The D Brief: Post-Maduro moves; Europe unites over Greenland; Marines’ ‘hidden crisis’; Jan. 6, remembered; And a bit more.

Developing: President Donald Trump said his Pentagon chief is among four people leading U.S. involvement in Venezuela for the foreseeable future. Speaking to NBC News on Monday, Trump listed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Vice President JD Vance. “It's a group of all. They have all expertise, different expertise would also play a role,” Trump said. 

Who is ultimately in charge? “Me,” Trump replied. He also repeated his goal of convincing American oil firms to somehow rebuild Venezuela’s petroleum industry and infrastructure. 

“A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue,” Trump said. That process, he speculated, could be complete in 18 months. 

For what it’s worth, billionaire investor and Trump-supporter Paul Singer is poised to benefit immensely from the president’s oil ambitions for Venezuela, Judd Legum of Popular Information noted Monday. “In November 2025, Singer acquired Citgo, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-run oil company” for $5.9 billion, Lugum reports. The sale “was forced by creditors of Venezuela after the country defaulted on its bond payments.” 

Advisors for that sale “valued Citgo at $13 billion, while Venezuelan officials said the assets were worth as much as $18 billion,” Legum writes. “Maduro’s government was also seeking to appeal court approval of Singer’s bid for Citgo. Now that Maduro has been ousted, however, it seems unlikely that the appeal will continue.” Read more, here. 

Survey says: Just a third of Americans approve of Trump’s plan to attack Venezuela and abduct Maduro; a slightly larger percentage (34%) said they disapprove; and the remaining 33% did not have an opinion yet, according to Reuters polling published Monday.

In similar polling, the Washington Post found 40% of respondents approve versus 42% who disapprove of the abduction operation. 

Coverage continues below…

Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2021, a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, assaulting at least 174 law-enforcement officers, in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Donald Trump, who falsely claimed voter fraud.

New: Seven European nations unite against Trump’s threats over Greenland. The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the UK and Denmark released a joint statement Tuesday emphasizing America’s role as an “essential partner” and NATO ally, “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.” 

That statement comes in the wake of the U.S. military attack on Venezuela over the weekend, in which American troops reportedly killed at least 80 people during an operation to abduct Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro and his wife in apparent violation of international law early Saturday in Caracas. 

The following day, U.S. President Donald Trump was asked if he expected “to take an action against Greenland” after the Venezuela operation, since he has openly speculated several times about the possibility since retaking office last year, despite not mentioning it at all during his campaign. Trump reiterated his position on Sunday, telling reporters, “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. And Denmark is not gonna be able to do it, I can tell you.” He repeated that goal in a separate interview later in the day. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen released her own statement Sunday warning Trump against trying to annex Greenland or “any of the three countries in the Danish kingdom,” which also includes the Faroe Islands. 

“We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and the European Union needs us to have it, and they know that,” said Trump. 

The seven European leaders disagreed. “Arctic security remains a key priority for Europe and it is critical for international and transatlantic security,” they said at the outset of their statement Tuesday. “NATO has made clear that the Arctic region is a priority and European Allies are stepping up. We and many other Allies have increased our presence, activities and investments, to keep the Arctic safe and to deter adversaries.”

However, they continued in a subtle rebuke emphasizing international law, “Security in the Arctic must therefore be achieved collectively, in conjunction with NATO allies including the United States, by upholding the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders,” the leaders said, and stressed, “These are universal principles, and we will not stop defending them.” Read over the statement in full, here. 

At the United Nations on Monday, Russia and China demanded Maduro’s release while Secretary General António Guterres said the U.S. violated the UN’s charter, which delegates from Bahrain, Brazil and Mexico also echoed. Trump’s ambassador to the international body, Mike Waltz, insisted, “We are not occupying a country. This was a law enforcement operation.” 

Waltz: “You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States, under the control of illegitimate leaders, and not benefiting the people of Venezuela, and stolen by a handful of oligarchs inside of Venezuela,” the U.S. ambassador said. 

Second opinions: Former Pentagon special counsel Ryan Goodman described Waltz’s UN remarks as “One of most remarkable US presentations at [the] UN Security Council I've ever seen,” and noted his remarks about energy reserves as a justification is illegal. Former State Department counsel Brian Finacune asked that if, as Waltz says, “there's no war with Venezuela (and hence no application of the law of war), does that mean that the US military killing Venezuelan and Cuban security personnel was just murder?”

Venezuela’s position: “If the kidnapping of a head of state and bombing are tolerated or downplayed, the message sent to the world is a devastating one, mainly that the law is optional and force is the true arbiter of international order,” Ambassador Samuel Moncada said. 

