The Trump administration will leave the mundane matters of running Venezuela to its remaining leaders, a senior official said, as White House officials begin to espouse more hawkish goals for American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. In the immediate hours and days following a bold U.S. military and law enforcement operation in Caracas to arrest Nicolás Maduro and remove him from power, President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other administration officials offered conflicting views of who was running Venezuela. Trump twice assured reporters he and his team were calling the shots, with Maduro in a Brooklyn detention facility. “It means we're in charge,” the president told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday evening when asked to clarify who was running things in the Venezuelan capital. But Rubio and others in the administration were more circumspect in their assessments. “The president is speaking about exerting maximum leverage with the remaining elements in Venezuela and ensuring they cooperate with the United States by halting illegal migration, stopping drug flows, revitalizing oil infrastructure and doing what is right for the Venezuelan people,” a senior administration official said in an email. The official was responding to questions about how far down the scale of governance the American arm had reached and whether the remnants of Maduro’s governing apparatus or officials in Washington were handling the less-glamorous parts of ruling the country. That list included: routine financial decisions; repairing potholes; releasing funds; and signing off on proposals from Venezuelan government agencies. The senior official’s reply seemed to suggest that interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez and other Venezuelan officials were keeping their country operational. A close Trump adviser offered a more candid assessment during a Monday evening television interview that revealed a new U.S. foreign policy approach that sent ripple waves across the world. “By definition, we are in charge because we have the United States military stationed outside the country. We set the terms and conditions. We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce,” White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller told CNN, referring to a still-in-place naval deployment off the Venezuelan coast. “So, for them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission. So the United States is in charge. The United States is running the country during this transition period,” Miller said. “Now, obviously, that doesn't mean that President Trump is setting the bus fare schedule inside the country. … It doesn't mean that President Trump is assigning the key to the whole curriculum in the country.” U.S. officials on Wednesday said American forces had seized two sanctioned tanker ships linked to Venezuela. That followed Trump's announcement on social media Tuesday night that "Interim Authorities in Venezuela" would turn over between 30 million and 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S. Asked about Trump's claim that he is running two countries at once, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday described the administration as working in "close coordination" with the remaining government in Caracas. "The Trump administration, led by Secretary Rubio, the vice president, and the president's entire national security team, is in close correspondence with the interim authorities in Venezuela. We obviously have maximum leverage over the interim authorities in Venezuela," she said at a news briefing. "Right now, the president has made it very clear that this is a country within ... the Western Hemisphere, close by the United States, that is no longer going to be sending illegal drugs to the United States of America. It's no longer going to be sending and trafficking illegal people in criminal cartels to kill American citizens, as they have in the past. ... And their decisions are going to continue to be dictated by the United States." Miller’s description clarified a rather murky governance arrangement offered Sunday by Rubio on CBS' “Face the Nation" when asked about Trump's remark that the U.S. would "run" Venezuela. “We expect to see that there will be changes — not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking, so that we no longer have these gang problems … and that they no longer cozy up to Hezbollah and Iran in our own hemisphere," he said. As the governance picture began to clear up by midweek, so, too, did the Trump administration’s vision for the Western Hemisphere. “We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time,” Miller said, later declaring that it “has been the formal position of the U.S. government since the beginning of this administration — frankly, going back into the previous Trump administration — that Greenland should be part of the United States.” The typically-blunt Miller also appeared to float a new Trump administration foreign policy under which America could continue its military muscle-flexing in the hemisphere. “The United States should have Greenland as part of the United States. There's no need to even think or talk about this in the context that you're asking of a military operation,” Miller told CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.” Leavitt on Tuesday evening wrote on social media that Trump administration officials were studying options to acquire Greenland, including via the use of military force. Senior European, Greenlandic and Danish officials have for years rejected the notion that the island was for sale or that it should become an American territory, which they reiterated in a Wednesday statement. ‘Donroe Doctrine’ Trump on Sunday set off alarm bells among Democratic lawmakers, some foreign policy experts and government watchdogs by floating something of a Western Hemisphere hit list that included Greenland, Cuba, Colombia and Mexico. “You have to do something with Mexico. Mexico has to get their act together because they're pouring through Mexico, and we're gonna have to do something,” he told reporters. “We'd love Mexico to do it. They're capable of doing it, but unfortunately, their cartels are very strong in Mexico.” On Greenland, he asked reporters to give him “20 days” before questioning him again about a possible takeover. And he predicted that “Cuba is ready to fall,” perhaps without U.S. intervention — though he has not ruled that out. "Who said diplomacy isn't taking place behind the scenes?" Leavitt said Wednesday when asked why Trump was not seeking a negotiated arrangement for Greenland. Meantime, House Foreign Affairs ranking member Gregory W. Meeks hit out at the administration Tuesday, saying Trump had arrested Maduro “not to address an imminent threat to the United States, nor to advance a democratic transition in Venezuela." “Instead, the administration is embracing a dangerous worldview in which the United States can run roughshod over our hemisphere, mirroring the same logic [Russian President] Vladimir Putin uses to justify domination over his neighbors,” the New York Democrat said in a statement. “We are a country of laws, and this president’s blatant disregard for both domestic and international law is reckless and dangerous.” Robert Weissman, co-president of the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a Jan. 3 statement that the administration’s Venezuela operation and rhetoric echoed "the imperial arrogance of the United States after the invasion of Iraq and may well foretell a comparable disaster.” “Trump is embracing both a resource imperialism and regime change mentality that the American people overwhelmingly reject — for good reason. Trump seems to think that Venezuelan oil belongs to the United States,” Weissman said. “In invoking the Monroe Doctrine, or a ‘much bigger’ ‘Donroe Doctrine,’ he explicitly embraces a lawless, immoral and dangerous claim that the United States has a right to dominate the Western Hemisphere by force.” Trump on Tuesday offered the world a warning during remarks in Washington at a House GOP policy retreat. “The United States proved, once again, that we have the most powerful, most lethal, most sophisticated and most fearsome — it’s a fearsome military — on planet Earth,” Trump said of the Venezuela operation. “And it’s not even close. And I’ve been saying it for a long time: Nobody can take us. Nobody.” A veteran of Trump's first term said more is coming. “While the administration’s actions in Venezuela have shocked the world and sent a strong message to US rivals in Beijing, Moscow, Havana, and Tehran, they are likely only the starting point for a longer-term and more comprehensive reappraisal of US core interests in the hemisphere and the means to achieve them,” Alexander Gray, a former National Security Council chief of staff, wrote for the Atlantic Council think tank. “The Trump administration has a unique opportunity, built around … its audacious Venezuela operation, to reimagine the contours of U.S. hemispheric defense for years to come.”
