(The Epoch Times)—After U.S. military forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro over the weekend, attention has turned to what comes next for the country that has lived under socialist rule for more than 25 years.
President Donald Trump has spoken about his long-term goals for Venezuela, but for now, his focus remains on tackling short-term challenges. Holding fair and free elections and restoring a democratic government will take time, he said, as there is much work to do.
“We’ll have elections at the right time,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Jan. 4. “Venezuela right now is a dead country. We have to bring it back.”
The Trump administration has made clear that before any broader political change can take place in the country, the immediate priorities include ensuring that the interim leadership complies with U.S. orders, preventing interference by drug cartels, and bringing in U.S. oil companies to help rebuild Venezuela’s energy infrastructure.
In recent years, Venezuela has experienced economic collapse, accompanied by hyperinflation, widespread poverty, and a significant exodus of citizens.
During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump said the United States will run Venezuela until a “safe, proper, and judicious transition” to a new government is possible.
In a Fox News interview on Jan. 3, shortly after the operation, Trump explained why the United States needs to be involved in the country’s governance.
“We can’t take a chance on letting somebody else run it and just take over where [Maduro] left off,” he said.
Maduro and his wife were transferred to New York City on Jan. 3 and are currently being held in jail. At their first court appearance on Jan. 5, both pleaded not guilty to federal charges that include drug trafficking and collaborating with gangs designated as terrorist organizations.
Maduro told the court that he is still the president of his country and that he was kidnapped.
On the same day, Venezuela’s parliament swore in Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, as acting president. Her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, was also elected speaker of parliament.
Trump said Delcy Rodríguez will have to comply with U.S. demands, or “she will face a situation probably worse than Maduro.”
Delcy Rodríguez issued a statement on Instagram in response.
“Our country aspires to live without external threats,” she wrote on Jan. 5. “We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence.”
What Is Next?
A senior White House official told The Epoch Times that Trump’s national security team, rather than a single person, would continue to handle Venezuela policy for now.
The official said the team includes Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
Andrés Martínez-Fernández, a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, said he believes that Trump’s team will seek to avoid large-scale military occupation and instead protect U.S. national security interests through external pressure.
He told The Epoch Times that, in the near term, the administration will continue to apply economic and military pressure, as it has in recent months, to ensure that “the remnants of the regime in Venezuela don’t fall into a status quo of weaponizing drugs and migration against the United States.”
Corruption in the Venezuelan military and broader security services also creates a challenge for the Trump administration and will probably be a key topic in talks with the remaining members of the regime.
“There is a deep entrenchment of drug trafficking and corruption in those institutions, and there needs to be a major clean-up in those entities,” Martínez-Fernández said.
Role of Oil Companies
Trump has stressed that he expects U.S. oil companies to help rebuild Venezuela and restore the country’s economy during the transition.
Over the weekend, he said large U.S. oil companies would begin fixing broken infrastructure “and start making money for the country.”
The United States will be taking “a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” Trump said on Jan. 3.
He also indicated that oil revenues would be used to compensate people who were taken advantage of.
Venezuela, a founding member of OPEC, was once one of the world’s leading oil producers. The country sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves. However, its crude oil production has fallen in recent years, mainly because of the regime’s mismanagement.
Evan Ellis, a military strategist and former Latin America policy adviser to the U.S. State Department, said that former leaders Hugo Chávez and Maduro have left behind a serious legal and economic mess. The country faces significant international obligations to pay debts to various groups because of expropriations and unpaid monies under the leadership of the two socialist leaders.
“The path forward will be extremely challenging,” Ellis told The Epoch Times.
But effective management of the country’s oil assets and repairs to infrastructure, including the El Palito refinery, could boost oil production within two to three years, he said.
“That would allow Venezuela to reemerge as one of the most prosperous oil economies in the region and potentially reclaim its former status as one of Latin America’s wealthiest democracies, as it was through the 1990s.”
Opposition Leaders, Political Prisoners
There are also major political and humanitarian questions, including whether opposition leaders currently living abroad will be able to return safely and what will happen to hundreds of political prisoners held in Venezuelan prisons.
Trump has suggested that Venezuela’s opposition figure and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado lacks sufficient support and respect within Venezuela to assume the leadership in the near term.
Following Maduro’s removal from office, Machado said that opposition leader Edmundo González, widely recognized as the rightful victor of Venezuela’s 2024 election, is ready to take over the government.
“We are ready to take over the government. We have the teams, we have the plans,” she said in a statement.
However, both Trump and Rubio have expressed skepticism.
“There has to be a little realism here,” Rubio told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Jan. 4. “They’ve had this system of chavismo in place for 15 or 16 years. And everyone’s asking why, 24 hours after Nicolás Maduro was arrested, there isn’t an election scheduled for tomorrow. That’s absurd.”
It remains unclear when Machado, currently in Norway, and González, currently in Spain, will be able to return to Venezuela.
Rubio said that the administration is not ready yet to appoint opposition leaders.
“We’re going to make an assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly in the interim,” Rubio said. “So we’re going to find out.”
Whether Trump’s efforts will successfully lead Venezuela toward democratic elections—and how long that process may take—remains to be seen.
Martínez-Fernández said that rebuilding electoral, regional, and broader state institutions will require significant time.
However, he expressed hope that an election could take place before the end of Trump’s presidency, possibly sooner.
A credible election would finally end the “deeply unpopular” Chavista movement, he said.
