The Geopolitics of Maduro’s Capture: China’s Future in Latin America Following Operation Absolute Resolve

When the Trump administration published its National Security Strategy (NSS) in December 2025, it ignited a debate about the extent to which the document would guide U.S. strategy. While the NSS is often a statement of intention and envisages the world U.S. administrations would like to see, this NSS’s emphasis on the Western Hemisphere as a strategic priority for the United States heralded the profound shifts currently underway in U.S. foreign policy. And less than one month after the document’s release, President Trump launched Operation Absolute Resolve, an extraordinary military operation to capture the erstwhile Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, whisking them to the United States to face charges of drug trafficking and weapons possession stemming from a 2020 indictment.

The daring gambit, which reminded the world that Trump has a knack for using force in surprising ways, was a dramatic display of power in the United States’ own neighborhood, while the tactical success and the flawless execution of the operation itself surely rank among the annals of special operations lore.

Although the strongman was the prime target of the U.S. snatch-and-grab operation, China, too, was one of its principal audiences. Contrary to what some commentators have maintained, China is also one of the biggest losers in the aftermath of the raid. Operation Absolute Resolve sent a powerful message to Beijing that the United States is, in fact, serious about the competitive instincts contained in the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Ultimately, the Trump administration hopes to preside over a reduction in China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere and an increase in U.S. strategic solvency following decades of neglect in its own shared neighborhood—primarily through economic statecraft, maneuvering, and even coercion, but also through military means if necessary.

What China Lost

The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine introduced in the NSS emphasizes the “potent restoration of American power and priorities” in the Western Hemisphere. The Corollary sounds familiar to Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, which declared that “flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence” would bring the United States “to the exercise of an international police power” in the region. The positive references to Roosevelt in the document, combined with the fact that the Trump Corollary led the NSS’s sections on regional approaches, presaged more muscular engagement in the Western Hemisphere.

Beijing appeared to take note. Less than one week after the NSS, China released its Third Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean—its first update to a policy paper on the region in eight years. The paper emphasizes a comprehensive and robust strategy for challenging the United States (and Taiwan) in the Western Hemisphere, extending its signature Belt and Road, Global Governance, Development, Security, and Civilization initiatives, and generally not giving an inch to the United States in its own neighborhood. After what transpired last week, China may need to recalibrate some of its thinking on the Western Hemisphere.

As a means of accentuating its strategy, the Maduro capture served notice that the United States was not only back in the Western Hemisphere, but that it would not hesitate to cross a previously established line regarding major kinetic action, at least in South America. To be sure, the United States intervened throughout Central America and the Caribbean during the twentieth century, but in South America, even the exigencies of the Cold War led it not to overt military operations but rather support for anti-communist military regimes.

The operation to capture Maduro was intended to lay to rest doubts about Trump’s seriousness of purpose to leverage hard power and threats of its use to reconstitute U.S. preeminence in the Western Hemisphere. To quote a former official on the failure of past policy toward Maduro: “This moment offers a chance to prove that hard power can deliver outcomes where diplomacy and sanctions failed and to reshape the terms of debate over U.S. leadership in the hemisphere.”

The predawn raid reminds regional governments that the relative disengagement of past administrations from Latin America—Republican and Democrat alike—was a deliberate choice as opposed to a constraint built into U.S. foreign policy. The region’s relatively muted response, and even the open celebration in some capitals, recalls that there are few good options for strong opposition to the exercise of determined U.S. power.

It is likely that no other operations in history featured a de facto head of state taken prisoner in his own compound, read his Miranda rights, and exfiltrated without any in the capturing force killed in action. Indeed, China doubted the possibility of any U.S. action against Venezuela, with the Chinese Communist Party undertaking a viral propaganda campaign insisting that Trump was bluffing about the use of military force. Fundamentally, a U.S. operation of this complexity and success partly dispels China’s narrative of the United States as a nation in inexorable decline with a political establishment riven by divisions and unable to take decisive action.

