SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
nicolas maduro
Laura Dogu: The American Coup Expert Appointed by Trump as Top US Envoy in Venezuela
Dogu’s appointment ultimately signals not innovation but continuity: a recalibration of tactics in pursuit of the same objective that has defined US policy toward the Bolivarian Revolution for decades—regime change.
Feb 13, 2026
Laura Dogu, newly appointed US envoy to Venezuela, is described by the Los Angeles Times as an appropriate choice because she “navigated crises” in Nicaragua and Honduras during periods of “social and political volatility.” What the LA Times fails to add is that it was precisely Dogu’s job to create crisis and volatility in both countries.
In Latin America she is widely regarded, for good reason, as the “US ambassador of interventions and coups.”
The LA Times appears entirely relaxed about a US diplomat’s job being to meddle in the internal politics of a country whose president the US has just kidnapped in an operation resulting in the murder over 100 people and involving the bombing of key public buildings and health facilities.
Dogu enters the fray “leveraging her experience with authoritarian regimes” and her “deep Latin American expertise.” The LA Times implies that her job is likely to be proactive, looking for ways to ease out the Chavista government and replace it with one more to Washington’s liking, even if that takes a while.
Nicaragua
Signaling that this is the case, the LA Times reporter asked right-wing opposition figures from Nicaragua for their opinions of Dogu, presumably on the basis that she is charged with working with similar quislings in her new role. Predictably, they praised her, admitting to having had clandestine meetings with her when she was based in the country and noting her public support for opposition groups.
Dogu was US ambassador in Managua from 2015 until October 2018, a period coinciding with the preparations and then the coup attempt that began in April 2018 and was defeated in July. At the start of her term, she had relatively cordial relations with the government. That changed after President Daniel Ortega was reelected in 2016 with an increased popular mandate. It became clear to Washington that electoral means to oust the Sandinistas lacked sufficient public support.
Instead, as the State Department admitted, the US concentrated their efforts on “civil society” groups led by opposition figures, “limiting their contact” with the elected government. It later emerged that, in the run-up to the April 2018 insurrection, millions of dollars were spent promoting such groups.
When the coup attempt fizzled, President Ortega explicitly identified Laura Dogu, as Washington’s representative, of being “the leader and financier of this conspiracy, the destruction, the fires, the torture, the disrespect for human dignity, the desecration of corpses, and other acts carried out with cruelty against all Nicaraguans marked by the great sin of being Sandinistas.” Within three months, Washington replaced her.
Honduras
In Honduras, Xiomara Castro of the progressive Libre Party became president in January 2022. Laura Dogu arrived in Tegucigalpa as US ambassador just three months later.
The Center for Political and Economic Research (CEPR) catalogued some of her egregious interferences including with energy and tax reforms, creation of a Constitutional Tribunal, replacement of the attorney general, and the building of a prison.
By 2023, Dogu was already drawing criticism from the Honduran foreign minister, who asked her to “stop commenting on internal Honduran matters.” He criticized her again for similar reasons, in December 2024, after she held a series of meetings with NGOs critical of the government.
In August 2024, President Castro complained about Dogu, after the US diplomat criticized Honduran officials for meeting with their counterparts in Caracas. The ambassador characterized this meeting as “sitting next to a drug trafficker."
Then after a conflict with Dogu over Honduras’s extradition treaty with the US in September 2024 and a spate of rumors about the president’s family, Castro warned that a coup attempt was underway. Dogu concluded her term in Honduras before the presidential elections at the end of 2025, where the US did, in fact, decisively interfere.
Venezuela
The LA Times ingenuously commented that Dogu was “an unusual pick signaling a strategic shift in US policy.” It was neither. US policy remains regime change, but the tactics have shifted in response to the successful and unified resistance of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Venezuelan analyst Francisco Rodriguez noted: “Laura Dogu presented credentials as diplomatic representative of the US to the government of [acting President] Delcy Rodríguez today, that would count as an act of formal recognition.”
As for Dogu being “an unusual pick,” her record, as shown above, suggests a continuation of business as usual. CEPR put it bluntly: “Dogu’s appointment suggests that the administration sought someone with experience in aggressively interfering in a host country’s domestic affairs.”
There is nothing unusual about that. Between 1898 and 1994, the US perpetrated coups and government changes in Latin America at least 41 times. Dogu now presides over just another such attempt. The only reasons Washington itself hasn’t suffered a coup, Latin Americans quip, is because there is no US embassy there.
