Why Venezuela has Marco Rubio’s handprints all over it

When Marco Rubio took the lectern at Mar-a-Lago shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the country had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, it was the culmination of a decade of effort from the secretary of state and a clear sign that he had emerged as a leading voice within the Trump administration.

The daring — and potentially illegal — nighttime operation saw more than 150 U.S. aircraft buzz through Venezuelan airspace as Delta Force commandos stormed Maduro’s home, seizing the leader and his wife before exfiltrating the couple eventually to New York City. They’re facing multiple charges including narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy and possession of weapons. They have pleaded not guilty to all charges.

At Mar-a-Lago, Rubio said the message was clear: “Don’t play games with this president in office, because it’s not going to turn out well.”

But his deferential comments belie the outsized role he likely had in calling for action in Venezuela.

Rubio’s Cuban roots 

Rubio, 54, the son of Cuban immigrants, grew up in Miami, steeped in Cuban culture and anti-communist sentiments that many in the community shared.

He has “lived experience,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and State Department appointee during Trump’s first term.

As a senator representing Florida, Rubio took a keen interest in the affairs of Latin and South America.

In 2017, he took to the Senate floor and called Maduro a dictator, urging companies and foreign governments not to do business with Venezuela. 

It was just one of several instances in which he used his pulpit as senator to rail against what he saw as Maduro’s regime of “repression.”

During Trump’s first term, Rubio became a key figure, helping steer U.S. policy in the region. It was a surprising turn after what was a sometimes testy relationship on the campaign trail, when both men sought the 2016 Republican nomination.

In 2019, he co-sponsored a bill that sought to restore democracy in Venezuela and fast-track planning for the country’s financial institutions post-Maduro.

Six years later, it’s unclear if that planning will be necessary. Rather than seek full regime change, the U.S. appears content to get rid of Maduro and work with his vice-president-turned-president, Delcy Rodríguez — though Trump made it clear that Rodríguez would have to fall in line or face “a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” he told the Atlantic.

Navigating the administration

In the early months of the second Trump administration, Rubio took a more reserved role, allowing the president’s longtime friend Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to criss-cross the globe in their private planes, serving as Trump’s key interlocutors with the Israelis, Russians and Ukrainians. 

But as the administration settled in, so too did Rubio. In May, he became acting national security adviser, replacing Mike Waltz following Signalgate, when Waltz accidentally added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a government messaging chain on the app Signal, in the lead-up to U.S. strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen.

With the new position, Rubio gained an office inside the White House, allowing him to maintain close proximity to the president.

He has often joked about wearing multiple hats within the administration.

But on Saturday at the president’s resort, he emerged centre stage. “Now you have Secretary Rubio, asserting his influence, asserting the United States’ influence, in the region like nothing we’ve seen before, or certainly in the past few decades,” Bartlett said.

Mark Jones, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, Texas, said Rubio’s fingerprints were all over the Venezuela operation.

“Rubio has long been a hawk on Venezuela, and especially a hawk on Cuba,” he said. “And so this fits very firmly with it.”

What it might mean for Cuba

Indeed, one of the possible side effects of Maduro’s capture is the destabilization of Cuba, a country that has long relied on discounted oil from Venezuela, its close ally.

“We already have a Cuba that’s experiencing power outages lasting dozens of hours a day. The economy is staggering and propped up on its last legs,” Jones said. “This could be the straw that broke the camel’s back of the Cuban communist regime.”

Rubio hinted at that possibility while speaking at Mar-a-Lago, quipping, “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”

Saturday’s actions are a “seismic development for the region,” said Jason Marczak, senior director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. 

“This is the first concrete deliverable of Trump’s new national security strategy with a heavy Western Hemisphere focus.”

Rubio helped write that document, which calls for hemispheric control.

Unlike Trump’s first national security strategy or even that of predecessor Joe Biden, the 2025 edition shifts away from the great-power competition with China and Russia, focusing instead on spheres of influence.

In the days since the U.S. seized Maduro, multiple administration officials including Trump have referenced it.

“Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” Trump said on Saturday.

The plan is perhaps the strongest example of just how much influence Rubio has acquired in this administration.

“It was good, right? I wrote that myself,” he joked in response to a question by CBC News at his year-end news conference.

But he quickly demurred. He was just “involved” in writing it, he said — suggesting, as he often does, that he is merely part of a team whose job is, ultimately, to fulfil the president’s vision.