Who’s Really Running Venezuela?

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

Delcy Rodriguez sworn in as acting president of Venezuela - Photo: MSN

As the Senate voted to advance a War Powers Resolution on Venezuela on January 8th, Republican Senator Susan Collins declared that she did not agree with “a sustained engagement “running” Venezuela.”

The world was mystified when President Trump first said that the United States would “run” Venezuela. He then made it clear that he wants to control Venezuela by imposing a U.S. monopoly on foreign oil operations in Venezuela and marketing its oil to the rest of the world, to trap the Venezuelan government in a subservient relationship with the United States.

The U.S. Energy Department published a plan to sell Venezuelan oil already seized by the United States and then to use the same system for future Venezuelan oil exports. The U.S. would dictate how the revenues are divided between the U.S. and Venezuela, and continue this form of control indefinitely. Trump is meeting with U.S. oil company executives on Friday, January 9th, to discuss his plans.

Trump’s original plan would have cut off Venezuela’s trade with China, Russia, Iran and Cuba, and forced it to spend its oil revenues on goods and services from the United States. This new form of economic colonialism would also prevent Venezuela from continuing to spend the bulk of its oil revenues on its generous system of social spending, which has lifted millions of Venezuelans out of poverty.

However, on January 7th, the New York Times reported that Venezuela has other plans. “Venezuela’s state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, confirmed for the first time that it was negotiating the “sale” of crude oil to the United States,” the Times reported. “This process is being developed under frameworks similar to those currently in effect with international companies, such as Chevron, and is based on a strictly commercial transaction,” the oil company’s statement said.

By January 8th, the U.S. had already backed down on some of its more extreme demands. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox Business Network, “I think you will probably see some long-term involvement of China in Venezuela. As long as …America is the dominant force there, the rule of law (sic), the United States controls oil flow. That will be fine…In that framework, where Venezuela’s main partner … is the United States, can there be commerce with China? Sure.”

Trump has threatened further military action to remove acting president Delcy Rodriguez from office if she does not comply with U.S. plans for Venezuela. But Trump has already bowed to reality in his decision to cooperate with Rodriguez, recognizing that Maria Corina Machado, the previous U.S. favorite, does not have popular support. The very presence of Delcy Rodriguez as acting president exposes the failure of Trump’s regime change operation and his well-grounded reluctance to unleash yet another catastrophic and unwinnable war.

After the U.S. invasion and abduction of President Maduro on January 3rd, Delcy Rodriguez was sworn in as Acting President, reaffirming her loyalty to President Maduro and taking charge of running the country in his absence. But who is Delcy Rodriguez, and how is she likely to govern Venezuela? As a compliant and coerced U.S. puppet, or as the leader of an undefeated and independent Venezuela?

Delcy Rodriguez was seven years old in 1976, when her father was tortured and beaten to death as a political prisoner in Venezuela. Jorge Antonio Rodriguez was the 34-year-old co-founder of the Socialist League, a leftist political party, whom the government accused of a leading role in the kidnapping of William Niehous, a suspected CIA officer working under cover as an Owens Corning executive.

Jorge Rodríguez was arrested and died in state custody after interrogation by Venezuelan intelligence agents. While the official cause of death was listed as a heart attack, his autopsy found that he had suffered severe injuries consistent with torture, including seven broken ribs, a collapsed chest, and a detached liver.

Delcy studied law in Caracas and Paris and became a labor lawyer, while her older brother Jorge became a psychiatrist. Delcy and her mother, Delcy Gomez, were in London during the failed U.S.-backed coup in Venezuela in 2003, and they denounced the coup from the Venezuelan embassy in interviews with the BBC and CNN.

Delcy and her older brother Jorge soon joined Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian government, and rose to a series of senior positions under Chavez and then Maduro: Delcy served as Foreign Minister from 2014 to 2017, and Economy and Finance Minister from 2020 to 2024, as well as Oil Minister and Vice President; Jorge was Vice President for a year under Chavez and then Mayor of Caracas for 8 years.

On January 5th 2026, it fell to Jorge, now the president of the National Assembly, to swear in his sister as acting president, after the illegal U.S. invasion and abduction of President Maduro. Delcy Rodriguez told her people and the world,

“I come as the executive vice president of the constitutional president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro Moros, to take the oath of office. I come with pain for the suffering that has been caused to the Venezuelan people after an illegitimate military aggression against our homeland. I come with pain for the kidnapping of two heroes who are being held hostage in the United States of America, President Nicolas Maduro and the first combatant, first lady of our country, Cilia Flores. I come with pain, but I must say that I also come with honor to swear in the name of all Venezuelans. I come to swear by our father, liberator Simon Bolivar.”

In other public statements, acting president Rodriguez has struck a fine balance between fierce assertions of Venezuela’s independence and a pragmatic readiness to cooperate peacefully with the United States.

On January 3rd, Delcy Rodriguez declared that Venezuela would “never again be anyone’s colony.” However, after chairing her first cabinet meeting the next day, she said that Venezuela was looking for a “balanced and respectful” relationship with the United States. She went on to say, “We extend an invitation to the government of the U.S. to work jointly on an agenda of cooperation, aimed at shared development, within the framework of international law, and that strengthens lasting peaceful coexistence,”

In a direct message to Trump, Rodriguez wrote, “President Donald Trump: our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war. That has always been President Nicolás Maduro’s conviction and it is that of all Venezuela at this moment. This is the Venezuela I believe in and to which I have dedicated my life. My dream is for Venezuela to become a great power where all decent Venezuelans can come together. Venezuela has the right to peace, development, sovereignty and a future.”

Alan McPherson, who chairs the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy at Temple University in the U.S., calls Delcy Rodriguez “a pragmatist who helped stabilize the Venezuelan economy in recent times.” However, speaking to Al Jazeera, he cautioned that any perceived humiliation by the Trump administration or demands seen as excessive could “backfire and end the cooperation,” making the relationship a “difficult balance to achieve.”

After the U.S.invasion on January 3rd, at least a dozen oil tankers set sail from Venezuela with their location transponders turned off, carrying 12 million barrels of oil, mostly to China, effectively breaking the U.S. blockade. But then, on January 7th, U.S. forces boarded and seized two more oil tankers with links to Venezuela, one in the Caribbean and a Russian one in the north Atlantic that they had been tracking for some time, making it clear that Trump is still intent on selectively enforcing the U.S. blockade.

Chevron has recalled American employees to work in Venezuela and resumed normal shipments to U.S. refineries after a four-day pause. But other U.S. oil companies are not eager to charge into Venezuela, where Trump’s actions have so far only increased the political risks for any new U.S. investments, amid a global surplus of oil supplies, low prices, and a world transitioning to cleaner, renewable energy.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice is scrambling to make a case against President Maduro, after Trump’s lawless war plan led to Maduro’s illegal arrest as the leader of a non-existent drug cartel in a foreign country where U.S. domestic law does not apply. In his first court appearance in New York, Maduro identified himself as the president of Venezuela and a prisoner of war.

Continuing to seize ships at sea and trying to shake down Venezuela for control of its oil revenues are not the “balanced and respectful” relationship that Delcy Rodriguez and the government of Venezuela are looking for, and the U.S. position is not as strong as Trump and Rubio’s threats suggest. Under the influence of neocons like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, Trump has marched the U.S. to the brink of a war in Latin America that very few Americans support and that most of the world is united against.

Mutual respect and cooperation with Rodriguez and other progressive Latin American leaders, like Lula in Brazil, Gustavo Petro in Colombia and Mexico’s Claudia Scheinbaum, offer Trump face-saving ways out of the ever-escalating crisis that he and his clueless advisers have blundered into.

Trump has an eminently viable alternative to being manipulated into war by Marco Rubio: what the Chinese like to call “win-win cooperation.” Most Americans would favor that over the zero-sum game of hegemonic imperialism into which Rubio and Trump are draining our hard-earned tax dollars.

The main obstacle to the peaceful cooperation that Trump says he wants is his own blind belief in U.S. militarism and military supremacy. He wants to redirect U.S. imperialism away from Europe, Asia and Africa toward Latin America, but this is no more winnable or any more legitimate under international law, and it’s just as unpopular with the American people.

If anything, there is greater public opposition to U.S aggression “in our backyard” than to U.S. wars 10,000 miles away. Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia are our close neighbors, and the consequences of plunging them into violence and chaos are more obvious to most Americans than the equally appalling human costs of more distant U.S. wars.

Trump understands that endless war is unpopular, but he still seems to believe that he can get away with “one and done” operations like bombing Iran and kidnapping President Maduro and his first lady. These attacks, however, have only solved imaginary problems – Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons and Maduro’s non-existent drug cartel – while exacerbating long-standing regional crises that U.S policy is largely responsible for, and which have no military solutions.

Dealing with Trump is a difficult challenge for Delcy Rodriguez and other Latin American leaders, but they should all understand by now that caving to Trump or letting him pick them off one by one is a path to ruin. The world must stand together to deter aggression and defend the basic principles and rules of the UN Charter, under which all countries agree to settle disputes peacefully and not to threaten or use military force against each other. Any chance for a more peaceful world depends on finally starting to take those commitments seriously, as Trump’s predecessors also failed to do.

There is a growing movement organizing nationwide protests to tell Trump that the American people reject his wars and threats of war against our neighbors in Latin America and around the world. This is a critical moment to raise your voice and help to turn the tide against endless war.

Take action for Venezuela NOW!

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Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, now in a revised, updated 2nd edition.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.