Expert reax: “Military force can topple a dictator, but it cannot create political authority or legitimacy,” argues Monica Duffy Toft of Tufts University, whom we spoke with about the militarization of American foreign policy less than three years ago. Along with researcher Sidita Kushi, Toft is co-author of the “Military Intervention Project” documenting use cases throughout American history. 

“Removing a leader—even a brutal and incompetent one—is not the same as advancing a legitimate political order,” Toft wrote Monday for The Conversation. “By declaring its intent to govern Venezuela, the United States is creating a governance trap of its own making—one in which external force is mistakenly treated as a substitute for domestic legitimacy.”

The big problem: When violence becomes a substitute for full-spectrum action, including diplomacy and economics, “it tends to deepen instability rather than resolve it,” Toft warns. 

Consider as well, “In 2026, for every dollar the United States invests in the diplomatic ‘scalpel’ of the State Department to prevent conflict, it allocates $28 to the military ‘hammer’ of the Department of Defense, effectively ensuring that force becomes a first rather than last resort,” she writes. 

Another troubling possible second-order effect of Trump’s plan to “run” Venezuela: Its infrastructure is already in ruins. “If the United States assumes responsibility for governance, it will be blamed for every blackout, every food shortage and every bureaucratic failure. The liberator will quickly become the occupier,” Toft writes. (Tom Friedman of the New York Times echoed this sentiment, which traces back to Colin Powell as the “Pottery Barn rule,” when Friedman warned on the day of Maduro’s abduction, “You Break It, You Own It.”)

And beyond that is the message other nefarious leaders around the world could take: “The more the United States normalizes unilateral governance, the easier it becomes for rivals to dismiss American appeals to sovereignty as selective and self-serving, and the more difficult it becomes for allies to justify their ties to the U.S.,” says Toft. Read on, here. 

Developing: The U.S. military may be preparing to intercept a Russian-flagged crude oil tanker transiting the North Atlantic, The War Zone reported Monday after a flurry of open-source flight tracking data appeared online. The U.S. Coast Guard has so far been unable to intercept the vessel; the recent movement of C-17 Globemaster III cargo jets suggests U.S. special operations forces may try next. Details here. 

Additional reading/viewing: 

• “Venezuela latest: Security forces patrol streets as opposition calls for release of political prisoners,” the BBC reported Tuesday; 
• “Venezuela Braces for Economic Collapse From U.S. Blockade on Oil Exports,” the New York Times reported Monday evening; 
• “Ukraine’s allies meet in Paris but progress is uncertain with US focus on Venezuela and Greenland,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday; 
• “GOP fears Trump’s foray into nation-building in Venezuela,” The Hill reported Tuesday; 
• And ICYMI, a political organizer in Michigan was arrested mid-interview while speaking out against U.S. action in Venezuela on Saturday. WZZM ABC13 out of Grand Rapids has video of the arrest. 

Around the Defense Department

Update: SecDef Hegseth has moved to downgrade Sen. Mark Kelly’s military rank over the lawmaker’s remarks discouraging troops from following unlawful orders, which is a sentiment Hegseth himself propagated ahead of Trump’s first term, though he backtracked during his confirmation hearing a year ago. In a Jan. 5 letter of censure, the defense secretary accused the senator of counseling disobedience, undermining the chain of command, and other charges by making videos urging troops to disobey illegal orders. Stateline has coverage, here.

Kelly responded with a statement, which read, in part: “Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn’t like, they will come after them the same way. It’s outrageous and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that.”

Inside the Marine Corps' hidden recruiting crisis. The only service to consistently meet its intake goals in recent years is doing so at great cost, Business Insider reports in a four-part investigative series. "You're basically burning Marines in order to put more Marines in," one recruiting sergeant in a Great Plains duty station said. "That is what recruiting is."

The pressure to fill quotas is so great that some recruiter Marines are forging documents and even dying by suicide, the site reports. Read on, here.

Five years after Jan. 6

Several outlets have retrospectives on the attempted insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, and its aftermath, including NPR, Lawfare, the New York Times, and more.

Former special prosecutor Jack Smith, in Dec. 17 Congressional testimony:  “The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him.” The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee released a 255-page transcript of Smith’s deposition on Dec. 31.

Pardon update: “At least 33 pardoned insurrectionists have now been convicted of, charged with, or arrested for additional crimes since the violent attack on the Capitol,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin and House Judiciary Committee Democrats announced in a new report Monday.

Trump and other Republicans have “engaged in a near-complete effort to rewrite the history of the day and erase it from the collective American memory,” reports the Guardian. “On his first day in office, Trump pardoned anyone involved in the attack, a move that affected some 1,500 people.”

Gregory Rosen, who led the Justice Department unit that prosecuted Jan. 6 cases: “But Americans remember that day for a simple reason – we watched it happen. And as long as we remember what it was – unadulterated mob violence – we can speak honestly about what it means for our democracy and our future.”