{"id":391963,"date":"2026-01-06T22:59:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/391963\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T22:59:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:59:20","slug":"oil-drugs-and-harsh-regimes-led-to-maduros-capture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/391963\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil, drugs and harsh regimes led to Maduro\u2019s capture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) &#8211; After the United States captured Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife on Jan. 3, politicians and experts are now considering and analyzing what the move means for the United States\u2019 involvement and influence in foreign policy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cTraditionally, the United States has been dominant in the Western Hemisphere since it became a great power at the end of the 19th century,\u201d said John Schuessler, an Associate Professor in the Department of International Affairs at Texas A&amp;M University. \u201cThe United States has at least claimed to be a champion of \u2018rule-based order\u2019 that was meant to replace rough behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Schuessler noted that Venezuela has had an \u201canti-American regime\u201d since the early 2000s. The Trump administration has also cited Venezuela\u2019s involvement in the drug trade. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cAnd, in the last few days, a lot of emphasis on oil and the fact that the United States helped to develop Venezuela\u2019s oil industry. But then, that was reclaimed or nationalized by the Venezuelans,\u201d added Schuessler. \u201cAnd now we want our fair cut in the oil trade. I would say drugs, oil, and this traditional American tendency to deal harshly with regimes that are on our bad side.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">For the full interview, click on the video player above. <\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 KBTX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) &#8211; After the United States captured Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-391963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}