Furthermore, the military buildup in the southern Caribbean and the operation itself have likely quashed any concerns about Chinese basing in the region for the time being, where, for example, U.S. concerns over key maritime chokeholds led to increased scrutiny of Chinese plans to build a “polar logistics facility” in Argentina, or even its leveraging of dual-use infrastructure such as ports for military operations involving the PLA navy. For a period of time, China may hesitate to offer Latin American governments anything that could be highly strategic in nature, such as security and technology investments. Beyond basing and ports, this reticence could implicate cooperation on space stations or even espionage infrastructure, such as the kind of signals intelligence posts maintained by China in Cuba. Following Operation Absolute Resolve, it is tough to imagine a repeat of recent Chinese war games, which involved simulated operations around Cuba and other Western Hemisphere hotspots.

There are also major energy implications for China—none of them positive. Rather than pushing for full-blown regime change, the United States has left significant remnants of the Maduro regime in place but is demanding pro-U.S. policies. Previously, China was the destination for approximately 80 percent of Venezuela’s sanctioned oil exports, receiving its heavy crude at a steep discount in exchange for repayment of billions in debt. Venezuela was the largest single recipient of Chinese loans in Latin America, and it retains just under $20 billion in debt outstanding, which is China’s largest single-country loan backed by commodities. The U.S. quarantine of ghost fleet tankers commenced in December 2025, already throttling exports to China, which imports about 11 million barrels per day for its energy needs, much of it by sea.

Some reports indicate the United States has reportedly demanded that interim president Delcy Rodríguez cease oil exports to China, and the recent management structure outlined by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright would place the United States in charge of selling sanctioned Venezuelan oil at market value and ensuring the sales benefit the Venezuelan people. In other words, the United States is now positioned to determine who receives Venezuelan crude.

On the other hand, President Trump extended an olive branch to China and vowed oil sales could continue, but this should also be understood as a source of leverage. Slightly less than 5 percent of China’s crude imports come from Venezuela. If China does not receive Venezuela’s crude, loans to the country could fall further into arrears, and Beijing would be forced to backfill lost Venezuelan crude with imports from other countries. China’s imports would also be more expensive given the sizable discounts previously associated with the import of sanctioned Venezuelan crude.

In sum, the Trump administration has managed to disrupt—and likely prompt an entire rethink—of China’s energy security in the Americas via Operation Absolute Resolve and its resulting aftermath. (In a more far-reaching scenario, China may have to rethink some of its critical import reliance in Latin America writ large). This comes on top of several regional trade deals announced by the Trump administration, where tariff reductions were granted partly in exchange for reducing commerce with China.

Sundering Venezuela’s alliances with the “axis of authoritarians,” too, will reap dividends for the United States and begin to rewire some of the region’s geopolitics. The Trump administration has demanded that interim authorities remove official advisers, spies, and other officials from China, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and even North Korea who found a warm welcome from the Maduro regime; for China and Russia, Venezuela (and Cuba) is a key access point to the Caribbean for staging military exercises and threatening the U.S. homeland. More than just reducing China’s presence and circumscribing any future role in Venezuela, however, the U.S. operation was another critical display—akin to Operation Midnight Hammer, which degraded Iran’s nuclear infrastructure—of the emptiness of the axis of authoritarians on existential questions of regime security. For the second time in eight months, China’s diplomatic assurances—first to Iran, then to Venezuela—resulted in zero meaningful protection. After all, Maduro had pleaded for months with China (and Russia and Iran) for greater assistance as the United States built its current force posture in the southern Caribbean. But despite having an “all-weather strategic partnership” with China, he was met with appeals to “political solidarity” by the Foreign Ministers of China (and Russia) and reminders that Venezuela lacks formal treaties of mutual assistance on defense matters.

The fortuitous timing of Operation Absolute Resolve exacerbated Beijing’s embarrassment. As if to punctuate the message, the last foreign official Maduro met with before his capture was Qiu Xiaoqi, the Chinese special envoy for Latin America, whose delegation did not manage to depart Caracas before the operation commenced. Other countries, such as Venezuela’s ideological bedfellows Cuba and Nicaragua, which serve as beachheads for the axis of authoritarians in the region, received a similar message: an unequivocal sign that Trump would pursue heretofore inconceivable actions to shape the security environment in the U.S. interest. Overall, Operation Absolute Resolve was a powerful demonstration of China’s limitations in the region, highlighting the limits of its ability and willingness to support fellow authoritarian states, and serving as a reality check on China’s self-image as a global player. “All-weather strategic partners” everywhere have a reason to question China’s role—at least in matters of regime security.

