After Maduro: Latin America’s policy community reassesses the US-China balance
The US capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, coupled with the support the White House has given Maduro’s successors, has significant implications for China’s position in the region. Although Venezuela has been a frustrating partner for China—largely due to prolonged debt repayment delays and corruption-marred joint projects—Beijing has repeatedly stressed its commitment to the bilateral relationship. The day before Maduro’s capture, China’s special envoy for Latin American affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi, visited Miraflores Palace to review more than six hundred bilateral agreements and to express support for the regime amid US operations against Venezuela-linked oil tankers.
Although Maduro has been removed from office, his second-in-command Delcy Rodríguez now leads the same regime, prompting a recalibration of how China’s key bilateral relationships in the hemisphere are understood in light of US intervention in Venezuela. This piece examines whether Latin American policymakers and analysts view China’s reaction to Maduro’s ouster as evidence of a shift in Beijing’s regional diplomatic strategy—and whether this episode is influencing how other countries in the region weigh their US–China relationships.
We interviewed thirteen influential sources across diplomatic, military, and academic circles in Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and the Dominican Republic, spanning a wide range of political perspectives. While this is by no means a representative sample, respondents with different political views were aligned on key aspects of the new playing field in Latin America as it relates to both China and the United States.
After providing a general overview of how US and Chinese actions are interpreted across the region, we turn to Brazil, China’s largest trading partner in the region, and Colombia, the country most directly affected by developments in Venezuela.
Latin America feels a seismic shift
Most of our sources, both left and right leaning, agree the US intervention in Venezuela is a game changer and it will likely modify the power dynamics in the region. They see it as a hard blow to China and a strengthening of US influence in Latin America. For example, Ernesto Samper, former president of Colombia (1994–1998) and former secretary general of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR, 2014–2017)—who has been close to the region’s left-wing leaders—doesn’t believe the US intervention in Venezuela was meant to combat drug trafficking or strengthen access to oil revenues. Instead, he sees it as a geopolitical strategy. The intervention represents an attempt to weaken alliances between Latin American governments and external powers, particularly China. The objective is to consolidate what might be termed a Monroe Doctrine 2.0, reasserting US hegemonic control over Latin America. Venezuela is a symbolic target in a wider approach that seeks to assert regional dominance in the face of China’s growing influence. “This catches the Latin American region in its worst moment. We had never been so disconnected,” Samper said. “We’re very divided because part of [Donald] Trump’s diplomacy is not having relations with states, but with governments.”
Yet Samper warns against reading this rapprochement as a definitive realignment. Chinese economic penetration in Latin America, he argues, has already reached a point of near irreversibility—China is now the primary trading partner for most South American countries, and its infrastructure investments are deeply embedded in the region’s development strategies. For most major Latin American economies, China is either the largest or second-largest trading partner. The United States doesn’t have the capacity to replace China economically in the region. “The Chinese have a lot of experience in something Trump simply does not have, which is patience,” Samper said. “And I believe they have been penetrating Latin America to the point where those advances should be considered irreversible.”
Carlos Calderón, researcher and defense expert at the military-run Colombian War College, whose views are more aligned with the center-right than Samper’s, nonetheless has a similar take: “‘Operation Southern Spear’ and Maduro’s capture, ‘Operation Absolute Resolve,’ no doubt send tectonic waves throughout the region, and are meant to signal the United States is back and wants to have a stronger influence than China in the region. Events are too recent to say that Latin American countries are reorienting their relations with China, but I’d say it’s very likely that relations with China will be restructured.”
Behind closed doors, according to Calderón, military leaders in Colombia and neighboring countries that struggle with organized crime networks are welcoming the change in US tactics—not necessarily because they agree that operations such as blowing up drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific are appropriate, but because they signal what they feel was a needed change in the status quo. They welcome a United States that is more assertive regarding its military presence in the region. “Behind closed doors, military leaders are glad about Operation Southern Spear,” Calderón said. “They wanted a government, either Democrat or Republican, that doesn’t matter to them, that would kick the chess board, so to speak. We’ve been at that [war on drugs] two decades and no pieces have been moved, then we need a reset. Sometimes you have to introduce a little bit of chaos to make a situation more dynamic.”
As the United States assumes this hard-power stance, China’s lack of such power is starker. Maurício Santoro, a political scientist specializing in Brazil–China relations, said the US operation in Venezuela revealed China has limited capabilities when projecting military power in the Western Hemisphere. China is economically vital to Latin America but is not a strong and effective military actor in the region.
A senior Brazilian source familiar with the matter, who asked to remain anonymous, said Chinese officials had privately expressed concern about how the lack of a Chinese military response after Maduro’s removal might be interpreted in Latin America. According to this source, Chinese officials asked whether the region would view China as weak or unable to defend its political partners against unilateral US actions.
