Weekly Report - 08 January 2026 (WR-26-01)

The significance of events can often be diluted by hyperbole, but it is no exaggeration to describe the US decision to mount a military operation to seize Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, as a seminal moment. Not since Panama’s dictator Manuel Noriega was extracted by US troops in 1990 - also on 3 January - has the US staged any comparable military intervention in Latin America. This will send shockwaves through the region and beyond. Widely reviled in Latin America as providing justification for unilateral interventionism by the US, and assertion of hegemony in its backyard, the Monroe Doctrine is very much alive and kicking again as a central tenet of US foreign policy. Venezuela’s future is unclear but the US government plans to use coercion to compel the Bolivarian regime, shorn of its leader, to do its bidding, focusing, in the short-term at least, on oil rather than restoring democracy.