Far from breaking with the past, Dogu actually invokes it: “We never left the Cold War in Latin America,” she said.
Dogu recently tweeted: “Today I met with Delcy Rodríguez and Jorge Rodríguez to reiterate the three phases that @SecRubio has outlined regarding Venezuela: stabilization, economic recovery and reconciliation, and transition.”
The comment drew an immediate repudiation from the aforementioned Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly. The failure by Dogu to refer to him and acting President Delcy Rodríguez by their formal titles is a disrespectful snub. He characterized her remarks as “diplomatic blackmail” and a “colonial roadmap.” The Venezuelan leadership may have a gun held to their heads, but they continue to respond militantly.
For now, Dogu is concentrating on the “stabilization and economic recovery” phases of the Rubio dictate. The more contentious third phase will be “transition.”
In a telling pivot from its previous myth-making that the “opposition [is] more unified than ever,” the LA Times now admits that Dogu is just the right official to be foisted on Venezuela because of her experience navigating “fragmented opposition movements.” The opposition to the Chavista government has long been fractious despite hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into “democracy promotion” by the US.
Contrary to the myths in the corporate press, María Corina Machado and her hand-picked surrogate Edmundo González Urrutia may not be the people’s choice in Venezuela. No lesser authority than Donald Trump himself commented that Machado “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.”
If the claims that the opposition won the July 2024 presidential by a 70% landslide were credible, why didn’t González present his evidence when summoned by Venezuela’s supreme court? Failing to do so left no constitutional basis for him to be declared the winner.
But that was the whole point of the Washington’s interference in backing an astroturf opposition with more traction inside the Beltway than in Caracas. The US objective was not to win the contest but to delegitimize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The deadly sanctions—illegal unilateral coercive measures—were explicitly designed as collective punishment to erode Maduro’s authority with his compatriots.
And when that failed and the Bolivarian Revolution prevailed, Washington escalated further, culminating in the January 3 kidnapping of a constitutional head of state. That military action formed part of its hybrid war, accompanied by sustained demonization of Maduro before the US public.
Conclusion
Laura Dogu’s appointment ultimately signals not innovation but continuity: a recalibration of tactics in pursuit of the same objective that has defined US policy toward the Bolivarian Revolution for decades—regime change through pressure, attrition, and delegitimization. Whether branded as “stabilization,” “economic recovery,” or “transition,” the underlying premise remains that Venezuela’s political future should be shaped in Washington, not Caracas.
Yet the record in Nicaragua, Honduras, and Venezuela itself suggests that external coercion has limits. Dogu’s mission will test not only Venezuela’s resilience but also the durability of the unremitting US strategy of Latin American interventions.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The US Must Stop Pointing Fingers and Admit: We Are the Bad Guys
Our humanity demands that we cease with claiming the evil in others without recognizing it in ourselves.
Jan 22, 2026
Every single moving mouth and face I see in the media seems to be obligated to stress the barbarity and illegitimacy of the Maduro government to establish some acceptable moral clarity even before they can carry on with any analysis of the current political situation, or the current political conditions in the world. Likewise, each personality seems obligated to make similar statements as a prerequisite to speak on the Iranian regime and the religionists controlling the country. Each is evil they must claim, and that they expressively disagree and denounce them in all shape and form. Each is beyond the specter of acceptable civilization, they must state. Each has no inkling of morality, but is simply obsessed with power and control.
This was the same in any discussion of Hamas in Gaza. Every political critic was required to denounce the various regimes and point out their flaws without spelling out the historical influences that helped to create the regimes and set them into motion. Anyone who has ever spoken up for peace and credible reflection knows what it’s like to be baited or accused of being an apologist for the bad guy. But this is not necessary and distracts from full and meaningful analysis.
I am not going to seek acceptability by engaging in some litmus test of morality regurgitating a litany of flaws and how I don't agree. I believe that there is a collective of people so tired of the moral denunciations that they are able to look past my refusal to criticize and denounce and hear what I am trying to say.
The reflections of the flaws of other places and countries is namely a reflection of us and on us...
I am reminded, from my experiences with my work in the drug and alcohol recovery community in Roxbury, Massachusetts and the very poignant but grassroots logic and moral challenge that often flowed from that recovery community. People would remind us that when we were so busy pointing fingers at others that there were four fingers pointing back at us. This means that when we point out the deficiencies, the cruelty, the lying, the racism, and the hatred of others it is not all in them, but it also resides in us. We are not exempt and we are not free from all the dismissive political distances that we try to create.