Paulo Filho, a retired Brazilian Army colonel who holds a master’s degree in defense and strategy studies from China’s National Defense University, said China’s leadership is still “learning how to be a superpower” in the sense of projecting power beyond its traditional zone of influence. Retired Colonel Rafael Almeida, who is also a graduate of China’s National Defense University, said that the crisis had produced a “reality check” for the region. He summed this up in a single phrase: “China is economically indispensable, but the United States remains politically central.” Almeida also said the episode stressed the urgency of reassessing security concerns and drove home the idea that aligning with either the United States or China has become dangerous and strategically costly.
Caribbean observers, in the meantime, have their eyes on Cuba and are anxious to determine if there will be a domino effect that will cause the decades-long communist regime to follow a path similar to that of Venezuela. “Dominicans are hopeful that Cuba will have a similar outcome for the best, and that Venezuela’s developments lead to improvements,” said Campos de Moya, former assistant to the vice president of the Dominican Republic and former ambassador assigned to the Foreign Ministry. “There are some voices that don’t agree with this view, but the way the situation has unfolded leads most Dominicans, politicians and business leaders, to support what the US is doing in Venezuela and Cuba.”
De Moya says there were concerns in the region that US action against Venezuela and Cuba could spark a wider military conflict with China and Russia, but recent developments signal that won’t happen. He further suggests it’s a good moment for the United States to pressure the Dominican Republic to flip its diplomatic recognition once again from China to Taiwan. “The business community in the Dominican Republic is very upset with China and everything is in place for the country to step back from that relationship,” de Moya said. “The possibility of flipping back to Taiwan is even stronger now.”
One of our few sources who had a different view and didn’t believe the US removal of Maduro is a game changer for regional diplomatic relations was Ricardo Ferrer, fellow at the Center for Secure Free Society and former national director of criminal intelligence for the right-wing Javier Milei government in Argentina. Ferrer doesn’t think China’s position in Venezuela has meaningfully weakened because Beijing’s influence is structural. Ferrer notes that China’s influence in Venezuela is rooted in telecommunications, digital governance, logistics, data systems, and opaque contracts that persist across leadership changes. As an example, he cited Huawei’s extensive role in telecom infrastructure and ZTE-linked databases tied to citizens’ IDs as forms of durable leverage that shape political control through technology. He thinks China’s muted response follows its long-standing strategy toward the hemisphere: avoid direct security competition with the United States while maintaining embedded commercial and infrastructural influence. “There is absolutely no sign of a decline in Chinese influence, which in Venezuela is not solely determined by the economic situation,” Ferrer said.
Brazil: Adapting to a new context and diversifying
Brazil publicly condemned the bombings of alleged drug boats and Maduro’s removal through an official statement that characterized the US action as a “grave affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty,” a highly dangerous precedent, and a violation of international law that threatens Latin America’s long-standing aspiration to remain a “zone of peace.” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva echoed this position on social media, calling the events unacceptable and urging a robust response through the United Nations. Collectively, these messages reaffirm Brazil’s emphasis on multilateralism and the principle of non-intervention.
Some recent Lula administration initiatives suggest defense issues are garnering greater attention—at least behind the scenes—following the Venezuelan crisis. This has prompted discussions on budget strengthening, deterrence stances, and expanding the institutional role of the armed forces in Brazil’s national strategy. According to high-level sources, the crisis and the volatile regional environment have emphasized the need to strengthen defense capacities.
Rather than a departure from the country’s diplomacy-first tradition, Brazilian decision-makers are framing this readjustment as an adaptation to a new era of major-power competition in which non-intervention norms are weakened. The US operation has renewed fears that it will apply intervention and unilateral coercion whenever its interests are at stake.
The context of the US intervention also caught Brazil in a sensitive position. Brazil had just resolved its own dispute with the Trump administration, which began on April 2, 2025, when Trump imposed a 50-percent tariff on Brazilian imports in retaliation for the prosecution of his political ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro, over an attempted coup d’etat. The tariffs were suspended on November 14, 2025, after several rounds of diplomatic negotiations.
Against this backdrop, Brazil and the European Union (EU) formally signed the EU–Mercosur agreement on January 17, 2026, concluding more than two decades of negotiations. The agreement, which will need ratification by the European Parliament and national legislatures before entering into force, is described as creating one of the world’s largest bilateral free trade areas, covering roughly 700 million consumers and giving Brasília an additional avenue to diversify trade and investment partners amid heightened uncertainty. The timing suggests an effort to increase economic resilience and reduce strategic vulnerability by deepening ties with other players besides the United States and China.
Colombia: Getting closer to the United States
Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Relations rejected US military intervention in Venezuela and issued a statement that echoed Brazil’s stance, describing the intervention as “actions that have placed at risk the territorial integrity and political autonomy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.” It called for the issue to be taken to the UN Security Council and treated multilaterally. The day of the attack, the Colombian government also sent thirty thousand troops to patrol the border at several crossings, from northern Guajira to Arauca.
In the days following the capture of Maduro, President Gustavo Petro—whose left-wing politics are aligned with Lula’s—received threats from Trump, who hinted at conducting a similar operation in Colombia. As part of a deescalation approach, Petro sought an urgent one-on-one meeting with Trump in the White House to discuss the US intervention, oversight of Venezuela, and the role Colombia could play, signaling Colombia was willing to work with the United States.
