WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to warn Wednesday that the Trump administration is ready to take further military action against Venezuela if the country’s interim leadership deviates from U.S. expectations.
In prepared testimony for a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio says the US is not at war with Venezuela and its interim leaders are cooperating, but he notes the Trump administration would not rule out using additional force if needed following a raid to capture then-President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.
“We are prepared to use force to ensure maximum cooperation where other methods fail,” Rubio will say, according to his opening statement released Tuesday by the State Department. “We hope this will not prove necessary, but we will never shy away from our duty to the American people and our mission in this hemisphere.”
As he is often called upon to do, Rubio, a former Florida senator, will aim to sell one of President Donald Trump’s most controversial priorities to former colleagues in Congress. With the Republican administration’s foreign policy pivoting on the Western Hemisphere, Europe and the Middle East, Rubio may also be called upon to ease the alarm that has emerged in his own party of late over efforts such as Trump’s request to annex Greenland.
In the Venezuela-focused audience, Rubio will defend Trump’s decisions to oust Maduro to face drug-trafficking charges in the U.S., continue deadly military strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats and seize sanctioned tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, according to prepared remarks. He will again reject accusations that Trump is violating the Constitution by taking such actions.
“There is no war against Venezuela and we have not occupied a country,” he will say, according to prepared remarks. “There are no US troops on the ground. This was an operation to assist law enforcement.”
Maduro, who has pleaded not guilty to federal drug-trafficking charges in a US court, defiantly declared himself “the president of my country” and protested his capture.
Congress did not cut Trump back on Venezuela
Democrats in Congress condemned Trump’s moves as exceeding the authority of the executive branch, while most Republicans supported them as a legitimate exercise of presidential power.
Idaho Republican Sen. Jim Risch, the committee’s chairman, planned to open the hearing by praising Trump and Rubio for making Americans safer with military actions in and around Venezuela, saying they were legal.
“These actions were limited in scope, short in duration, and were made to protect US interests and citizens,” Risch will say, according to his prepared remarks released by the committee. “What President Trump has done in Venezuela is the definition of the president’s constitutional Article II authorities as commander-in-chief.”
New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the committee, took an opposing stance, questioning whether the operation to oust Maduro was worth it, given that most of his former advisers and lieutenants still run the country.
“The U.S. naval blockade around Venezuela and the raid have already cost the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars … and yet the Maduro regime is still in power,” she plans to say, according to her prepared opening statement.
The House narrowly defeated a war powers resolution that would have directed Trump to remove US troops from Venezuela. As Rubio will argue, the administration says there are no US troops on the ground in the South American nation, despite a large military buildup in the region.
Democrats argued that the resolution was necessary after the US raid to capture Maduro and because Trump has declared plans to control the country’s oil industry for years to come.
The pushback has also begun in the courts, as the families of two Trinidadians killed in a Trump administration boat strike filed what is believed to be the first wrongful-death lawsuit stemming from the campaign. Three dozen attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean have killed at least 126 people since September.
The US is taking steps to normalize ties while still issuing warnings
While maintaining pressure on what the Trump administration calls “drug traffickers” without providing evidence, US officials are also working to normalize ties with Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez. However, Rubio will make it clear in his testimony that he has no choice but to comply with Trump’s demands.
“Rodríguez is aware of Maduro’s fate; it is our belief that her own interest aligns with advancing our key goals,” Rubio will say, noting that they include opening Venezuela’s energy sector to U.S. companies, providing preferential access to production, using oil revenues to purchase U.S. goods and ending subsidized oil exports to Cuba.
Rodríguez, who was previously Maduro’s vice president, said on Tuesday that his government and the Trump administration “have established respectful and polite channels of communication.” During televised remarks, Rodríguez said he was working with Trump and Rubio to establish “a working agenda.”
So far, she appears to be acceding to Trump’s demands and freeing prisoners held by the government under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez. On Monday, the head of a Venezuelan human rights group said 266 political prisoners had been freed since January 8.
Trump praised the releases, saying on social media that he “would like to thank the leadership of Venezuela for agreeing to this powerful humanitarian gesture!”
In a key step in restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries, the State Department notified Congress this week that it plans to begin sending additional diplomatic and support personnel to Caracas to prepare for the possible reopening of the U.S. Embassy there.
It was the first official notification of the administration’s intention to reopen the embassy, which closed in 2019. Full normalization of ties would still require the US to reverse its decision to recognize the Venezuelan parliament elected in 2015 as the country’s legitimate government.
Rubio also planned to meet with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado later Wednesday at the State Department.
Machado went into hiding after Maduro was declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election, despite ample credible evidence to the contrary. She reappeared in December to collect her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. After Maduro was ousted, she traveled to Washington. In a meeting with Trump, she handed him her Peace Prize medal, an extraordinary gesture given that Trump had effectively sidelined her.
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Associated Press writer Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.