Experts: Rubio shapes stance on Maduro

Cybele Mayes-Osterman

USA TODAY

Much has changed since late January when Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, shook hands in Maduro’s palace.

Some hoped Grenell’s deal would lower tensions between Washington and Caracas, and perhaps even renew access to Venezuela’s rich oil reserves. Instead, experts say, Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears to have taken Grenell’s place and is spearheading an aggressive campaign to bring down Maduro.

Nine months after Grenell and Maduro’s pact, eight U.S. warships are circling the waters off Venezuela, and the largest U.S. aircraft carrier and its three escorts are cruising toward the region. Roughly 10,000 troops are stationed in the area. B-1 and B-52 bombers have approached Venezuelan airspace three times in two weeks, in an undisputed threat of force.

At least 61 people, many of them Venezuelans, have been killed in U.S. strikes on boats in international waters, which the Trump administration said, without providing evidence, were carrying drugs. The strikes, which the Trump administration has said are part of an 'armed conflict' with cartels, were ordered without congressional approval.

Trump has turned aside Maduro’s offer of access to Venezuela’s rich oil reserves in exchange for maintaining power in the country. Instead, his administration has gone all-in on a campaign led by Rubio to force Maduro from office. Rubio, also the acting national security adviser, aims to end a regime that has opposed the United States for decades and sparked an exodus of nearly 7.9million migrants, including more than 700,000 who have made their way onto American soil.

Concrete plans to push out Maduro surfaced during Trump’s first term. They crystallized in 2019, when the United States endorsed opposition leader Juan Guaido’s failed attempt to seize power.

That January, Guaido declared Maduro’s presidency illegitimate and announced he was Venezuela’s interim president. Protests erupted, but Guaido ultimately failed to gain military backing and provoke an uprising. By late 2022, he had lost the support of the opposition, and he fled the country.

As a U.S. senator concerned with preserving Latin American democracies and business interests, Rubio pressed Trump to recognize Guaido.

'Rubio was the architect of ‘maximum pressure’ in the first term,' said Brian Fonseca, director of Florida International University’s Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy. In Trump’s first term, 'maximum pressure' referred to the strategy of tough sanctions on Venezuela and charging Maduro and his top officials with narcoterrorism.

In his years representing Florida as a Republican senator, Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who immigrated before the island’s revolution, frequently blasted Maduro’s 'Cuban-style dictatorship.'

The president has amped up the pressure on Maduro with at least 14 maritime strikes off the coast of South America. In the latest offensive, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that another four people were killed in the eastern Pacific on Oct.29.

Maduro has indicated he understands exactly what Trump and Rubio are doing: 'They promised they would never again get involved in a war, and they are fabricating a war,' Maduro said on Oct.24 after the Pentagon announced the USS Gerald Ford, the world’s largest warship, was headed toward South America.

Trump’s offensive comes after Maduro and his top generals were indicted in 2020 for their alleged involvement in a drug trafficking conspiracy.

'The Administration’s policy is ‘maximum pressure’ on the Maduro regime,' a White House official told USA TODAY on Oct.27. 'No negotiations that could potentially benefit the regime are occurring.'

The Trump administration has said intelligence showed the boats were headed to the states with deadly drugs such as fentanyl.

Fentanyl causes the majority of U.S. overdose deaths. But no proof has been made public indicating that the vessels hit in the Caribbean were carrying the deadly drug. Trafficking experts also say strikes on individual boats would do little to curtail mass distribution.

'The vast majority of the drugs come across the legitimate ports of entry along the Mexico border,' said Mike Vigil, who previously headed international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration and served in the agency for three decades.

'American citizens are primarily the ones who distribute it,' he said.

Trump is also taking a leap when he says Tren de Aragua, an international gang from Venezuela, is perpetrating this drug trafficking off its coast, according to Vigil.

Yet the administration shows no signs of halting the strikes, even as the 60-day legal deadline for U.S. leaders to declare war or cease the extrajudicial attacks approaches. Trump has repeatedly hinted that he plans to engage in future strikes on land in Venezuela.

In January, sealing the Venezuela-U.S. pact meant six Americans detained in the country would be freed in exchange for hundreds of Venezuelan migrants whom the Trump administration said belonged to Tren de Aragua.

It marked the first time in years that a U.S. official met face-to-face with Maduro, a protege of strongman Hugo Chávez. After what international observers say was a rigged 2024 vote, Maduro is in his 12th year as president.

Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany who served as an intelligence official in Trump’s first term, sought to extract economic wins from Maduro, in line with Trump’s dealmaking style in Ukraine and Gaza.

Grenell continued talks with Maduro’s government through the summer, analysts and people close to the administration say. Grenell had negotiated an opening of Venezuela’s oil sector in exchange for allowing Maduro to keep his post, according to Francisco Monaldi, director of the Baker Institute’s Latin America Energy Program.

Maduro 'offered everything,' Trump told reporters on Oct.17.

The deal clinched by Grenell didn’t meet the mark for Rubio, who has long reviled Maduro for his ties to Cuba and refusal to sever economic ties to Russia and China. Rubio’s rejection of Maduro’s oil concessions upset U.S. energy interests eager to tap Venezuelan reserves. Three people with knowledge of those interests said there was consternation among insiders that forcing Maduro out could foment chaos and unrest, and impede their access.