MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Attack on Venezuela was the first of many changes: Cuban government could be “ready to fall”

With no supplies from Caracas, the Cuban revolution seems to have its days numbered

While former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is held at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, pending his arraignment at noon on Monday, Caracas' Supreme Court (TSJ) ordered Vice President Delcy Rodríguez to assume the role of Acting President to ensure “administrative continuity.”

However, US President Donald Trump made it clear that his country was actually in charge, with Rodríguez highly cooperative. “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” the Republican leader insisted.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted that Trump's Government was “running policy,” not Venezuela itself, to protect national interests and block adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran.

At the same time, Edmundo González Urrutia, widely recognized as the rightful winner of the 2024 election, has called on the Venezuelan military to recognize him as the legitimate commander-in-chief to begin the transition. In this regard, Trump noted that most Venezuelans aligned with Urrutia or with fellow anti-Chavista leader María Corina Machado were outside the South American country and therefore lacked the on-site support to consolidate the political shift, which is why it was wiser to rely for the time being on a more compliant figure from the ancient regime.

With Caracas under Washington's effective control, Havana is expected to lose its Venezuelan oil and other lifeline supplies shortly, raising questions about how much longer the Communist government can survive.

In addition, law purists who objected to the US extraction of Maduro were told during the weekend that 32 Cuban troops guarding the deposed Bolivarian leader were killed in the operation. Were they protecting or controlling him? That point remains unclear so far. In any case, foreign military presence at the Miraflores Palace did not start with Trump, who recognized that the Cuban government was “ready to fall.”

In the case of Colombia, Trump warned that the country was a large cocaine producer ruled by a “sick man,” who would not last long, hinting at a possible military action to that end or just banking on this year's elections in which Gustavo Petro is constitutionally banned.

The White House also encored its interest in Greenland for national defense. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen rejected the idea as “absurd,” though White House staffer Katie Miller posted a photo of an American flag over the island with the caption “SOON.”