No press was allowed in the room but statements from each side offer a glimpse into the conversation. Petro said they discussed counternarcotics operations targeting transnational kingpins (and that he gave Trump a list of names), skepticism toward the effectiveness of sanctions against Venezuela, ways to reactivate the Venezuelan economy (including energy projects), having the United States mediate tensions between Colombia and Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa, declassifying US intelligence related to violence in Colombia, and diplomatic optics such as inviting Trump to Cartagena and reframing Trump’s slogan as “Make the Americas Great Again.” Trump and the White House said the meeting went well, emphasized counternarcotics cooperation as the main focus, and characterized Trump’s approach as preferring diplomacy.
The rapprochement follows a deeply confrontational 2025 between Trump and Petro. In September, the Colombian president’s US visa was revoked, and in October, he and several members of his family were placed under Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions, despite the absence of any US indictments against them. According to Calderón, one objective of the visit was to persuade Trump to lift those sanctions before Petro leaves office in August. Securing their removal would not only ease personal and political constraints on Petro’s final months in power but also signal a partial normalization of bilateral relations after a year marked by open hostility.
Although the immediate outcome of the US intervention in Venezuela has been a reset in US–Colombia relations, Calderón also noted that, in recent years, the Colombian military has felt a need to diversify its partnerships, including in security cooperation and arms procurement. “We can’t help but see that countries such as Brazil and Peru cooperate tightly with the US, but that doesn’t stop them from also talking and establishing security relations with China or Russia . . . They buy Chinese aircraft and Russian helicopters,” Calderón said.
The end of strategic ambiguity
The removal of Maduro should not be read primarily as a Venezuelan event, nor as a narrow bilateral episode between Washington and Caracas. It was a stress test that clarified the real distribution of power in the hemisphere.
On one hand, the episode exposed the asymmetry that has long structured great-power competition in Latin America. The United States retains escalation dominance and the capacity to shape outcomes through force, while China’s influence remains concentrated in finance, infrastructure, trade, and institutional penetration rather than in deterrence. On the other hand, Maduro’s ouster does not signal the collapse of Chinese influence in the region. It reveals the limits of China’s ability to translate rhetorical commitments about sovereignty into material responses when confronted with hard-power realities. What unfolded was not the unraveling of China’s regional presence, but a clarification of its priorities, its risk tolerance, and the boundaries of its foreign policy reach in the Western Hemisphere.
The operation also clarifies that China’s preferred tools of influence are largely irrelevant in moments of kinetic disruption in the region. Years of loans, political backing, diplomatic cover, and rhetorical alignment did not translate into leverage when the core issue became one of coercive force. This matters because much of the current debate on foreign influence assumes a continuity between influence and power. Venezuela shows that this continuity breaks down under pressure.
Latin America’s apparent conditional tolerance of US intervention does not stem from ideological realignment with Washington, but from exhaustion. The United States had not carried out an overt military intervention in South America in modern times, and the last comparable interventions in the hemisphere occurred more than three decades ago in much smaller Central American and Caribbean states. Given the region’s long historical memory of US interference, one would have expected sharp and unified backlash. Instead, the reaction has been restrained and, in some cases, openly appreciative. That alone signals how disruptive Venezuela had become.
Maduro was no longer simply an authoritarian outlier. Venezuela had turned into a sustained source of regional instability, driving mass migration, facilitating organized crime networks, and deepening cross-border insecurity. Even governments publicly critical of US power were privately aware that the status quo had become untenable. The controlled response to Washington’s action reflects a hierarchy of priorities that has become harder to ignore.
Economic development remains central, and this is where China’s role is most visible. But dealing with migration pressures, drug trafficking, transnational criminal networks, and border security have become immediate political imperatives. In those domains, cooperation with the United States remains indispensable. The convergence of security interests that emerged around Maduro’s removal is therefore significant, but it is also narrow and contingent. It reveals less about renewed faith in US leadership than about the degree to which Venezuela had become a destabilizing force that governments felt unable to manage on their own.
If Washington interprets this moment as a blank check and settles for stability without democratic transition, it risks reinforcing long-standing suspicions that intervention is primarily driven by hegemonic control. Removing a destabilizing authoritarian is not the same as resolving the conditions that produced him. The strategic window created by January 3 is real, but it is not self-sustaining.
Lastly, China is unlikely to retreat from the region. It will adapt, recalibrate risk, and continue expanding where economic statecraft remains effective. The competition is now clearer. The United States demonstrated that it retains coercive primacy in the hemisphere. China demonstrated the limits of its willingness to contest it. Latin America is left navigating a landscape in which the space for ambiguity has narrowed and the costs of miscalculation have grown.
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Image: Captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is escorted, as he heads towards the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in Manhattan for an initial appearance to face US federal charges including narco-terrorism, conspiracy, drug trafficking, money laundering and others, at Downtown Manhattan Heliport, in New York City, US, January 5, 2026. REUTERS/Adam Gray