I originally wrote this column while the US army was still carrying out its kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro. I wanted to stress something the international press had mostly ignored while reporting the US strikes in Venezuela: its actions had little to do with this country’s internal problems, or even primarily with getting their hands on its huge oil reserves (which are not economically viable at current oil prices, given its heavy and extra-heavy nature, dilapidated infrastructure and huge security problems). Furthermore, Venezuela is already a marginal oil producer; it is politically isolated in Latin America; and there is no danger of what happens in Venezuela being “contagious” for the rest of the region. The regime in Venezuela was already falling apart. Even Maduro’s allies, Russia and China, have made it clear that they would not risk a confrontation with the US about what happens in his country. Moreover, Venezuela’s other ally, Iran, has enough to worry about at home.Of course, American oil companies would love to get their hands on Venezuela’s vast reserves (despite its problems), and Donald Trump could deport the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Venezuelan immigrants in the US. Nevertheless, that alone wouldn’t really justify what’s happening in that country right now. Furthermore, for Trump and his “MAGA” (Make America Great Again) agenda, domestic problems must be addressed first, not foreign issues that are not the essence of his grand American geopolitical project.In reality, Trump doesn’t even pretend this is all about “democracy” in Venezuela; and I doubt the well-being of the Venezuelan people is something that keeps him up at night. In fact, he’s never had a problem with working with dictatorships in other parts of the world. And as his own actions at home have shown, “democracy” has never been particularly relevant to him. All he’s emphasised so far about Venezuela is drug trafficking and “narco-terrorism”; but at the same time, he pardons the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of being directly responsible for shipping more than 400 tonnes of cocaine to the US. We already know that consistency isn’t Trump’s strong suit, but this goes beyond the pale. Meanwhile, he had put a higher price on Maduro’s head than Osama Bin Laden’s…Besides drug trafficking and insisting that Venezuela had to return the oil reserves and assets it had “stolen” from American multinationals (when they were nationalised), Trump has also emphasised the difficulties the Maduro regime placed on the repatriation of undocumented immigrants, and that Venezuela has been getting rid of its criminals by sending them as immigrants to the United States.Furthermore, the US midterm elections are still a way off (they’re only in November of this year), and while there is a real risk that Trump could lose control of the House of Representatives, doing this so early in the year wouldn’t make much sense if that’s what he was aiming to avoid.Venezuela is like a move in a chess game where the objective is to checkmate Cuba; it is to make its already fragile economy collapse, as it desperately needs cheap Venezuelan oil to survive. Venezuela not only sells Cuba oil at very low prices, but since Chávez, it has also sent large amounts of oil for free in exchange for doctors and military assistance.What truly changed everything was the appointment of Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American from Miami who has never denied his lifelong political objective: to “liberate” Cuba, as Secretary of State. While regime change in Venezuela would be a marginal and temporary success for Trump, contradicting all his criticisms of US military interventions in other countries, regime change in Cuba is something else entirely, transcending even immediate political gains. As Trump has finally acknowledged, “…Cuba is [what] we’ll end up talking about.”Furthermore, a regime change in Cuba would not only help Trump in the mid-term elections, but would also ensure Rubio a strong position as a candidate in the upcoming Republican primaries, where J.D. Vance has thus far been the frontrunner.As everyone knows, the economic situation in Cuba is extremely precarious and deteriorating steadily. Sixty percent of the population is already without electricity, which is impacting tourism – its main source of foreign currency. Without cheap Venezuelan oil, which was already arriving in lower quantities than usual, and with less earnings from tourism, Cuba’s economic situation could become unsustainable.Basically, for the first time since the revolution, 65 years ago, Cuba is now alone in the world, without a single powerful ally, as neither Russia nor China ― and now Venezuela ― are able or willing to come to its help. In this new world “order”, with clear “areas of influence”, they are happy to let Trump and Rubio get on with their “Monroe doctrine” ― the “Americas for the Americans” (where the first refers to a continent, while the second to a country) ― as long as they can also act themselves with impunity in their own “areas of influence”.We are entering a period that was unimaginable until a few years ago. Essentially, it marks the end of the great era of the Enlightenment – an era that emphasised reason, science and critical thinking to dispel ignorance and promote progress, individual liberty and the modernisation of society. This thinking impacted philosophy, politics, science and art, championing freedom, representative government and tolerance, and laying the groundwork for revolutions like the French and American ones. What is looming on every level is a new era of obscurantism, a new “dark age”, which, in addition to economic and intellectual stagnation, was – ironically – marked by massive movements of migration.José Gabriel Palma is Emeritus Senior Lecturer, Cambridge University, UK and Professor of Economics, University of Santiago, Chile.This article was originally published in Spanish on January 3, 2026. It was published on The Wire on January 7, 2026, and updated and republished on January 9, 2026.