The hypocrisy is when people go through all of the denunciations of the other over legitimacy and brutality, over legalities and dictatorship, and fail in acknowledging this mirror that reflects back on this country first and foremost.
There is some Nicolas Maduro in us. There is some Ali Hosseini Khamenei in us. Vladimir Putin is in us. We find that Hamas is in us and has always been part of who we are. We find that Palestinian dismissal resides in so many of us as it does in Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. We need to quell our objections and realize in so many instances there is a mirror that projects a reflection onto ourselves, and we discover them is in us.
I am astounded that given all of the vigorous and vehement denunciations and dismissal of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, or denunciation of Hamas there are still four fingers pointing back at us. If we look closely enough, we find all of the criticisms and flaws that we recognize in the other and our strong objections are mirrored in this government and in this historical moment in this country.
Murders do not just happen with the brutality of other governments but happens in Minneapolis with the killing of Renee Good. That murder happened not too far from where George Floyd was also killed. As we point out the roundup of people in other countries we must remind ourselves of the undocumented immigrants and US citizens that the Trump administration has arrested. More than 328,000 have been disappeared in the illegal and unconstitutional sweeps carried out by the administration. 327,000 have been deported. At least 22 have died in ICE custody. Most of the facilities are operated by private corporations that have raked in huge profits like the GEO Group.
Just as this administration is obsessed with crushing Tren de Aragua, a notorious gang with reaches from Venezuela into the US, the parallels are frightening with the US reaching into Venezuela creating a vassal state, stealing oil and other resources, claiming that they have a right to do so, and arrogantly stating that they are running the government. There are four fingers pointing back at us.
The sheer arrogance of demanding that Greenland be controlled by the US the hard way or the easy way points to the rogue status of the US. There are many other examples of racism, hatred, cruelty, brutality, the looting of other countries, the demanding of rare earths, and in general street racketeering but on a broader scale. The expression of this current moment with the US government is that it is expressed in theft, fear, bullying, and simple old street protection and racketeering. There are four fingers pointing at this government and this country.
The Fellowship of Reconciliation-USA, the oldest peace and justice nonviolent organization in the country, embraces this hard truth. They are us, and we urge that we move away from the paradigm of the other and, almost in confession, that leads to contrition that what the country claims as the other is us, and four fingers are pointing back upon us. Our humanity demands that we cease with claiming the evil in others without recognizing it in ourselves.
The hypocrisy is when people go through all of the denunciations of the other over legitimacy and brutality, over legalities and dictatorship, and fail in acknowledging this mirror that reflects back on this country first and foremost. Our claims of deep immorality, where objections are strongly expressed, belong to us. If we are going to denounce any place to gain credibility in our analysis or criticisms, then the talking heads and the experts need to state that this is us in all of the shapes and forms of political repression and immorality. They are us, and our denunciations begin at home—stating that we are strongly opposed to what is happening in the US, and that we do not agree with the images and political agenda in the US just like we do not agree with what is happening abroad. The reflections of the flaws of other places and countries is namely a reflection of us and on us, and four fingers are pointing back at us.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump 'Piracy' Continues as US Hijacks 7th Venezuela-Linked Oil Tanker
The MV Sagitta is at least the second Chinese-owned tanker seized during Trump's nearly monthlong "quarantine."
Jan 20, 2026
US forces on Tuesday seized a seventh oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea linked to Venezuela as President Donald Trump's military campaign to control the source of the world's largest petroleum reserves continued.
According to US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), troops boarded and seized the MV Sagitta Tuesday morning "without incident."
"The apprehension of another tanker operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean demonstrates our resolve to ensure that the only oil leaving Venezuela will be oil that is coordinated properly and lawfully," SOUTHCOM said.
The Sagitta is a Liberian-flagged vessel owned and managed by a company in China. It is at least the second Chinese-owned tanker taken by US forces since Trump's announcement last month of a "quarantine" on Venezuelan oil exports. Regional and world leaders have condemned the seizures as acts of "piracy."
International law experts contend that the blockade, sanctions, and strikes on boats allegedly transporting drugs—which have killed more than 120 people—are all illegal, as are the US bombing and invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The US Department of Justice indicted Maduro for alleged conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices, and possession of such weapons. Maduro has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and has called himself a “prisoner of war.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular