How could Trump

America’s greatest strategic adversaries quickly condemned President Trump’s decision to order United States attacks against Venezuela and the raid on capture the now former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. China, Russia and Iran called it a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty and international law. Cuba, just south of the United States and a close ally of Caracas, also condemned the attack as President Trump predicted its decisions could lead to the collapse of the government in Havana.

As all of those countries had maintained close economic and political ties with the Maduro regime, the dramatic unilateral action by the United States is likely to have some impact on them, and while that impact may not be financially tremendous in all cases, the message sent by Trump could be just as important.

“What I think is clear is that we are entering a new phase of great power competition,” Ryan C. Berg, director of the Americas Program and head of the Venezuela Future Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told News themezone. “Some of the rules, some of the unthinkable things, some of the things we wouldn’t have imagined would be part of the operation before, are now on the table as options.”

A test of China’s foothold in America as it threatens Taiwan

China, which buys most of Venezuela’s oil, said it was “deeply shocked” by the weekend attacks and the ouster of Maduro, and the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said the United States had “clearly violated international law” with its actions.

“We have never believed that any country can act as the world’s police, nor do we accept that any nation can claim to be the world’s judge,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday, citing “sudden events in Venezuela” without explicitly mentioning the US.

“The sovereignty and security of all countries must be fully protected by international law,” he said, speaking for the first time since Maduro’s capture by US special forces.

China’s official foreign policy is broadly based on a position of neutrality when it comes to foreign conflicts, and despite Beijing’s continued economic support for Venezuela and unbreakable political ties amid the standoff between Caracas and Washington, some analysts say China is unlikely to intervene directly.

“There is not much material support that China can offer Venezuela at the moment, but rhetorically, Beijing will be very important as it leads the effort at the UN and with other developing countries to generate opinion against the United States,” Eric Olander, co-founder of the China-Global South Project, told the Reuters news agency. “What we have seen in the cases of Zimbabwe and Iran, both sanctioned by the West, is China demonstrating its commitment to these relationships through trade and investment, even in difficult circumstances.”

But that economic link was probably much more vital to the geopolitically isolated Maduro regime than to China.

China’s purchases have amounted to a whopping 80% of Venezuela’s relatively insignificant total oil exports, which according to Reuters amounted to less than a million barrels per day during 2025 (compared to around 3 million barrels per day 25 years ago). According to Reuters, Venezuelan exports accounted for only about 4% of the oil China has bought in recent years.

But Berg said that even if President Trump gets American oil companies to move in and start rebuilding Venezuela’s decrepit infrastructure to boost production, there are still financial implications for Beijing.

“The big question that is still unknown at this point is whether all of that production, and especially any increased production in Venezuela that may occur, will make it to the United States or whether it will be sold in international markets,” Berg told News themezone. “Remember, Venezuela was sending about 80% of its oil to China. Much of that was to pay off debt. If China suddenly doesn’t receive that 80% of Venezuela’s exports, it is not only losing energy security, but also in a situation where Venezuela is no longer paying its debts.”

“There is a huge risk for China that some of its energy security will actually be redirected away from China to the United States or to other markets because of this game in Venezuela,” Berg said. “China has a way to make up for what Venezuela represented, but it won’t be easy, especially since the United States is simultaneously squeezing Iran, one of its other major sources of oil.”

On the non-economic front, there are also concerns that Chinese President Xi Jinping could use Trump’s move as justification to launch his own unilateral military action, with an invasion of Taiwanthe US-backed democratic island off the coast of mainland China.

Taiwan punches well above its weight economically thanks to its close ties to the West and as the world’s largest producer of advanced semiconductors for artificial intelligence and weapons.

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has reiterated his policy of unifying China with Taiwan and has never ruled out the use of force to achieve it.

Russia condemns “destabilizing” actions four years after its invasion of Ukraine

In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin had yet to issue any public comments on the U.S. attack on Venezuela as of Tuesday, but former President Dmitry Medvedev, who often broadcasts the Kremlin’s talking points, said Washington’s actions were “illegal” and “destabilizing.”

Medvedev also said, however, that the measures ordered by Trump were in defense of the national interests of the United States, given that Venezuela’s vast proven oil reserves.

“It must be recognized that, despite the obvious illegality of Trump’s behavior, a certain consistency in his actions cannot be denied,” Medvedev said, according to the Russian state news agency TASS. “He and his team defend the national interests of their country quite harshly.”

Berg said the U.S. operation in Venezuela supports a philosophy held by the Russian government, which launched the ongoing war in Ukraine with its large-scale invasion of the resource-rich eastern part of the neighboring country nearly four years ago.

