This weekend the Honolulu Defense Forum will kick off a gathering of military and government leaders to discuss security in the Indo-Pacific. That topic takes on new meaning with the recent military action by the U.S. on Venezuelan soil.
The Conversation reached out to the East-West Center to better understand how the U.S. operation and arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife could impact the region.
Carlos Juarez’s family hails from Mexico, and he has worked in Colombia and studied in Venezuela. He also served as Honorary Consul of Peru to Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. HPR asked about his thoughts on the latest developments.
Interview highlights
On U.S. actions in Venezuela
CARLOS JUAREZ: It's a pretty significant event. Maybe I want to put it in this bigger context. It represents a transition to a system, an international system, which we've seen before in most of the 19th and early 20th century, a system in which powerful countries run spheres of influence, in other words, carve up the world in some way. … This is great power politics, and it reflects a clear determination that the U.S. will do what it wants to in the atmosphere, in other words, part of what we saw, the recent national security strategy that made very clear it codified the Western Hemisphere as not only a core U.S. security priority, but also an exclusive domain. … There's so many different pieces of it that it's really hard to even grasp it. But it is the so-called Trump corollary, the idea that it's a version of the Monroe Doctrine that essentially promises to deny non-hemisphere competitors, which are China and Russia, access to the region.
On U.S. relationship with Venezuela
JUAREZ: It was interesting that when the event took place, the capture of this president of Venezuela, Maduro, there was a Chinese delegation, basically, in Caracas, Venezuela, that woke up that morning to experience the same thing. And I guess, I mean, I would just add this, that China, of course, does have, as a major global power, it has a very, very strong engagement economically with Latin America, with South America, specifically, it is a major foreign investor, particularly countries like Bolivia and Peru, and the Andes with a lot of minerals, and Venezuela, primarily the oil. What I'm getting at there is that it's deeply engaged. And over the last 25 to 30 years, the U.S. has largely neglected, or really looked the other way, towards the region.
On the uncertainty for other Latin American countries, Venezuelans in the region
JUAREZ: I think for the region again, also you mentioned these other countries, Mexico, they've been singled out by the U.S., by Trump specifically, in ways that probably have a lot of them nervous in ways that we haven't seen before. There is a fair amount of fear. And of course, longer-term Latin American countries are going to reassess their own limited ability to deter U.S. military attacks. Nobody's going to stop the U.S. from doing what it wants. But a generation from now, the region may be less beholden to the U.S and have more, not fewer, links to other players, because one of the things we're seeing play out, not just in Latin America but elsewhere, is reassessing who are your partners and allies, and so we're going to see a continent that fears the U.S. rather than sees it as a powerful partner.
On the future
JUAREZ: I can't be sure what's going to happen. But there's a lot of pressure also, and maybe mixed pressure, because [there is a] huge diaspora of Venezuelans who have been pushed out in the last 15 to 20 years, and many need to come back, and want to come back, but they need to make sure they're coming back to a country that they can govern and have a say in. And right now that remains to be seen.
Editor's note: East-West Center is an underwriter for HPR.
This story aired on The Conversation on Jan. 8, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this interview for the web.
