When Nicolás Maduro and his wife were arrested and arraigned under US laws, the shockwaves travelled far beyond Caracas.
For Washington, it marked a dramatic escalation in a long and bitter relationship with Venezuela.
For the rest of the world — especially medium-size powers watching the US closely — it reopened an old but unresolved question: is Donald Trump following the hardline roadmap once articulated by his former national security adviser John Bolton, or is he improvising a far more personal and mercantilist foreign policy?
In November 2018, Bolton famously warned that the Trump administration would confront what he called a “Troika of Tyranny”: Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. At the time, the language was blunt and ideological.
Sanctions would squeeze Caracas, oil exports to Havana would be curtailed to starve the Cuban economy, and Managua would eventually face the same pressure.
The sequencing implied a coherent plan, even if it stopped short of open war.
Today, however, Venezuela’s leadership has been physically removed, even as the regime structures remain intact.
This outcome already diverges sharply from Bolton’s original playbook.
It is not regime change in the classic sense, nor is it merely sanctions and diplomatic isolation.
It is something far more ambiguous — and far more unsettling.
The key complication is Trump himself.
Trump has never hidden his disdain for Bolton, whom he later portrayed as a reckless hawk too eager for war.
Yet it would be naïve to assume that personal animosity automatically translates into strategic rejection.
Trump may dislike Bolton the man, but he has shown no hesitation in borrowing ideas when they serve his own interests.
What is striking about the Venezuela episode is how little it resembles an ideologically driven crusade against socialism.
Instead, it reflects Trump’s instinctive preference for leverage, spectacle and material gain. Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, its geopolitical symbolism in the Western Hemisphere, and its usefulness as a warning to others all align neatly with Trump’s worldview.
As he once remarked with characteristic bluntness, “I like maps. As a property man, I like them a lot.”
This is why the question of whether Trump will now “follow through” on Bolton’s broader vision misses the deeper point. Trump does not follow blueprints. He tests boundaries.
He probes reactions. He advances where resistance is weak and pauses where costs rise too quickly.
Cuba, long dependent on Venezuelan oil, cannot help but feel exposed.
Nicaragua, already under sanctions, must wonder whether pressure will remain economic or turn coercive.
Even countries traditionally aligned with Washington in the hemisphere — such as Colombia, Brazil and Mexico — cannot fully insulate themselves from unease.
Trump’s willingness to use US laws to justify extraordinary extraterritorial actions sends a clear signal: proximity and past cooperation are no guarantees of immunity.
At the same time, Trump’s foreign policy remains fundamentally transactional.
War for its own sake has never appealed to him. Wars are expensive, politically risky and hard to control.
They do not easily translate into the kind of immediate, visible “wins” he prefers.
This is why a full-scale military campaign to overthrow governments in Havana or Managua remains unlikely — though not impossible.
Instead, Trump’s approach appears closer to selective coercion than systematic regime change. Venezuela becomes a demonstration case.
Others are left guessing whether they are next. Uncertainty itself becomes a strategic asset.
This logic also explains why Trump’s ambitions seem to range so widely — from Latin America to Greenland. These are not the moves of a grand strategist in the traditional sense.
They are the instincts of a dealmaker who sees territory, resources, and leverage as interchangeable assets on a global board.
For Asean and other medium-size powers, the lesson is sobering.
The US under Trump is neither predictably isolationist nor reliably interventionist.
It is opportunistic. Legal norms, alliances and precedents matter less than perceived advantage.
Bolton’s ideological framework may linger in the background, but it no longer dictates outcomes.
Will Trump continue beyond Venezuela? The honest answer is that no one knows — not even Trump himself.
What is clear is that he will act when he sees benefit, hesitate when costs rise, and keep allies and adversaries alike guessing.
In that sense, the greatest continuity from Bolton’s era is not the “Troika of Tyranny” itself, but the enduring truth that power politics, once unleashed, rarely stops where their architects originally intended.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