“For a long time, the Russians have considered themselves a great power, and in their view, great powers get exclusive spheres of influence to behave however they want. I think that guides a lot of their behavior in Eurasia, and certainly in Ukraine. And I think they think the same way about the United States,” Berg said.

Berg said Russia uses its relationships in what it perceives as other great powers’ spheres of influence to show its strength.

“Every time they are willing to carry out aggression in the European theater, it is almost like clockwork, they have a major political official travel to Latin America and the Caribbean,” Berg said.

Russia did this before its invasion of Georgia in 2008, for example, when then-President Dmitry Medvedev visited Venezuela and Russia held joint naval exercises with Venezuelan forces. It was the first major deployment of a Russian fleet to the region since the end of the Cold War.

Meanwhile, when Russian forces took control of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, Putin visited Brazil and met with Maduro and other Latin American leaders. Then, in a visit that ended less than a week before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov visited Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.

These were all “important diplomatic visits to Latin America that were intended to show visibility to the United States and presaged aggression in the European theater,” Berg said.

Iran faces protests under threat from Trump

Iranian government forces have been trying to quell protests against the country’s rulers for 10 days, the largest unrest to hit the country since 2022. So far, at least 29 protesters have died in clashes with security personnel, the U.S.-based Human Rights News Agency group said Monday.

Trump said last week that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, as is its custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” warning that his administration was “locked, loaded and ready to go.”

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed that Iran “will not give in to the enemy” and reiterated the common claim that the United States and Israel were behind the anti-government unrest.

But for some Iranians, desperate to see an end to more than four decades of rule by hardline Islamic clerics, the US action against Venezuela has fueled hopes that Trump could use similar pressure tactics against his own authoritarian leadership.

“I think a lot of Iranians will be inspired by that (message), they have been inspired by that,” Maziar Bahari, editor of the Iranian news site IranWire, told News themezone on Saturday. “The message has made the Iranian regime more careful with its actions and with the use of violence against the people.”

“I don’t think (the protests) will lead to the overthrow of the regime, because there is no alternative in sight,” Bahari said. “But there will be some change in the regime’s actions, changes in the regime’s decisions, especially after President Trump’s message.”

Protests across Iran were echoed in London over the weekend, where a protester who said she would like to see the country’s former Western-backed monarchy restored told News themezone she hoped Trump’s action in Venezuela would send a signal to Tehran.

“What is happening in Venezuela is a kind of warning for the Islamic Republic. That is the message from the United States or Israel: ‘That will happen to you, Khamenei.’ That’s the message,” said the protester, who only gave her first name, Ghazal.

Asked if he believed people defying Iran’s security forces to protest might also be looking to Venezuela and hoping for similar action in their own nation, Ghazal reiterated his optimism.

“Something will definitely change and the Islamic Republic will fall very soon,” he said.

Trump says that “Cuba seems to be about to fall”

A day after the US operation in Venezuela, Trump predicted to reporters on Air Force One that Cuba’s 67-year-old communist government could soon collapse as a result of the operation.

“Cuba appears ready to fall,” Trump said Sunday. “I don’t know if they’re going to hold out, but Cuba doesn’t have any income. They got all their income from Venezuela, from Venezuelan oil.”

“What President Trump was referring to is actually the collapse of the internal regime,” Berg said, emphasizing that Cuba is “going through one of the worst times it has had since the 1990s,” when the Soviet Union dissolved, taking with it its support for the Caribbean island nation.

“I would imagine that one of the demands of the new Venezuelan government would be to cut off shipments of barrels of oil to Cuba, some of which is used to meet domestic demand within Cuba, but also a large portion shipped and sold to other markets for profit,” Berg told News themezone. “If that support runs out, Cuba will be in an even more difficult position.”

Maduro was an important economic and political partner of Cuba, and the Havana government said that 32 Cuban citizens died in the US operation in Venezuela, security forces who were there serving at Venezuela’s request.

“For that sister nation and for its people, we are willing to give, as for Cuba, our own blood,” the Cuban government said in a statement on Saturday, condemning the US operation. The Cuban government called on the international community to condemn the actions of the United States and impose consequences.

“All nations in the region must be on alert, because the threat looms over them all,” the statement said.

But even if Cuba’s current government were to collapse, Berg does not foresee a pro-American regime taking its place.

“When it comes to the Cuban regime, we have decades and decades of anti-Americanism, so-called anti-imperialism,” he said, calling an “overnight change to become pro-American and implement policies that somehow give them autonomy in the face of American pressure” highly unlikely.