Will US Troops Be Deployed in Venezuela? What We Know

President Donald Trump has said the U.S. will “run” Venezuela for an unspecified amount of time after ousting Nicolás Maduro. However, his announcement raises many pressing questions for a staunchly anti-interventionist U.S. administration - not least whether U.S. soldiers will be deployed in the South American country.

Many former officials and experts have for months doubted the administration would be willing to commit troops to a ground presence in Venezuela, which would be a hard pivot away from Trump’s America First agenda. The prospect alone summons specters of U.S. deployments in the likes of Panama, Vietnam and Afghanistan and would likely be unpopular with both the MAGA base and with other voters.

But Trump said on Saturday the White House was “not afraid of boots on the ground,” and the U.S. would “make sure that country is run properly.”

In separate comments, Trump told the New York Post the U.S. “won't have to do that” if Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s vice president who is now serving as the country’s interim leader, “does what we want.”

But there is little idea of what exactly the U.S. will do next, beyond the suggestion the administration will likely be working with some of Venezuela’s current officials. The future U.S. military footprint in Venezuela is also shrouded in mystery and onlookers say next-stage planning is absent.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth avoided any specifics during a Saturday appearance on CBS News, only saying the U.S. would “set the terms” when asked about whether troops would be deployed in Venezuela, adding it would be the “exact opposite” of U.S. intervention in Iraq.

The lack of a clear road map has drawn Democratic scorn, including from Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, who called the removal of Nicolás Maduro and the U.S. strikes on Venezuela “reckless, elective regime change risking American lives (Iraq 2.0) with no plan for the day after.”

“Trump really never had a plan for the day after,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at the influential Chatham House think tank. To put significant U.S. troops in Venezuela would “be folly,” he told Newsweek.

What Has Trump Said, And Could U.S. Troops Be Deployed?

"We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said on Saturday. “We don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years."

But there’s scant indication - beyond Trump’s comments about not shying away from “boots on the ground” - about what the U.S. role will actually look like, and it’s hard to tell what the function of U.S. troops would be.

“Would it be to establish security? Would it to promote a democratic transition? Would it to secure oil fields?,” Sabatini said. “It’s really not clear what they would be doing there.”

“I hope it is a bluff,” said Joe Sestak, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral and former director for Defense Policy on the National Security Council staff. But the U.S. military could be deployed around areas like oil facilities the administration considers as belonging to the U.S., he suggested.

“I doubt it’s more than a threat,” Sestak told Newsweek. “How will it end if troops ever go on the ground there?“

Any U.S. deployment would likely be limited to shielding high-importance, strategic assets and infrastructure - not attempting to battle insurgents, Sabatini said. Others doubt the administration would risk U.S. lives to do it when Venezuelan authorities could be tasked with the job.

“I don’t think there’s a long-term strategy here as to what it really means to put ‘boots on the ground,'” said Robert Kelly, who formerly served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for drug enforcement. There are “so many different variables here,” Kelly told Newsweek.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday the U.S. had not invaded Venezuela, instead framing U.S. actions as a “law enforcement operation.”

“We don’t have U.S. forces on the ground in Venezuela,” Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. Rubio said U.S. forces were on the ground in Venezuela for the hours of Saturday’s extraction operation, but Trump would retain “optionality.”

Who’s In Charge?

Rodriguez, an ally of Maduro, has assumed the post of acting leader under orders from Venezuela’s courts. Rather than institute a regime change, the U.S. operation appears to have put in place a leadership swap.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado on Saturday said those who opposed Maduro would “restore order, free political prisoners, build an exceptional country, and bring our children back home."

Trump said he thought it would be “very tough” for Machado to be at the helm in Caracas, telling reporters on Saturday: “She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.”

The Republican struck a more positive note about Rodriguez, adding: “She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”

But Rodriguez has publicly demanded Maduro’s return from U.S. custody and condemned the American operations.

The Oil Factor

U.S. officials have overtly pointed to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves as a motivating factor behind the operation. Venezuela’s government had long accused the U.S. of pursing oil in the country ahead of Saturday’s operations.

"We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations, and they stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country," Trump said. Venezuela nationalized the oil industry and related foreign-owned assets in the mid-1970s.

U.S. oil companies will invest billions of dollars in fixing “badly broken infrastructure” and “start making money for the country,” Trump said. Oil giants have largely stayed away from public declarations this weekend on plans for Venezuelan oil.

But oil companies will not be prioritizing nurturing Venezuela, experts say. “They don’t engage in state-building,” said Sabatini.

Newsweek