Rubio says US won’t govern Venezuela but will press for changes through oil blockade

Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio sug­gest­ed Sun­day that the Unit­ed States would not take a day-to-day role in gov­ern­ing Venezuela oth­er than en­forc­ing an ex­ist­ing “oil quar­an­tine” on the coun­try, a turn­around af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced a day ear­li­er that the U.S. would be run­ning Venezuela fol­low­ing its ouster of leader Nicolás Maduro.

Ru­bio’s state­ments on TV talk shows seemed de­signed to tem­per con­cerns about whether the as­sertive Amer­i­can ac­tion to achieve regime change might again pro­duce a pro­longed for­eign in­ter­ven­tion or failed at­tempt at na­tion-build­ing. They stood in con­trast to Trump’s broad but vague claims that the U.S. would at least tem­porar­i­ly “run” the oil-rich na­tion, com­ments that sug­gest­ed some sort of gov­ern­ing struc­ture un­der which Cara­cas would be con­trolled by Wash­ing­ton.

Ru­bio of­fered a more nu­anced take, say­ing the U.S. would con­tin­ue to en­force an oil quar­an­tine that was al­ready in place on sanc­tioned tankers be­fore Maduro was re­moved from pow­er ear­ly Sat­ur­day and use that lever­age as a means to press pol­i­cy changes in Venezuela.

“And so that’s the sort of con­trol the pres­i­dent is point­ing to when he says that,” Ru­bio said on CBS’ “Face the Na­tion.” “We con­tin­ue with that quar­an­tine, and we ex­pect to see that there will be changes, not just in the way the oil in­dus­try is run for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple, but al­so so that they stop the drug traf­fick­ing.”

The block­ade on sanc­tioned oil tankers — some of which have been seized by the U.S. — “re­mains in place, and that’s a tremen­dous amount of lever­age that will con­tin­ue to be in place un­til we see changes that not just fur­ther the na­tion­al in­ter­est of the Unit­ed States, which is num­ber one, but al­so that lead to a bet­ter fu­ture for the peo­ple of Venezuela,” he added.

Even be­fore the op­er­a­tion that nabbed Maduro, ex­perts were al­ready ques­tion­ing the le­gal­i­ty of as­pects of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pres­sure cam­paign on Venezuela, in­clud­ing the dead­ly bomb­ing of boats ac­cused of traf­fick­ing drugs that some schol­ars said stretched the bound­aries of in­ter­na­tion­al law.

Trump re­peat­ed vow US would ‘run’ Venezuela

Trump’s vow to “run” Venezuela, re­peat­ed more than half a dozen times at a news con­fer­ence in Flori­da on Sat­ur­day, sparked con­cerns among some De­moc­rats. It al­so drew un­ease from parts of his own Re­pub­li­can coali­tion, in­clud­ing an “Amer­i­ca First” base that is op­posed to for­eign in­ter­ven­tions, and al­so from ob­servers who re­called past na­tion-build­ing ef­forts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ru­bio dis­missed such crit­i­cism, say­ing that Trump’s in­tent had been mis­un­der­stood by a “for­eign pol­i­cy es­tab­lish­ment” that was fix­at­ed on the Mid­dle East.

“The whole for­eign pol­i­cy ap­pa­ra­tus thinks every­thing is Libya, every­thing is Iraq, every­thing is Afghanistan,” Ru­bio said. “This is not the Mid­dle East. And our mis­sion here is very dif­fer­ent. This is the West­ern Hemi­sphere.”

Ru­bio al­so sug­gest­ed that the U.S. would give Maduro’s sub­or­di­nates who are now in charge time to gov­ern, say­ing, “We’re go­ing to judge every­thing by what they do, and we’re go­ing to see what they do.” And though he did not rule out a U.S. mil­i­tary pres­ence in Venezuela, Ru­bio said the cur­rent U.S. “force pos­ture” was ca­pa­ble of stop­ping drug boats and sanc­tioned tankers.

A day ear­li­er, Trump told re­porters, “We’re go­ing to run the coun­try un­til such time as we can do a safe, prop­er and ju­di­cious tran­si­tion.” He lat­er point­ed to his na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty team with him, in­clud­ing Ru­bio and De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth, and said it would be done for a pe­ri­od of time by “the peo­ple that are stand­ing right be­hind me. We’re gonna be run­ning it we’re gonna be bring­ing it back.”

The White House de­clined to com­ment be­yond what Trump said Sat­ur­day.