela has large oil reserves, much of its oil is “extra heavy, making it polluting and expensive to process.”

So, why did Trump have Maduro abducted? There were surely multiple motivations. Fantasies of dominance and control and dreams of oil-soaked riches played their part. So did ego. The snatch gave Trump an opportunity to strut, and assuage his Obama envy: Trump’s minions set up a “war room” at Mar-a-Lago that looks as if it was designed to let him emulate the famous photo of Obama and his officials tracking the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Obama’s team did not, however, have X/Twitter on the screen behind them.

Trump also surely hoped that abducting Maduro would help him politically. The abduction pushed the Epstein files out of the headlines for a few days. And Trump is definitely trying to wag the dog, seeking a boost in popularity as the nation rallies around the flag. However, he’s almost certain to be disappointed. Before the abduction, Americans overwhelmingly opposed military action in Venezuela. Early polling since the abduction remains highly unfavorable:

Note that three times as many independents strongly oppose the U.S. running Venezuela as strongly support it. And these numbers will get worse as the public realizes how little was achieved.

In any case, it’s important to understand that the confrontation with Venezuela has nothing to do with the national interest. It’s all about Trump’s self-aggrandizing delusions. And it will accomplish nothing except to make America look even less trustworthy and weaker than it did before.

MUSICAL CODA

I think I may have used this already, but it’s too on point not to use here: