What Trump wants from Venezuela

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0:34James Story: Last week, the Pentagon announced that it was sending an aircraft carrier to the Caribbean. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy's largest aircraft carrier, and as many as five destroyers and dozens of aircraft are heading to Latin America. And U.S. President Donald Trump raised the possibility of military strikes on land targets in Venezuela. So now they're coming in by land, and even the land is concerned because I told them that's going to be next. You know, the land is going to be next. It all comes after weeks of missile strikes against boats that the White House says are being operated by drug traffickers.

1:06James Story: The strikes killed dozens. Meanwhile, the administration is increasing its rhetoric against the authoritarian government in Venezuela.

1:18James Story: This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the Financial Times, where we talk about all the things happening in U.S. politics, finance and the economy. I'm Mark Filippino, and this week we're asking, what's Trump's endgame in Venezuela? Here to discuss is James Story. He was the top U.S. diplomat to Venezuela from 2018 to 2023 under both Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden. Ambassador Story, welcome. Thank you for having me. And we've also got Michael Stott, the FT's Latin America editor. Hi, Michael. Hello, Mark. Michael, bring me up to speed on the latest. What's been going on in the region over the last, I don't know, week or so?

1:51Michael Stott: I'd say the main developments, Mark, are that President Trump ordered an aircraft carrier strike group to join the military task force already off the coast of Venezuela. So this is a major escalation in the military campaign towards Venezuela. The other thing that's happened is the missile strikes have continued and increased, if anything, in tempo and intensity. So I think we've now had a total of 15 vessels, which the administration says were carrying drugs destroyed and a total of 61 people killed.

2:23James Story: Ambassador, what was your first reaction when you saw the Pentagon was deploying an aircraft carrier to the Caribbean?

2:28Michael Stott: Well, you know, these are all resources that are decidedly more powerful than that necessary for counter-narcotics operations. So for me, having a carrier strike group, in addition to the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, a squadron of F-35s, the deployment of a B-2, the B-52s and B-1s that have been coming down, all indicates the president is considering options in Venezuela that go beyond mere counter-narcotics.

2:56James Story: Ambassador, you served under President Trump during his first administration when he tried to impose maximum pressure sanctions on Venezuela and Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro. What changed about the president's approach to Venezuela since then?

3:12Michael Stott: Well, one of the things that I'd offer is under the first Trump administration, he often said all options are on the table. And what I think we can see today, the options are actually off the coast of Venezuela. And he's been very explicit in delineating and talking about those options. The fact that the president, for instance, mentioned a covert program in an overt fashion was illustrating or underscoring to those around Maduro what other options the president has at this point in time. I think the objective of the president and the administration is that somebody close to Maduro convinces him either to go into exile, they decide to extradite him to the United States, or they remove him from power by other means.

3:56James Story: Yeah, and I think it's really important to say that regime change is probably what's on the mind right now, right? Like Venezuela is not the leading narcotics supplier to the United States. Why is regime change something that the president and his administration is so focused on? Michael, Ambassador, whoever wants to take it.

4:15Michael Stott: I'll jump in. I want to jump in on this, Michael, because, you know, the regime was changed in July of last year during an election. an election that was won overwhelmingly by the democratic opposition.

4:27James Story: Ryan, let me just jump in there for context. Outside experts said the Venezuelan opposition actually won the presidential election, but the Maduro government stole it.

4:35Michael Stott: And what additionally has happened since then, the president ran for office on a migration message and also on a stability and security message. The president is deciding that if we want stability in the region, if we want to stop the out-migration, if we want to attack the criminality and the narcotics trafficking, then Maduro's got to go. Michael, you were going to say something. I think Ambassador Storey is making a very important point here, Mark, which is that these issues in Venezuela speak directly to President Trump's domestic agenda. So the fight against drugs and the fight against illegal migration are two key policy planks for him.

5:12Michael Stott: And Venezuela has an important role there. I mean, remember that about a quarter of a of the Venezuelan population has fled the country since President Maduro took power. And it's an important staging point in the trafficking of cocaine towards the United States. Not the principal source of cocaine, but an important staging point for cocaine, which comes through from Colombia through a very permeable border. So there's clearly a reason for President Trump to focus. I think there's also a reason that this is, as Ambassador Story referred, to some extent unfinished business from his first administration.

5:45Michael Stott: President Trump invested quite significant political capital in his first term in trying to topple Maduro and in trying to achieve international support for the idea of an alternative government led by then opposition leader Juan Guaido. And that effort did not prosper. So Trump has something here he wants to finish, I think. But the other point I just make in closing is to say that I think President Trump clearly wants Nicolas Maduro out of power in Caracas. What's less clear is what President Trump might be prepared to settle for as an alternative to Nicolas Maduro and Caracas.

6:18James Story: I'm so glad that you brought that up because I do want to get to the opposition in just a moment. But do we have a sense, Ambassador, of what the Trump administration would be able to settle for? Because the leaders around Maduro seem to have a similar agenda to the president himself.

6:32Michael Stott: Well, during the first Trump administration, we publicized or published a framework for a democratic transition in March of 2020. They kind of laid out how an interim government could work while they get to free and fair elections. But when as democracy is restored and you have an interim government, reinstitutionalizing the country is going to be a big project. because for 25 years now, they have undermined the institutions of state and that the state has now been completely subjugated to the whim of a very strong executive branch and a very small group of folks who claim to be political ideologues, but I really think they're more criminal organization.

7:22Michael Stott: How do you reinstitutionalize the country? And how do you make sure not to make mistakes such as we made, the United States and Iraq, when we did de-bathification? Not everyone in the military is a bad actor. There are plenty of them. But there are a lot of other bad actors in Venezuela. So as you're building and going towards new elections, having an interim government, what is that going to look like? I don't know if we've defined it on our side. I certainly hope that Maria Corina Machado, who's now the head of the opposition, has been defining it on her side, because ultimately it's the Venezuelans that will make this decision.

7:59Michael Stott: And I think there's a tricky issue in the equation, isn't there, which is the Venezuelan military and security forces are the hard power. They're the ones who are actually in control of the country. The opposition, as Ambassador Sori says, won an overwhelming victory at the election last year, and then the count was rigged to deny them that victory and the official result. They don't have the hard power. And unless they can convince the security forces in the military to accept some kind of transition, there is, of course, the other scenario, which is a dark scenario, which is that Maduro leaves and you get something similar, another Chavista taking power, or even something worse, one of the harder line people in the Chavista leadership assuming power and cracking down even harder on the opposition.

8:44Michael Stott: I mean, that's also not to be excluded, I think.

8:46James Story: And just a little dictionary definition here. Chavista is a supporter of the socialist policies, or I guess, political leaders that are associated with the famous late president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Michael, what decision do you think President Trump will make here in the coming weeks?

9:03Michael Stott: I think here we have to go back again to President Trump's intentions. And as Ambassador Story pointed out at the beginning, the president is giving himself a number of options in Venezuela. but I have heard from people familiar with the situation, shall we say, that the president has not yet made a final decision and will make one at some point in the coming weeks, but it will be his decision. It won't be the decision of anyone else in his inner circle. I think President Trump is very risk-averse when it comes to force. He is quite happy to see missile strikes and bombings and attacks of the type that don't risk the lives of U.S.

9:40Michael Stott: troops. But if it comes to actually sending any form of US unit ashore in combat where their lives could be at risk or they could be taken prisoner or killed. I think the president's risk appetite is much, much lower. And I think if you look at what he said in public about this, he has been very clear in his firm opposition to Maduro. He's been very clear in his wish to see Venezuela stop trafficking drugs towards the United States. He has been much less vocal about what he wants to see happen in Venezuela afterwards. He's just essentially focused on the message, I want Maduro out, full stop.

10:17James Story: You mentioned Maria Carina Machado. She just won the Nobel Peace Prize, we should mention. Is the opposition in a particularly advantageous position right now? Do they want to seize this moment?

10:28Michael Stott: Well, there was an election, and Edmundo Gonzalez won the election. So presumably, if there's a transitional government, I would imagine you would have Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Corina Machado in some position of primacy within that. There is a lot of political thought in the country. But she won a primary among all the political parties leading into this election that firmly puts in her hand the banner of leader of the opposition. And that comes with a lot of responsibility. Right. You have to figure out, well, how do I bring in people who have played footsie sometimes with this regime because they believe the way out of this situation was through a direct negotiation or a different type of engagement?

11:17Michael Stott: And I think the other thing is that you've got the Chavistas still in charge of the hard power. And they are very, very wary about the idea of Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez taking power because they fear retribution. They fear being put in jail. This is a government which has worked very closely hand in glove with drug trafficking and with other illegal areas of the economy, illegal gold mining, in particular legal mining of the mineral coltan. So there is a fairly large number of people here, maybe a few thousand, who are complicit and who've been profiting from this criminal regime.

11:54Michael Stott: And they will not easily want to give up power, certainly not without cast-iron guarantees that they're not going to end up in jail. And unless you can find the way to tempt those few thousand in the hard power positions to come along with you, you're going to find that exiting Maduro doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

12:15James Story: Michael, what happens, going back to the U.S. military side of things, what happens if the U.S. escalates? What are Venezuela's military capabilities in a situation where, say, the U.S. conducts land strikes, as we've talked about, or does a full-scale invasion, which we should say is probably unlikely?

12:29Michael Stott: Yeah, so I think the full-scale invasion is more than unlikely impossible. There's simply nothing like the numbers of troops required to do that. The strikes on land via missiles or bombs, I think, are a fairly high possibility. President Trump has referred to it. It's for him a relatively cost-free option that doesn't put US lives at risk. He could choose to attack something like drug-related infrastructure, infrastructure training camps or bases of the guerrillas. If that comes to pass, Venezuela, I think, has no really significant way to defend against missile strikes. Its military is not in great shape.

13:07Michael Stott: It has a handful of US fighters, which are by now quite old and a lot of them lacking in spare parts. and the pilots not having been trained for a long time, a couple of S-300 Russian anti-aircraft batteries, but not a kind of sophisticated missile defense system. So I think it would find it very difficult to defend against strikes on land of that kind of type. I'd also underline that, I mean, the main focus for the Venezuelan armed forces over the past 10, 15 years has been repression of dissent. So it's a task which they've been ruthlessly effective at. But of course, it's a very different task to trying to defend your country against a highly sophisticated military like the U.S.

13:49Michael Stott: force, which is in theater at the moment, that has some of the most advanced capabilities that are available anywhere in the world.

13:56James Story: Ambassador, I want to spend a moment on the politics of this in the U.S. A lot of congressional Democrats and some Republicans, they've raised the issue that they aren't being properly notified about either the drug boat strikes or any looming military action in Venezuela. Is that an issue here?

14:11Michael Stott: Certainly, if you listen to Senator Rand Paul, he's had significant questions about the authorization of use of military force. Congress is not in session. The government is shut down. I would imagine at some point they're going to have to take up this issue because this has been an expansion of the definition of executive power. And this is something that, generally speaking, Congress would have an interest in.

14:37James Story: One last question for you both. Obviously, we've been focused on Venezuela, this conversation, but does this tell us anything more broadly about Trump's relationship with the rest of the region?

14:48Michael Stott: Yeah, I think it fits neatly into a strategy in which President Trump has focused far more firmly on the Western Hemisphere than I would say any of his predecessors from Bill Clinton onwards. Clinton was really, for me, the last U.S. president with a strong focus on the Americas after the war on terror. Attention in Washington switched to Afghanistan and the Middle East. So Trump is firmly refocusing on the Western Hemisphere, and he's doing it because he believes, I think, in spheres of influence. He believes in the idea that the U.S. needs to control, as he sees it, the Western Hemisphere, because this is a priority area for the United States, and because it's an area which concentrates the issues that matter most to his domestic base, migration and drugs among them.

15:31Michael Stott: But also, of course, it's a region that offers wealth, mineral wealth, both sort of old mineral wealth, if you like, in the form of oil and gas. And there Venezuela is central or new mineral wealth in the form of rare earths, which Brazil has a lot of, too. So I think Venezuela is part of a broader strategy that President Trump has for the Western Hemisphere. And I think he's choosing to use it as well as a way of demonstrating military power, military force, that America is not afraid to use that force and to show that force to exert influence in its own backyard, if you like.

16:05James Story: I want to thank our guests, Ambassador James Story. He's the former top diplomat to Venezuela from 2018 to 2023. Thank you, Ambassador.

16:13Michael Stott: Thank you so much for having me today. It was a pleasure.

16:16James Story: And Michael Stodd, the FT's Latin America editor. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Mark. And thank you, Ambassador Story. Good to see you, Mike. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to do exit poll this week. We are going to church.

17:14James Story: We are back with Exit Poll where we ask an FT journalist one of your questions. This week we have Lauren Fedor, the FT's Deputy Washington Bureau Chief. Hi, Lauren. Hi, Mark. Lauren, we've got a question from Andrew in France. He's curious about religion, particularly evangelical Christianity, and how it factors into U.S. politics. So, Lauren, what role does it play? Well, that is a big question, and probably one that would take me a long time to give Andrew a full answer. But what I would say to him is that it plays a big role, and it plays an increasingly big role in Republican Party politics in particular.

17:52James Story: We have seen in recent years or decades, even, you know, think back to like George W. Bush, whose evangelical faith was a big part of his brand and message. But the kind of intermingling and connections, I think, between evangelical Christian churches and the Republican Party now is closer than it's ever been. Donald Trump, the thrice married former real estate magnate casino operator, perhaps in an unlikely twist, has become the kind of president for that demographic. And the polling bears that out. He did very well with evangelical voters in 16, in 20, in 24. I think what's different right now, though, is that we've really seen a rise of this notion of Christian nationalism in the last couple of years in particular.

18:39James Story: And that's the idea that there's a role for Christianity in the state. And an example, I think, that really crystallized this for me was last month I was at the funeral out in Arizona for Charlie Kirk. And that was an event that really, in a pretty striking way, I think melded some of these evangelical Christian messages with the idea that there was a role for that in the government. And you had pastors and kind of faith leaders, but also a who's who of the president's cabinet and the president himself speaking at that event. Lauren, I think you did a great job getting your arms around a really big topic.

19:17James Story: Thank you for that. Thanks for having me. That's the FT's Washington Deputy Bureau Chief, Lauren Fedor. And Andrew, I hope that answers your question. If you listening right now have a question about U.S. politics and the economy, send me a message. I love them. They're my emails in the show notes. Make sure to include your name and where you're from. and if you send us a voice memo, we may even play it on the show.

19:45James Story: This was Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we've also got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is produced by Henry Larson. Our show is mixed by Sam Giovinco. Thanks as always to Pierre Nicholson and this week, Special thanks to Roxanna Vigil from CFR. I'm your host, Mark Filipino. Our acting co-head of audio is Topher Juarez. Original music by Hannes Brown. Check back next week for more U.S. political analysis from the Financial Times.

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