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<\/p>\nRiding high after a successful military mission in Venezuela, Donald Trump is now talking about where US forces might venture next.<\/p>\n
At a press conference on his plane as he returned to Washington for a new political year he entertained the idea of targeting another four nations.<\/p>\n
He started with Colombia, which he said had a leader who “likes making cocaine” but is “not going to be doing it very long”. A US operation there “sounds good to me”, he said.<\/p>\n
Iran risks being “hit very hard by the United States” if protesters there are killed, he said.<\/p>\n
In Mexico “we’re going to have to do something”, he offered without being asked. He said he had proposed sending US troops over the border “every single time” he had spoken to the Mexican president.<\/p>\n
And he repeated his longstanding insistence the US “needs” Greenland for American national security, “and the European Union needs us to have it”.<\/p>\n
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Trump, of course, talks a lot of talk.<\/p>\n
The commonly cited maxim that he should be taken “seriously but not literally” \u2014 advice given by Trump’s then-spokesman in 2017 \u2014 still often proves true.<\/p>\n
He likes to make provocative statements for a range of reasons. Sometimes it’s a negotiating tactic. Sometimes it’s an assertion of power. Sometimes it’s to troll the Left or the press.<\/p>\n
But a lot of people applied the “don’t take him too literally” thinking to Trump’s threats about Venezuela and underestimated his appetite for action.<\/p>\n
Trump had for weeks been saying Nicol\u00e1s Maduro’s days were numbered. But the international community was still stunned when US forces swooped in and snatched him.<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it simply proved Trump was a man of his word.<\/p>\n
“When he tells you that he’s going to do something, when he tells you he’s going to address a problem, he means it,” Rubio said. “He actions it.”<\/p>\n
So what to make of Trump’s latest list of threats? Should they be taken literally?<\/p>\n
Read more on the situation in Venezuela:Translating Trump<\/p>\n
When Rubio did a round of TV interviews the day after Maduro was seized he seemed annoyed that journalists had taken Trump to mean everything he had said the night before.<\/p>\n
Trump, for example, had said repeatedly the US would “run the country”. Rubio was naturally asked what this meant.<\/p>\n
“Well, it’s not running the \u2013,” he started without finishing the sentence, then said: “It’s running policy.”<\/p>\n
He went on to explain the Venezuelan government would stay in place, but face pressure \u2014 including an oil blockade \u2014 to run the country the way the US wants.<\/p>\n
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Marco Rubio (right) sat with Donald Trump as they watched the US military operation to seize Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. (@realDonaldTrump\/Truth Social)<\/p>\n
Trump had also flagged the prospect of sending troops back into Venezuela. The US was “not afraid of boots on the ground”, he said.<\/p>\n
When Rubio was asked about this he complained about the “obsession people have about boots and this or that”.<\/p>\n
“I think what the president is saying is very simple,” Rubio said.<\/p>\n
“And that is as president of the United States he is not going to go around telling people what he’s not going to do \u2026 he retains all this optionality.”<\/p>\n
It seemed Rubio was walking back some of Trump’s comments \u2014 or at least inserting some critical nuance \u2014 while trying to avoid directly contradicting him.<\/p>\n
Sphere of influence<\/p>\n
To get a sense of the thinking inside Trump’s foreign policy planning, it can sometimes be more helpful to listen to Rubio than Trump.<\/p>\n
Now Trump’s national security advisor,<\/a> as well as his Secretary of State, Rubio is seen as a key player behind the decision to grab Maduro.<\/p>\n For years he has been in Trump’s ear about the need to see Maduro pushed out of power, even when Trump was showing far less appetite for regime change missions.<\/p>\n “It’s just a matter of time,” Rubio said of Maduro’s downfall<\/a> in 2019, during Trump’s first term. “The only thing we don’t know is how long it will take \u2014 and whether it will be peaceful or bloody.”<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n Seven years later, Maduro’s eventual ouster “would not have happened if Rubio was not at the top tiers of the Trump administration”, Jason Marczak, a Latin America expert at the Atlantic Council think tank, told USA Today \u2014 an assessment many pundits agree with.<\/p>\n So what are Rubio’s priorities beyond Venezuela?<\/p>\n In one of his weekend interviews he was asked if Cuba was the Trump administration’s next target.<\/p>\n “Well, the Cuban government is a huge problem,” he said.<\/p>\n Pushed on whether that meant “yes”, he said: “I think they’re in a lot of trouble, yes.”<\/p>\n