No. of Recommendations: 16
Decapitating one of the world's largest producers of illicit drugs (FARC) is a step in the right direction. Getting rid of some of Maduro's henchmen is a step in the right direction. Smashing up the $6B of Russian defense equipment (including some of their air defense toys) is a step in the right direction.
What's her face now has a choice. Maduro's government is still intact, albeit toothless.
How is it any more toothless than it was two days ago? Maduro's gone, to be sure - but the regime is still in control of the country. If anything, Trump's rejection of Machado has gutted the only political opposition to the Maduro regime. He's de facto supported the military getting to choose who runs the country, whether it's Rodriguez or not. He's framed the entire operation as not regime change, but just getting to Maduro personally. FARC has not been decapitated, because Maduro wasn't the head of FARC. Killing a few random Venezuelan soldiers isn't going to have any material effect, either.
The belief appears to be that Rodriguez will be a more pliant partner for Washington than Maduro was. Which is extremely unlikely, because (again) none of the underlying political factions or forces or influences in Venezuela have been changed by this operation. Rodriguez can't move much closer to Washington, because she'll lose the support of the military and Chavez' political/militia machine if she does.
So there's no particular reason to expect that Venezuela's policies towards China are going to change in any way that's big enough to matter in the slightest (which is why you use the circumlocution "step in the right direction"). They're not going to start expelling Chinese nationals or rejecting Chinese investment simply because Maduro has been replaced by Rodriguez. Theoretically this might give an opening to Washington to move closer to Caracas - actually changing some of the geopolitical dynamics and allowing DC to begin replacing Beijing as an investment partner in Venezuela. But that's also pretty unlikely, because it runs contrary to Trump's "America First" foreign policy that rejects US government economic support for other countries the way China is more than willing to do it.
Trump seems to believe that jawboning the oil companies will be an adequate replacement for coordinated government investment in Venezuela, but that's also very unlikely to pan out as long as there's still a Chavista government in Caracas. That's a multi-year, multi-billion investment - and merely replacing Maduro with a close ally, with no other political or structural changes in the country, is unlikely to induce companies to rush in.
