Three Ways to Teach About Venezuela in a Nonpartisan Way
by the Council on Foreign Relations
©2025 Council on Foreign Relations. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Unpack the news coming out of Venezuela with expert-informed resources that focus on history and fundamental foreign policy concepts.
People celebrate after the U.S. struck Venezuela and captured its President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, in Santiago, Chile on January 3, 2026.
Source: Pablo Sanhueza/Reuters
Last Updated: January 06, 2026
If your students are returning to the classroom talking about Venezuela, they are not alone. When Americans woke up on January 2nd to the news that U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, there were a lot of questions. The capture, which came after weeks of mounting military pressure on Venezuela, stirred difficult conversations, leaving world leaders and experts unsure of what comes next.
Given the uncertainty surrounding Venezuela, it is important to present this moment in foreign policy in a nonpartisan, fact-based manner to encourage students to think critically and form their own opinions.
In this blog, you’ll find three ways to incorporate this topic into your teaching by
- viewing events through a historical lens;
- focusing on fundamental concepts of foreign policy; and
- conducting a hypothetical simulation on the foreign policy tool of intelligence and covert action.
A Summary of the Past Decade in Venezuela
Venezuela has been struggling for years. Once South America’s wealthiest country, Venezuela’s economy collapsed in 2014 under President Nicolás Maduro due to expensive social policies, corruption, and overreliance on oil exports. The legitimacy of Maduro’s role as president has been called into question numerous times because of fraudulent elections and arrests of opposition leaders.
For almost two decades, the United States has imposed sanctions on Venezuela for a variety of reasons, including for lack of cooperation on counterterrorism and anti-narcotics efforts, as well as human rights violations. Under the Biden Administration, some sanctions were rolled back in an effort to curb energy prices and help the Venezuelan people. However, after Maduro’s government claimed victory in the 2024 election despite evidence that the opposition won the majority of votes, the tide changed again. Within the first year of his second term, President Trump began deploying a significant military presence off the coast of Venezuela, escalating tensions.
History of U.S. Foreign Policy in South and Latin America
The U.S. has been involved in Latin America almost as long as the United States has existed as a country. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 declared that European nations should not interfere in the region, as it was in the United States’ sphere of influence. President Theodore Roosevelt went further than his contemporaries, announcing through the Roosevelt Corollary that the United States would intervene in countries in the region. These two declarations set the stage for decades of intervention aimed at advancing U.S. interests.
From the Spanish-American War to supporting an armed insurrection to creating the Panama Canal, the U.S. became increasingly involved in Latin America as it sought to establish itself as a global power. There were a few years when the U.S. attempted to prioritize a more diplomatic approach in the region and focused on fostering democracy and developing local economies.
The Cold War quickly saw a return to U.S. interventionism. During this period, the United States and the Soviet Union supported opposing governments worldwide to promote their ideologies, exploited local politics for economic advantage, and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Some of the governments that the U.S. supported to achieve its goals were violent, oppressive, and often inflicted lasting harm on their populations.
The U.S. operation to capture Maduro could signal a return to the kind of interventionism that defined previous decades of U.S. involvement in Latin America.
Foreign Policy Concepts Relevant to Venezuela
With a range of perspectives on what has occurred in Venezuela over the past few days, understanding fundamental foreign policy concepts can help students form their own conclusions.
Discussions about Saturday’s operation have centered on several core foundational concepts in international relations, including sovereignty, international law, and the authorization of force. Use CFR Education resources to help your students understand the basics before they consider whether they believe the concepts apply in this situation.
Sovereignty
In principle, sovereignty means countries get to control what happens inside their borders and shouldn’t interfere within other countries. However, as with most things, established principles don’t always hold true. Countries occasionally violate other countries’ sovereignty to varying degrees – sometimes for humanitarian reasons, and sometimes to pursue economic or security goals.
The concept of sovereignty has become increasingly complicated in a more interconnected world, where many of today’s most pressing issues do not respect geographic boundaries. What does sovereignty look like when greenhouse gas emissions, viruses, and information ignore borders? While sovereignty serves as a central organizing principle at the heart of modern international relations, there are few clear rules or procedures for determining who is entitled to form a sovereign country or what constitutes a violation of sovereignty.
International Law
As with sovereignty, international law has helped maintain order by setting standards that other countries and domestic publics alike can use to hold governments accountable. Some types of international law are codified in the form of treaties and formalized agreements. Other international law is customary, comprising international obligations that arise from established international practices rather than from formal written treaties.
The United Nations (UN) Charter prohibits the use of military force, except in two cases: self-defense and instances where the UN Security Council authorizes the use of force. If war does break out, international humanitarian law encompasses a set of rules that aim to mitigate the conflict’s impact on civilians. These principles are codified in the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which 196 countries have ratified.
Primary Source Tip: Have your students read Article 2(4) in Chapter I of the UN Charter and discuss the extent to which it leaves room for interpretation regarding the use of military force and self-defense.
The Constitution and Military Force
According to the Constitution, Congress has the exclusive power to declare war. It also empowers Congress to authorize military force without having to declare war, as Congress did—among other times—in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s. While Congress can greenlight military force, the president serves as the commander-in-chief of the military and has discretion over how it performs its duties. Presidents have used this authority to deploy the country’s armed forces, conduct intelligence, and carry out covert operations.
In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution to ensure that presidents can act effectively in a military context by acting unilaterally for specific periods of time before obtaining congressional approval. However, past presidents of both parties have violated the War Powers Resolution without facing action from Congress.
Primary Source Tip: Have your students read Article I, Section 8, and Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution before reading the CFR Education piece to see how these Sections of the Constitution have evolved over time. Then ask them to discuss whether they see Venezuela as representing continuity or change in the evolving way in which presidents pursue American interests.
Hypothetical Scenarios
It can be challenging to understand the foreign policy forces at play in Venezuela while also keeping up with the constant news updates. You can drive home the relevant issues of intelligence and covert action without having to refer back to the news for policy changes with one of the hypothetical situations in CFR Education’s simulations library.
In the simulation below, students are put in the shoes of the National Security Council (NSC) to advise the president on deciding whether to use covert action as a tool of foreign policy. After conducting the simulation, ask students to reflect: What is this tool suitable for? Does it fulfill its stated goals? What are the pros and cons of employing covert action? Do students see similarities or differences between the hypothetical simulation and the events this past weekend in Venezuela?
Teach the Headlines with CFR Education
Rapidly changing global affairs can be challenging to understand, which is why it is essential to scaffold these events for your students by studying history, principles of foreign policy, and simulations that model global situations.
You can rely on CFR Education for nonpartisan resources that will help you tackle this situation as well as the other global events heading our way.
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