Rubio defends Trump on Venezuela while trying to allay Greenland and Nato fears

US secretary of state Marco Rubio gave a full-throated defence of President Donald Trump’s military operation to oust and arrest then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, while also using his wide-ranging congressional testimony to touch on Greenland, Nato, Iran and China.

As Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee offered starkly different readings of the administration’s foreign policy, Mr Rubio addressed Mr Trump’s intentions and his often bellicose rhetoric that have alarmed US allies in Europe and elsewhere.

In the first public hearing since the January 3 intervention to depose Maduro, Mr Rubio said Mr Trump had acted to take out a major US national security threat in the Western Hemisphere.

Mr Trump’s top diplomat said America was safer and more secure as a result and that the Republican administration would work with interim authorities to stabilise the South American country.

“We’re not going to have this thing turn around overnight, but I think we’re making good and decent progress,” Mr Rubio said.

“We are certainly better off today in Venezuela than we were four weeks ago and I think and hope and expect that we’ll be better off in three months and six months and nine months than we would have been had Maduro still been there.”

The former Florida senator said that Venezuela’s interim leaders are co-operating and would soon begin to see benefits.

Venezuela will be allowed to sell oil that is now subject to US sanctions, with the revenue set aside to pay for basic government services such as policing and health care, Mr Rubio said.

He said money from oil sales will be deposited in an account controlled by the US Treasury and will be released after Washington DC approves monthly budgets to be submitted by Venezuelan authorities.

“The funds from that will be deposited into an account that we will have oversight over,” Mr Rubio said.

Venezuela, he said, “will spend that money for the benefit of the Venezuelan people”.

Republican senators, with few exceptions, praised the Venezuelan operation. Among Democrats, there was deep scepticism.

They questioned Mr Trump’s policies in Venezuela and their potential for encouraging moves by China against Taiwan and Russia even more so in Ukraine, as well as his threats to take Greenland from Nato ally Denmark and his insults about the alliance’s contributions to US security.

Mr Rubio played them all down. He said the uproar over Greenland within Nato is calming and that talks are under way about how to deal with Mr Trump’s demands.

The Republican president insists the US needs Greenland to counter threats from Russia and China, but he recently backed away from a pledge to impose tariffs on several European countries that sent troops to the semiautonomous Danish territory in a show of solidarity.

“I think we’re going to get something positive done,” Mr Rubio said.

He dismissed criticism that Mr Trump was undermining the alliance, while repeating the long-running American complaint that member nations need to boost their defence budgets.

“Nato needs to be reimagined,” Mr Rubio said. “I just think this president complains about it louder than other presidents.”

He said China’s stated goal to reunify Taiwan with the mainland would not be affected by any other world event, including the Maduro operation.

“The situation on Taiwan is a legacy project” that Chinese President Xi Jinping has made “very clear that that’s what he intends to do and that’s going to be irrespective anything that happens in the world,” Mr Rubio said.

As Mr Trump once more threatens Iran with military action, Mr Rubio said there was no current plan to attack.

Asked about the potential for a change of government in Tehran, Mr Rubio said that would require “a lot of careful thinking” because it would be “far more complex” than ousting Maduro.

The committee chairman, Idaho senator Jim Risch, praised Mr Trump’s decisions to remove Maduro, continue deadly military strikes on boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean and seize sanctioned tankers.

Mr Risch also offered new details on the operation in Caracas, saying it involved “only about 200 troops” and a “firefight that lasted less than 27 minutes”.

“This military action was incredibly brief, targeted and successful,” Mr Risch said, adding that the US and other nations may have to assist Venezuela when it seeks to restore democratic elections.

“Venezuela may require US and international oversight to ensure these elections are indeed free and fair,” he said.

As he has often been called to do, Mr Rubio was aiming to sell one of Mr Trump’s more contentious priorities to ex-colleagues in the US congress.

With the administration’s foreign policy gyrating among the Western Hemisphere, Europe and the Middle East, Mr Rubio was also aiming to address the alarm that has emerged in his own party lately about efforts such as Mr Trump’s demand to annex Greenland.

Maduro, who has pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in a US court, has declared himself “the president of my country” and protested his capture.

Congressional Democrats have condemned Mr Trump’s moves as exceeding the authority of the executive branch, while most Republicans have supported them as a legitimate exercise of presidential power.

The House narrowly defeated a war powers act resolution that would have directed Mr Trump to remove US troops from Venezuela.

As Mr Rubio argued, the administration says there are no US troops on the ground in Venezuela despite a large military build-up in the region.

Democrats had argued that the resolution was necessary after the US raid to capture Maduro and because Mr Trump has stated plans to control the country’s oil industry for years to come.

The pushback has already begun in courts, too.

Families of two Trinidadian nationals killed in an administration boat strike filed what is thought to be the first wrongful-death case arising from that campaign.

Three dozen strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean have killed at least 126 people since September.

While keeping pressure on those that the US calls “narcotraffickers” without providing evidence, officials also are working to normalise ties with Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez.

Mr Rubio, in remarks prepared for the hearing that he did not use verbatim, said she has little choice but to comply with Mr Trump’s demands.

“Rodriguez is well aware of the fate of Maduro; it is our belief that her own self-interest aligns with advancing our key objectives,” according to the remarks.

The administration has said its demands for Ms Rodriguez include opening Venezuela’s energy sector to US companies, providing preferential access to production, using oil revenue to purchase American goods, and ending subsidised oil exports to Cuba.

Ms Rodriguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, said on Tuesday that her government and the US “have established respectful and courteous channels of communication”.

During televised remarks, Ms Rodriguez said that she, Mr Trump and Mr Rubio were aiming to set “a working agenda”.

So far, she has appeared to acquiesce to Mr Trump’s demands and to release prisoners jailed by the government under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

On Monday, the head of a Venezuelan human rights group said 266 political prisoners had been freed since January 8.

Mr Trump had praised the releases, saying on social media that he would “like to thank the leadership of Venezuela for agreeing to this powerful humanitarian gesture!”

In a key step to the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries, the US state department notified congress this week that it intends to begin sending additional diplomatic and support personnel to Caracas to prepare for the possible reopening of the US embassy, which shuttered in 2019.

Fully normalising ties, however, would require the US to revoke its decision recognising the Venezuelan parliament elected in 2015 as the country’s legitimate government.

Later on Wednesday, Mr Rubio planned to meet Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado at the state department.

Ms Machado went into hiding after Maduro was declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election despite ample credible evidence to the contrary.

She re-emerged in December to pick up her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.

After Maduro was ousted, she travelled to Washington DC and in a meeting with Mr Trump, she presented him with her Peace Prize medal, an extraordinary gesture given that Mr Trump has effectively side-lined her.