It us becoming more clear what Trump intends with his attack on Venezuela and his abduction of its president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and bringing them to the US. He dismissed what seemed the likely choice to replace Maduro, the Trump-worshipping opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, in favor of Maduro’s vice-president Delcy Rodríguez, someone who had worked with Maduro for years.

Trump is signaling what is going on.

The prospect of the United States seizing direct control of Venezuela appeared to recede on Sunday after the shocking seizure of President Nicolás Maduro – but US officials said Washington was keeping a 15,000-strong force in the Caribbean and might make a fresh military intervention if Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, did not accommodate their demands.

While Rodríguez kept up a defiant tone in public, the substance of conversations she had had in private with US officials was not clear.

In the aftermath of Maduro’s abduction on Saturday, Donald Trump said the US would “run” the South American country of 30 million people. On Sunday he warned Rodríguez to heed US wishes. “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” he told the Atlantic.

Rodríguez, 56, had on Saturday pledged fealty to Maduro and condemned his capture as an “atrocity” but the New York Times reported that Trump officials several weeks ago identified the technocrat as a potential successor and business partner partly on the basis of her relationship with Wall Street and oil companies.

Imperialism, the desire to take over and run other countries, never went away with the demise of the British, French, and other European colonial empires in the middle of the 20th century. It was merely replaced by more covert neo-imperialist forms, with power being wielded by economic means, using overt methods such as trade restrictions and embargoes and covert methods such as the levers of international finance and banking and agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

What we are now seeing is an old-fashioned Mafia-like extortion/protection racket, which suits the thug and gangster mentality of Trump. Rather than putting his own person in charge and thus becoming responsible to keep her in power, he is telling Rodriguez that she had better do what he wants or else. The abduction of Maduro was meant to be example for what could happen to her if she does not comply. It is the analog of the gangster’s thugs breaking the kneecaps of those merchants who do not pay up. It is meant to serve as a warning to others of what could happen to them if they defy the gangster.

What we are seeing in Venezuela is a reversion to an even older model of imperialism with Rodriguez serving as a satrap, reminiscent of what took place in the ancient Persian empire of Cyrus who took power in 553 BCE.

Although the Medes seem to be the first people in history to have divided their lands up into provinces, with individual provincial leaders, the system of satrapies really came into its own during the time of the Achaemenid Empire (sometimes known as the Persian Empire), c. 550 to 330 BCE. Under the Achaemenid Empire’s founder, Cyrus the Great, Persia was divided into 26 satrapies. The satraps ruled in the name of the king and paid tribute to the central government.

Achaemenid satraps had considerable power. They owned and administered the land in their provinces, always in the king’s name. They served as the chief judge for their region, adjudicating disputes and decreeing the punishments for various crimes. Satraps also collected taxes, appointed and removed local officials, and policed the roads and public spaces. 

To prevent the satraps from exercising too much power and possibly even challenging the king’s authority, each satrap answered to a royal secretary, known as the “eye of the king.” In addition, the chief financial officer and the general in charge of troops for each satrapy reported directly to the king, rather than to the satrap. 

Having a satrap indirectly run things on your behalf is easier (at least in theory) than directly running the country with your own people and troops, the model which led to the Iraq and Afghanistan disasters. However, its success depends on the satrap being able to enforce the foreign ruler’s orders and having the military and the people go along with what the satrap says. Trump has made it clear that what he wants from his satrap is to give US oil companies exclusive rights to its oil and other resources. How long the people will put up with the looting of their country remains to be seen,

Coincidentally, a more recent model for just such a situation is again Iran, when Reza Pahlavi was placed in power as a satrap by the US and British to give back control of the oil industry to US and British companies after they had been nationalized by Mohammed Mossadeq, just like Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela. Pahlavi was able to hold on to power with increasingly brutal methods until Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew him in a popular revolution.

That is the basic problem that satraps face, how to sell out their country’s interests to a foreign power without inciting popular unrest and revolution that require suppression by the military. When that fails, repeated intervention by the foreign ruler becomes necessary. In Vietnam, as each successive satrap failed to quell public unrest, the US fomented coup after coup in the hope that the new ruler would be more successful. When they were not, the US had to send in more and more of its own troops. What is to be seen is if Rodriquez can walk the tightrope between pleasing Trump and not being seen as totally selling out the country. Her task is made more difficult because new communication technologies make organizing popular uprisings easier. If Rodriquez fails in this task, the military may step in and take over, just as they did in Vietnam.

It is clear that Trump means to expand the range of his thuggery. He is similarly threatening Colombia’s president Gustavo Pietro who has been harshly critical of him. He is threatening Cuba, long a thorn in the side of the US ever since the Cuban revolution overthrew the dictator Batista who had made that country a haven for US interests.

The UK, Canada, and the countries of Western Europe seem to be still under the impression that they can appease Trump’s thuggery because his satrap expansion is just for countries that they think are unimportant. Hence their muted, even supportive, response to Trump’s aggression in Venezuela. But he will not stop because megalomaniacal leaders never know when to stop. Trying to placate them only makes them want to do more along the same lines. Trump is threatening to take over Greenland next. What will they do then? Right now, they are opposing it. But if he does, then I would not be too surprised to see them, especially the UK and Canada, find excuses to do nothing but just issue mild verbal rebukes.