Venezuela: Who’s in Charge Now?

0:01Today on State of the World, with Nicolas Maduro now detained and charged in the U.S. We take a closer look at Venezuela's leadership.

0:17You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close with their happening. It's Thursday, December 8th. I'm Christine Arasmeth. We also look at U.S. military strikes under President Trump since he took office, despite a campaign pledge to avoid foreign wars. First, deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro may be sitting in a New York jail, but the rest of his repressive government remains in power back at home. Maduro's former vice president has been sworn in as the country's interim leader, while two powerful ministers who run the feared intelligence services and the military are firmly in command.

1:02It's unclear how much will change under this new, but still very much the same as the old, leadership. NPR's Carrie Kahn reports from Bogota, Colombia. Under a steady rain, Kelly Diana Matasadeño rushes out of the Venezuelan embassy in Bogota. Like the nearly three million migrants now living in Colombia, she's eager to go home and had a quick message for President Trump.

1:31Thank you, and go ahead and do whatever you have to do, she said. But, she added, They have to get rid of the regime, she says, if we're all going to be able to go back home. That doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon. On the ground this week, armed paramilitary gangs or colectivos as well as uniformed officers were out in full force on Caracas streets. Long-time Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who heads the police and feared security forces, has been joining the patrols and posting multiple videos like this one since the U.S. attack. Flanked in heavily armed forces and fatigues, the group alternates, shouting loyalty forever and Cabello's trademark slogan, to doubt is treason.

2:23He's a staunch defender of the regime and a frequent participant in pro-government rallies like this one yesterday.

2:34They kidnapped Nicolás and thought the revolution would fall, but they don't know us, he told the crowd.

2:43Nicolás, we will get you back, he said to great applause. And we raise our voices against American imperialism, he added. Cabello has been a key enforcer of the regime and is named in the indictment, charging Maduro and his wife with drug trafficking. He denies the charges. His key ally and powerful defense minister, Vladimir Padrino, remains in his post, too. Padrino has also been under U.S. sanctions. He refutes any wrongdoing, too. And both men remain staunchly by interim president Delcy Rodriguez's side. Like at this televised cabinet meeting after she was sworn in, pointing to both men, Venezuela's high command, in a demonstration of continuity.

3:27Her rise through the ranks of Venezuela's hard-line leftist core has been steady and pragmatic, says Francisco Rodriguez, an economist at the University of Denver. She took over running much of the oil industry and the economy, he says, after corruption scandals and mismanagement nearly tanked the country a decade ago. Things have improved under her watch, definitely. She is known as a pragmatist who gets things done, he says. she understood the government had to foster better relations with the business community, oil executives, and Wall Street, despite their vast ideological differences. And in that sense, she was very different from other economics ministers who had had a different view in which the private sector didn't matter.

4:10But now having to manage the hardliners still in power while also appeasing Trump will be her biggest challenge, says Juan Gonzalez, President Biden's former National Security Council advisor. What is the least that she can give to Trump while making him happy so that she is not in this position where she's viewed as giving away all of Venezuela's resources to the United States? She's already confronted that challenge after Trump threatened her with a fate worse than Maduro's if she didn't fall in line. To that, she responded, To those who threaten me, my destiny is not determined by them, but by God.

4:49Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Bogota, Colombia. It's been a remarkable start to the new year for President Donald Trump. From authorizing an attack on Venezuela in the wee hours of last Saturday, to threatening a takeover of Greenland. This from a president who openly covets the Nobel Peace Prize and ran on a campaign of promising no U.S. involvement in foreign wars. NPR's international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam has this report. By any measure, President Trump's second term has been far more muscular than his first, launching military strikes and issuing threats from Africa to the Middle East and now Latin America.

5:34Here he is on Air Force One just hours after the U.S. raid on Venezuela and the arrest of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, contemplating what could be next for Mexico and his drug cartels. Mexico has to get their act together because they're pouring through Mexico and we're going to have to do something. For Iran. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the United States. And Greenland. We need Greenland from a national security situation. It's so strategic. Trump also made similar suggestions about Cuba and Colombia. There have been strikes on Yemen, Syria and Nigeria.

6:14He's threatened Canada, Panama, and others. There's no question that in his second term, Donald Trump is entirely unbound, and he's eager to throw America's weight around in the world. That's Stuart Patrick, a specialist on world order and international cooperation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He says Trump is waving aside rules-based international order in his effort to ensure U.S. dominance. Donald Trump feels zero restraints and is experiencing a great sense of hubris in terms of his interactions with the world. He's in a sense on a sugar high after having gotten rid of President Maduro.

6:53Laurel Rapp, who heads up the U.S. and North America program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, agrees Trump is demonstrating more muscular foreign policy ambitions in his second term. She sees several major differences from his first term in office. The first is geography. Trump is willing to use U.S. military force across the world, from Latin America to Africa to the Middle East and now potentially in Greenland in Europe. Rapp says the second difference is the level of risk involved. The Venezuela operation is a case in point. And the third big difference is that he is willing to not just go after adversaries, but also allies, treaty allies.

7:35Stephen Miller, one of Trump's top aides, lays bare the administration's view on raw power during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time. But Rapp, who spent 14 years at the State Department, says just because the military can invade a country doesn't mean it'll bring sustained change. When you have insufficient planning, when you have unclear and conflicting objectives, a lack of diplomatic capacity in the country, limited or shifting U.S.

8:16attention, and unrealistic timelines, these are all recipes for failure. Carnegie's Patrick says the administration's embrace of force to advance national interests is enabling great powers in other parts of the world. Not least China and Russia to actually legitimate their own claims to a sphere of influence in their immediate backyards. So he's providing cover to a number of U.S. adversaries around the world to do the same thing where they are. There's always the notion that threats against Greenland, Colombia and other nations are just overheated rhetoric or a negotiating tactic. but Venezuela proves nothing is off the table.

8:54Jackie Northam, NPR News.

9:06That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.