Rubio faces ghosts of American interventions after spearheading Maduro takedown

Marco Rubio is suddenly facing his most daunting puzzle in his 28 years in politics.The U.S. secretary of state didn't just help mastermind the ouster of Venezuela's dictator on Saturday. Rubio is now in charge of making sure President Trump's risky move against Nicolás Maduro doesn't descend into chaos.Why it matters: The U.S. is now effectively laying claim to the country with the globe's largest proven oil reserves — a move that could threaten global stability and complicate U.S. relations with China, a major buyer of Venezuelan crude.The world is watching to see whether Venezuela will suffer the same fate as the last country where the U.S. achieved regime change — Iraq, which fell into chaos shortly after the 2003 invasion.The big picture: Rubio's life story is intimately intertwined with Trump's historic, legacy-defining move to seize Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Caracas and extradite the two of them to the U.S. to face charges of cocaine trafficking.A child of Miami's anti-communist Cuban exile community, the 54-year-old Rubio built his political career on denouncing and confronting Latin American socialist regimes hostile to the United States.Rubio's background and worldview meshed with Trump's desire to expand U.S. influence throughout Latin America, where the president wants hemispheric dominance. Trump also wants Venezuela's oil and blames Maduro for causing an unprecedented migration crisis.Rubio "knows the region, knows the politics. He speaks Spanish basically as a first language," a senior White House adviser said. "There's a reason the president chose him as secretary and as his national security adviser."Zoom in: Rubio flexed those bilingual skills Saturday, first by informing Congress of the U.S. military incursion, then by speaking in Spanish via phone with Venezuela's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez.Rubio and Rodríguez could have daily calls, the adviser told Axios, as Trump decides what to do next with Venezuela."It's going to be done by a small committee, led by Rubio, with the president heavily engaged," the official said.The intrigue: Hours after Trump described the Rubio-Rodríguez call as friendly and productive, Rodríguez publicly spoke out, denouncing the snatching of Maduro and calling him the rightful president.U.S. officials and experts brushed off her statements as domestic political pandering to hold together the various factions of Venezuela's Chavistas, the nickname given to the left-wingers who gained power under Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chávez.Those factions include Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister accused by the first Trump administration of plotting to assassinate Rubio in 2017, when he was a U.S. senator and had emerged as first-term President Trump's top adviser on the Western Hemisphere.Cabello was charged in a second superseding indictment of Maduro that was released Saturday. Rubio allies say the secretary of state wouldn't mind seeing Cabello snatched as well.Between the lines: The fact that just Maduro was taken while Cabello, Rodríguez and her brother, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, have so far been untouched by U.S. forces is a sign Trump and Rubio want to keep Venezuela's government intact — for now.It's a break from the Bush administration's disastrous decision to purge leaders of Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq after the invasion, which led to an insurgency."This isn't de-Baathification," a Rubio ally told Axios. "This is intentional and methodical."Zoom out: Trump and Rubio view Venezuela as one of the last major lifelines to communist Cuba, which has supplied intelligence services to Venezuela's regime in return for free oil."One of the biggest problems the Venezuelans have is they have to declare their independence from Cuba, which tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint," Rubio said Saturday at Trump's Mar-a-Lago news conference. "If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I'd be concerned."Rubio has attacked Cuba's government as an axis of evil in the hemisphere since before he won his first office, as West Miami's city commissioner. His focus on Cuba has continued through his time as a Florida state representative and state House speaker, into his time in the U.S. Senate, and now in Trump's administration.The backstory: Trump's push for regime change in Venezuela isn't a new idea for him. He began paying close attention to the issue a month after assuming office in his first term in 2017, when Rubio brought the wife of a jailed political prisoner, Leopoldo López, to meet the new president in the White House.In 2019, partly at Rubio's urging, Trump became the first world leader to recognize Maduro's then-opponent, Juan Guaidó, as Venezuela's legitimate leader.At the time, Trump considered military strikes on Venezuela. But Rubio talked him out of it, partly by pointing out that the U.S. didn't have enough military assets in the region to launch effective strikes against the South American nation.That all changed this year, when Trump chose Rubio as his secretary of state and tasked him with pressuring Maduro to leave office.Rubio, recognized as the administration's foremost expert on Latin America, was part of a small working group that included Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Dan Caine, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.All of them flanked Trump at Saturday's press conference about the strikes in Venezuela. The president said they'd be involved in planning what comes next in the post-Maduro era.Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright will join the post-Maduro working group, officials said.Reality check: Trump administration officials quietly acknowledge they could be in for "some bumps in the road," as one adviser said.But they believe this regime-change operation will be successful like the 1989 invasion of Panama and the ouster of Panama's Manuel Noriega. What's next: Venezuela is facing a financial crisis amid Trump's sanctions on its oil and his decision to seize and interdict tankers. When and how they're lifted is crucial.Venezuela also has a violent gang problem that could prove troublesome for U.S. peacekeepers if they're deployed.And tough decisions remain about when to call for free and fair elections. Maduro is widely viewed as having stolen his election in 2024.Trump's decision Saturday to speak dismissively of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, struck many supporters of the president as tone deaf and ill-placed.What they're saying: Trump and Rubio's foes had little to criticize about the efficiency of Saturday's regime change operation, but called it a violation of international law that leaves the U.S. with tripwires ahead."This could come home to haunt them in the midterms and really blow up in their face," said Juan Gonzalez, who negotiated with Maduro's regime during the Biden administration."For Trump, right now, he's looking great," Gonzalez said. "And if it fails? Then it's Rubio's fault."