Such unqualified operational success should also augur well for the Trump administration’s drive to extend security cooperation to as many countries as possible in the Western Hemisphere. The NSS declared an intent to “expand and enlist” partners ready to cooperate on security, defense, and counternarcotics. In recent years, China has attempted to play its own role in these areas through the “Safe Cities” initiative (involving surveillance technology) and its Global Security Initiative. Highly notable during Operation Absolute Resolve, however, were the failures of Venezuela’s expensive Chinese and Russian defense systems, including air defense systems and radar arrays supposedly capable of detecting U.S. military aircraft. Venezuela was the largest purchaser of Chinese military equipment in Latin America.

The display of U.S. military and technological superiority was not lost on the region, as this equipment did nothing to impede the operation, further solidifying the United States’ preferred partner status and likely engendering a boom in sales for U.S. defense contractors. It was also not lost on adversaries. An ongoing Russian propaganda campaign to discredit the performance of U.S. equipment suggests that China and Russia understand the military takeaways from Operation Absolute Resolve. And as yet unconfirmed reporting on the use of a sonic weapon during the operation also sends the message that adversaries are potentially unprepared for countering the United States within their current frameworks. Indeed, the gap between high-end and low-end militaries is widening in the region, and many low-end militaries in the Western Hemisphere will desire to train with, learn from, and buy from the United States to rapidly fill these gaps.

Placing Beijing on Notice

Some observers have fretted that Operation Absolute Resolve could backfire if it gives China (and Russia) free rein to pursue similar strategies and otherwise act outside international rules and norms. However, capability—or lack thereof, in this case—combined with deterrence, is more likely to determine whether China (and Russia) pursues a similar strategy of leadership decapitation against Taiwan, for instance. A recent CSIS analysis concluded that China could not pull off a leadership decapitation operation against Taiwan, and cast doubt that Operation Absolute Resolve will cause China to increase its aggression in its near abroad. In Russia’s case, the country intended a leadership decapitation with special operations forces in the opening days of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but Ukraine’s defense forces rebuffed the attempt.

Of course, China will continue to pursue its multifaceted, long-term strategy in the Western Hemisphere, leveraging its familiar economic tools to open doors. That will not change—China has too much to lose in the region. But Beijing will have to recalibrate and think more carefully about U.S. redlines, how much it wants to support other embattled regimes in the region, and contemplate a wider Overton window of U.S. responses. Regarding one of China’s top foreign policy objectives—vitiating and reducing U.S. power—Beijing will have a harder time in the Western Hemisphere in the short- and medium-term. Instead, China will be forced to take the Trump Corollary more seriously with respect to its partnerships and economic offers to the region, knowing these packages will be under intense scrutiny from Washington. CSIS expert Jon Alterman predicts that “Xi will try to ensure that the specter of an unconstrained United States creates anxiety throughout the Global South (and among the BRICS+ grouping).” Yet China’s support for Venezuela is part and parcel of its broader vision of multipolarity, where countries like Venezuela and the Global South generally play a larger role in the world, and is shorthand for a world in which the United States is less dominant. While countries may worry privately, few countries in the Western Hemisphere will feel empowered to take bold steps away from the United States for fear of the repercussions, and especially openly and toward China as the alternative.

Recent military action so soon after the NSS’s release demonstrates that the second Trump administration and its NSS have set the tone and direction for its foreign policy in its own neighborhood. Operation Absolute Resolve signals that the United States is willing to use force to interrupt Chinese-aligned governments in the shared neighborhood. The Trump Corollary is thus more than mere bluster; rather, it is the administration’s formulation of an answer to competition with China in the Western Hemisphere that seeks to shape the region and create greater alignment with the United States. The Trump Corollary is also a powerful sign that the Trump administration sees the Western Hemisphere as an exception to its general distaste for the long history of U.S. intervention around the world. Nothing could be a more vivid display of that truth than the stunning nature of Operation Absolute Resolve, capturing one of the region’s most destabilizing strongmen.

Ryan C. Berg is director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.