The Backyard

Power Games in a Rewired Americas

Executive Summary

On January 2, 2026, U.S. forces entered Caracas and removed Nicolas Maduro from power.

It took less than 48 hours. What took considerably longer, nearly two decades, was everything China had built there that was now suddenly at risk.

Beijing had been patient. Methodical. While Washington spent the 2000s focused on the Middle East, China was quietly rewriting its relationship with Latin America one check at a time. Infrastructure loans. Port deals. Oil-for-credit arrangements.

According to Rhodium Group, Chinese companies invested nearly $4.8 billion in Venezuelan oil infrastructure alone. Across the wider region, according to China’s Ministry of Commerce, Chinese trade with Latin America reached $518 billion by 2024, double the figure from a decade earlier. More than twenty countries had signed onto Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. China had become the dominant trading partner for South America’s largest economies.

Nobody in Washington had a plan to stop it. For years, nobody seemed particularly alarmed.

Then the ground started shifting.

This paper asks what happens if it keeps shifting. What if Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia all undergo fundamental changes in political leadership and foreign policy orientation, whether driven from within or forced from without? What does the world look like when the dust settles?

The answer reaches far beyond the hemisphere.