Four days since US President Donald Trump’s most strident military move yet, the gulf grows between his claim that the United States will “run” Venezuela and the reality of a continued dictatorship on the ground.
In the weeks to come, there is a risk for the White House that its brutal flourish of US power in the early hours of Saturday is undermined by a failure to follow through – a potential strategic defeat snatched from the jaws of a spectacular but short-lived win.
In a matter of minutes during Saturday’s press conference, Trump’s flex of American might flip-flopped from asserting US control over Caracas to moments later conceding that the vehicle for this was the presumed cooperation of Nicolás Maduro’s longtime deputy, Delcy Rodriguez, who has since been sworn in as acting president.
At present, the mechanism of American influence, at least in public, appears to consist of occasional phone calls from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, backed by the lumbering muscle of the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier and other Navy assets.
The initial military assault was startling, but the “takeover” has so far been an anticlimax, one that relies on Rodriguez to embrace the role of overnight quisling and colonialist stooge. Publicly, she did the opposite, demanding Maduro’s release and expressing outrage, only on Sunday hinting that “cooperation” with the US might follow.
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