Marco Rubio has become the unmistakable face of Washington’s intervention in Venezuela following the fall of Nicolás Maduro. In official photographs released by the White House during the operation, the US secretary of state appears constantly at President Donald Trump’s side, sternly focused on screens tracking events in Caracas. According to reporting by El Pais, Rubio has consolidated extraordinary influence over US foreign policy, holding not only the State Department but also the roles of national security adviser and acting administrator of the remnants of USAID. Now he has taken on what may be his most consequential and risky assignment yet: coordinating US management of Venezuela’s political transition.
Over the past six months, Rubio has been the chief ideologue behind an increasingly aggressive strategy to isolate and ultimately remove the Chavista leader. He was also among the closest civilian observers of the military operation that led to Maduro’s capture. Trump revealed during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago that Rubio had already held an extensive conversation with Venezuela’s new leader, Delcy Rodríguez, laying out Washington’s conditions for allowing her to remain in office. Those demands include access to Venezuelan oil, a crackdown on criminal gangs and drug trafficking, and an end to cooperation with governments hostile to the United States.
Rubio is set to maintain a central role as part of a small group of Trump’s most trusted advisers overseeing Venezuela from afar. The quartet also includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Stephen Miller, the White House’s powerful domestic policy adviser and chief architect of its hardline immigration strategy. While Trump has said each brings different strengths, Miller confirmed that Rubio will lead the group, tasked with enforcing presidential directives toward Caracas.
Rubio outlined a three‑fold plan for Venezuela’s economic and political transition, placing particular emphasis on the country’s vast oil resources as a cornerstone of initial stabilization efforts. In the first phase, the United States will take control of between 30 million and 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil, selling it on global markets at prevailing rates and directing how the proceeds are distributed to help stabilize the nation’s battered economy. Rubio stressed that Venezuelan authorities are currently unable to generate revenue from oil without U.S. authorization, a situation created by sanctions and Washington’s enforcement of them, giving the United States “tremendous leverage” that it intends to use to benefit ordinary Venezuelans and support broader stabilization efforts rather than allowing funds to flow back into corruption or regime loyalists.
The second and third phases of Rubio’s strategy envisage a recovery and eventual transition. The recovery phase aims to ensure that American, Western, and other international companies have fair access to Venezuelan markets, potentially reviving production and rebuilding critical infrastructure. The final phase, as Rubio describes it, will be one of transition, although specific details remain limited. The overarching goal, according to the secretary of state, is to move Venezuela away from economic collapse toward a more sustainable and internationally integrated system, with the ultimate shape of that transition left to the Venezuelan people themselves.
That leadership places Rubio at the heart of decisions over Venezuela’s energy sector, the country’s most valuable asset and a primary objective of US intervention. Fluent in Spanish and deeply experienced in Latin American politics, Rubio has longstanding ties to the Venezuelan opposition, making him the key intermediary with the country’s emerging authorities. Trump has spoken of an 18-month timetable to rebuild the oil industry with US companies, a plan that implies sweeping economic, financial, security, and military reforms in a nation still riddled with armed groups, drug cartels, and internal factionalism.
Stability is far from guaranteed. Analysts warn that Maduro, despite his authoritarian rule, served as a unifying figure among competing power blocs. Phil Gunson of the Crisis Group told El Pais that without him, internal divisions could deepen, threatening the cohesion of Rodríguez’s government. Rubio’s mandate will therefore extend beyond reconstruction to ensuring strict compliance with Washington’s demands, under the threat of renewed US military action and what Trump has described as consequences “worse than Maduro.”
For now, pressure remains intense. The United States has already imposed a maritime blockade on Venezuelan oil exports and maintains a significant military presence in the Caribbean. Rubio has defended this posture as necessary leverage, saying it will remain in place until changes are seen that serve US national interests and offer Venezuelans a better future.
Politically, the moment represents a personal triumph for Rubio. The son of Cuban exiles and a former senator who once branded Maduro a “narco-terrorist,” he has long advocated the fall of leftist regimes in Latin America. As El Pais recounts, Rubio initially struggled to persuade Trump, who favored negotiation and even secured the release of jailed Americans through talks led by envoy Richard Grenell. The breakthrough came when Rubio reframed his argument, emphasizing US indictments linking Maduro to drug trafficking, a narrative that resonated with the president.
That shift led to a cascade of actions: the designation of the alleged Cartel of the Suns as a foreign terrorist organization, a doubled bounty on Maduro’s capture, and the expansion of US naval deployments. Since then, Rubio has spent less time on traditional diplomacy and more time inside the White House, working closely with Miller on plans for both Maduro’s removal and a post-Chavista Venezuela.
Beyond Caracas, Rubio has cast the intervention as a warning to Cuba’s aging leadership. He has openly suggested that officials in Havana should be alarmed by events in Venezuela, framing the operation as a signal to regimes Washington considers adversarial.
The scale of the task ahead is immense, and its outcome uncertain. As El Pais notes, both Trump and Rubio will ultimately be judged on whether this intervention leads to stability or chaos. The lesson Rubio himself often recalls, attributed to former secretary of state Colin Powell after the Iraq war, hangs heavily over the project: if you break it, you own it.
