Rappler Talk: What Trump’s attack on Venezuela means for the Philippines

MANILA, Philippines – The United States government calls it an arrest or capture. Many others call it an abduction or even a kidnapping.

Both allies and adversaries have criticized the Western superpower for what many would have once considered unthinkable in 2026: the United States carrying out a precision strike – codenamed Operation Absolute Resolve – to extract and detain the leader of another sovereign nation.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in power since 2013, is now in New York, where he faces criminal cases. Maduro has been indicted on several federal charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracy.

The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), in a statement on Monday, January 5, said it “views with concern the evolving events in Venezuela and its consequential impact on peace and stability in the region as well as on the rules-based international order.”

It’s said that the US military is almost always sure to win Day 1 — how could it not, with its sheer strength? But what happens on Day 2 and in the subsequent days?

What happens to Venezuela and its people? More broadly, what does this mean for faraway countries like us here in the Philippines, and why is the DFA emphasizing the “rules-based international order.”

To help make sense of yet another layer of chaos to our times, Rappler’s Bea Cupin speaks to Aries Arugay, a professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman Department of Political Science, who’s an expert on Latin America and was in Caracas just as Venezuela transitioned to the Maduro regime.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Arugay talks about the history of Venezuela, how we’re to make sense of the range in domestic reaction to his extraction and detention, and what a bold — some would say brazen — act of the US on its Latin American neighbor means for its treaty-ally in the Indo-Pacific.

Bookmark this page to watch the interview on Tueday, January 6. – Rappler.com