The lead from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ex­tra­or­di­nary news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day is that the Unit­ed States is go­ing to re-colonise Venezuela. In the ear­ly hours of Sat­ur­day, US spe­cial forces seized Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and put him on a ship to the US. Maduro and his wife, Cil­ia Flo­res, have been in­dict­ed by a New York court and will be charged with drug of­fences.

“We’re go­ing to run the coun­try till we can do a safe, prop­er and ju­di­cious tran­si­tion”, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump told the world from his Flori­da re­sort, Mar-a-La­go. Some­where in the un­der­world, Simón Bolí­var sat bolt up­right. Who’s go­ing to run Venezuela un­til that is de­ter­mined?

“For a pe­ri­od of time, the peo­ple stand­ing be­hind me will run the coun­try”, he told the re­porters. The peo­ple be­hind him were US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, De­fense (War) Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth and the high­est-rank­ing of­fi­cer in the world’s biggest mil­i­tary, Gen­er­al Dan Caine, Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Caine’s brief stop in Port-of-Spain in No­vem­ber is go­ing to so­lid­i­fy sus­pi­cions that there was heav­ier stuff than dou­bles on the menu.

Asked if op­po­si­tion leader and No­bel lau­re­ate Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do fig­ured in his plans to run Venezuela, Trump said that Macha­do “does not have the sup­port or re­spect with­in the coun­try.”

The US Pres­i­dent’s ca­su­al hu­mil­i­a­tion of Macha­do con­tained some truth. Maduro barred Macha­do from run­ning in the Ju­ly 2024 elec­tions, and Ed­mun­do González Ur­ru­tia took up the elec­toral chal­lenge. Macha­do over­shad­owed the fee­ble-look­ing González, then 74, and was clear­ly the pow­er be­hind the scenes. The op­po­si­tion is wide­ly pre­sumed to have won that elec­tion, but the elec­toral body hand­ed it to Maduro. The con­sen­sus view of Latin Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tives, some of whom were no friends of the US, was that Maduro had lost.

Just be­fore those elec­tions, Macha­do tried to greet a group of army of­fi­cers. They re­fused her hand­shake. The op­po­si­tion may have been the pre­sumed win­ners, but she clear­ly con­sid­ered the Venezue­lan mil­i­tary a threat to her life.

Af­ter the elec­tions, she hid in a se­cret lo­ca­tion in Venezuela and need­ed to be smug­gled out of the coun­try—in a boat at night and with the help of a for­mer US spe­cial forces op­er­a­tive—to trav­el to the Nor­we­gian cap­i­tal, Oslo, to col­lect her Peace Prize.

At the cen­tre of Trump’s plan for run­ning Venezuela was re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of its run-down pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try. Venezuela has the largest re­serves in the world, but its equip­ment and ma­chin­ery have be­come old and out­dat­ed. It ranked 21st among oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries last year, and Guyana, an en­trant in­to the mar­ket on­ly six years ago and hav­ing on­ly a frac­tion of its re­serves, is poised to over­take Venezuela in bar­rels per day.

Trump said that oil com­pa­nies would go in­to Venezuela, fix the old, out­dat­ed and dys­func­tion­al plant, start pump­ing oil at a high­er vol­ume and make mon­ey for the coun­try. In one hour, the US Pres­i­dent con­firmed some aw­ful “Yan­qui” stereo­types as be­ing true. Amer­i­can, mil­i­tarised, petro-dri­ven con­trol of a coun­try, un­til they in­stall a gov­ern­ment they ap­prove of.

Trump ad­mit­ted two weeks ago to what a num­ber of crit­ics of his Venezuela pol­i­cy said was his re­al mo­ti­va­tion. It was about the oil.

“They took our oil rights, re­moved our com­pa­nies, and we want them back.” It was a ref­er­ence to a num­ber of con­tentious cas­es of na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can com­pa­nies’ pe­tro­le­um as­sets. The oil com­pa­nies, wary of a rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing the tip of the spear of Amer­i­can im­pe­ri­al­ism, are go­ing to feel some dis­com­fort about how news of their in­volve­ment came out. How­ev­er, prof­its and rev­enue have great heal­ing prop­er­ties.

The so-called Don­roe Doc­trine—Trump’s ver­sion of the Mon­roe Doc­trine—is tak­ing shape. It’s about glob­al re-po­si­tion­ing for re­sources ad­van­tage—in Venezuela, Ukraine, Green­land and Gaza—and it in­volves rare earth met­als, oil and re­al es­tate.

The US Pres­i­dent said some­thing in­ter­est­ing. On the way to New York, a de­ci­sion will be made about Maduro. The due process path­way may not be that clear. Sev­er­al parts of the US pol­i­cy to­wards Venezuela have proved to be legal­ly shaky. The seizure and tri­al of a for­eign pres­i­dent in a US ju­ris­dic­tion looks like­ly to be an­oth­er one.