Trump’s Venezuela Blockade Helps China Tighten Noose on Taiwan

Turning the Caribbean into an American lake could justify the same game in the South China Sea

By: Jens Kastner

Photo from BBC

The Trump administration’s escalating pressure on Venezuela by sanctioning and blocking oil tankers associated with President Nicolas Maduro’s government and carrying out extrajudicial killings of operators of suspected drug boats has significantly lowered the bar for China to act against Taiwan, a range of observers are warning in unison over the situation around the island, 160-odd km from the Chinese mainland.

The US in December seized two oil tankers off Venezuela’s coast in international waters amid a large US military build-up, putting an effective embargo ‌in place, with loaded vessels carrying millions of barrels of oil staying in Venezuelan waters rather than risk seizure. On December 29, Trump confirmed that the US had attacked a target on the Venezuelan mainland for the first time. There was a large explosion in a port area where drugs are loaded onto boats, Trump said. “We hit all the boats, and now we’ve hit the area.”

That is in effect a physical manifestation of President Donald Trump’s early December annual National Security Strategy document invoking the 1823 Monroe Doctrine pronounced by President James Monroe, aimed at preventing interference by European powers in the Americas and in effect condoning military action in the hemisphere to protect US interests.

The Venezuelan moves, framed as a continuation of Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign, demonstrate a willingness to use coercive economic and military leverage to achieve political outcomes without triggering full-scale war. That should sound familiar to decision-makers within Taiwan who had long been calculating that the Chinese leadership wouldn’t risk an inherently complex amphibious invasion attempt.

In the final days of 2025, China’s military moved army, naval, air force, and artillery units around Taiwan for its unprecedently sweeping “Justice Mission 2025” drills in response to a Washington-approved US$11 billion arms sale to the island, enacting sea and air space restrictions affecting many passenger flights and Taiwan’s largest vital deep-water ports in Keelung and Kaohsiung. It is China’s sixth major round of maneuvers around the island of 23 million people since 2022, when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised its profile with a state visit.

“President Trump’s actions against Venezuela set a dangerous precedent for other countries, and particularly for China vis-a-vis Taiwan,” said Milena Sterio, a professor at Cleveland State University College of Law. “If the United States can engage in a blockade against a sovereign nation and claim, despite evidence to the contrary, that there is an armed conflict between the US and that nation, then countries such as China can surely use the same rationale to stage blockades against Taiwan, as an example.”

Sterio added that even though there is a distinction between Venezuela and Taiwan as the latter is not a fully sovereign nation, she would also argue that most in the international community agree that Taiwan is a pseudo-sovereign entity and that a Chinese blockade or other military action against Taiwan would be a breach of Taiwan’s sovereignty and a violation of international law.

The evolution of China’s actions suggests a strategic shift that is now being nurtured by Trump’s approach of pursuing extremely intense coercion rather than immediate conflict. After the 2022-25 period saw an ever-increasing number of Chinese large-scale military exercises around Taiwan and sorties by Chinese military aircraft near the island, also the Chinese coast guard has more recently begun adopting an increasingly assertive and complex operational pattern near Taiwan.

In November and December, there were multiple events of Coast Guard vessels entering Taiwan-controlled waters near Kinmen in formation, marking a sharp escalation in operational assertiveness after a period of relative calm in October.

While the Taiwanese authorities condemned the incursion for “greatly endangered passing vessels,” their Chinese counterparts labelled them as “safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests as well as the lives and property of fishermen on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s move to designate two Venezuelan criminal groups – Tren de Aragua and Cartel de los Soles – as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and alleging that they are led by Maduro himself evokes China in November launching a “police probe” against “Taiwan independence” separatist Puma Shen over secession charges. Puma Shen is a staunchly anti-China lawmaker belonging to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te. Shen’s life may now be in danger.

“The Trump Administration’s use of force against alleged narco-trafficking boats from Venezuela also sets a precedent which countries like China can use - that the use of lethal force against non-state actors from another country is justified, so long as the force-using country claims that they are terrorists,” said Sterio, the law professor.

Similarly, Steve Tsang, Director of the University of London’s SOAS China Institute, said that as Beijing adamantly refuses to recognize Taiwan as such, it would claim any act by Chinese forces on Taiwanese assets as a “police” action. “Acts akin to piracy conducted by the US. will only make Beijing feel more comfortable to act equally badly, as Beijing sees no need to abide by international law and norms that are blatantly violated by the US,” Tsang added.

The developments are closely watched also in the neighboring Philippines, which is embroiled in an increasingly violent spat with the Chinese coast guard in disputed waters in the South China Sea.

“In fact, Beijing can argue that it has stronger, historical argument over Taiwan than Washington has over Greenland [which Trump wants to capture from its owner Denmark],” said Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, president of the Philippine Association for Chinese Studies. “If the US can turn the Caribbean to an American lake, China may take the cue to turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake.”

Jens Kastner covers Taiwan for Asia Sentinel