Nicaragua's Reckoning: The Last Member of the Troika of Tyranny

Consider a Latin American country whose leaders have been condemned as dictators, who count themselves among the closest allies of Nicolas Maduro, and who were once branded “enemies of humanity” by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. By any reasonable measure, such a regime should be a fixture of geopolitical headlines. Instead, it has managed to slip almost entirely beneath the radar of the observers who track the Western Hemisphere’s authoritarian governments.

That country is Nicaragua, a Central American nation of roughly seven million people that has been ruled by Daniel Ortega since 2007. While the world’s attention has fixed itself on Venezuela for obvious reasons, on Cuba because of the prospect that its government could collapse without Venezuelan support, and on Colombia because of President Gustavo Petro’s acrimonious relationship with President Trump, the Ortega regime has done everything in its power to avoid drawing attention to itself.

It has good reason to keep its head down. For over two decades, Nicaragua has been one corner of what former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton called the “Troika of Tyranny,” a trio of leftist authoritarian regimes that also includes Cuba and Venezuela. That mutual-support network is now coming apart.

Key Takeaways

Nicaragua, ruled by Daniel Ortega since 2007, is the last functioning member of the “Troika of Tyranny,” after Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces and Cuba’s deepening economic crisis.
Between 2007 and 2016, Venezuela shipped $3.7 billion in oil to Nicaragua on extraordinarily generous terms, funding social programs and economic growth before Venezuela’s own collapse ended the arrangement.
Maduro’s capture shattered the assumption that direct American military intervention in Latin America was a thing of the past, fundamentally altering Managua’s strategic calculus.
Nicaragua is far more exposed than Venezuela: poor, resource-scarce, and dependent on the United States for nearly two-thirds of its exports—giving Washington far greater leverage than it ever had over Caracas.
Nicaragua’s lower profile in American domestic politics, and Ortega’s avoidance of publicly humiliating Trump, may be its best hope of avoiding the fate that befell Maduro.

The dramatic capture of Maduro by U.S. forces and a deepening crisis in Cuba have left Nicaragua as the last functioning member of the alliance, and the events in Venezuela have delivered a brutal lesson: decades of survival count for nothing when American special forces arrive at the door.

An Ally Falls

The bond between Venezuela and Nicaragua ran far deeper than shared ideology. For nearly a decade it stood as one of the most consequential examples of oil diplomacy in Latin American history, an arrangement that reshaped Nicaragua’s economy while tightening the Ortega regime’s hold on power.

When Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez took power in 1999, he envisioned using his country’s vast oil reserves as a geopolitical instrument to assemble a bloc of allies across the region. Nicaragua became a prime beneficiary, particularly after Ortega regained the presidency in 2007, following nearly two decades in opposition. The timing was ideal. Ortega needed resources to consolidate power and make good on his campaign promises, and Chavez needed dependable allies to counter American influence.

What emerged was an arrangement so favorable it bordered on the absurd. According to Nicaraguan economist Adolfo Acevedo, Venezuela shipped $3.7 billion worth of oil to Nicaragua between 2007 and 2016 on extraordinarily generous terms.

Oil Money and the Sandinista Boom

The mechanics of the deal explain just how lopsided it was. Managua paid only 50 percent of each shipment’s cost within 90 days. The remainder was due over 23 years at an interest rate of just 2 percent. In effect, every oil delivery functioned as a long-term, low-interest loan.

To put that in perspective, Nicaragua was securing cheaper financing than the U.S. government itself, which pays between 3 and 5 percent on its treasury bonds, the IOUs the state issues to borrow money, despite the Nicaraguan economy being orders of magnitude smaller than America’s.

Once the oil reached Nicaragua, it was sold at market prices, and the enormous margin between the subsidized cost and the market value bankrolled a stretch of dramatic economic growth. Between 2007 and 2016, Ortega’s government devoted nearly 40 percent of those oil proceeds to ambitious social welfare programs, including micro-financing for small businesses, food for the hungry, and subsidized housing for the poor.

The results were politically transformative. The country posted average GDP growth of 4.1 percent between 2007 and 2017 and saw meaningful reductions in poverty. Those gains made Ortega and his Sandinista party enormously popular, and with Chavez enjoying comparable popularity in Venezuela, the two leaders became something like the Sonny and Cher of Latin American socialism. But that prosperity rested entirely on Venezuelan oil, and all it would take to end the good times was for Venezuela’s economy to collapse.

When the Oil Stopped Flowing

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Venezuela’s economy did exactly that. A combination of plummeting oil prices and years of economic mismanagement under both Chavez and Maduro devastated the country’s oil industry. Production fell from more than 3 million barrels per day in the early 2000s to less than a million by the late 2010s. American sanctions accelerated the decline, and oil shipments to Nicaragua eventually slowed to a trickle.

Yet the relationship between Managua and Caracas did not weaken so much as evolve. With Venezuela no longer able to provide economic support, the partnership shifted toward something arguably more valuable: shared expertise in authoritarian survival. Both regimes were learning how to crush dissent while managing international criticism, and they supplied each other with diplomatic cover in global forums.

That solidarity was on constant display. When protests erupted in Nicaragua in 2018 and left hundreds dead, Venezuela stood by Managua, with Maduro declaring on Twitter that the Nicaraguan government had defeated terrorists and coup plotters. When sanctions targeted Venezuela, Nicaragua reliably voted in solidarity at bodies such as the Organization of American States.

And in 2024, as protests mounted against the disputed elections that extended Maduro’s rule, Ortega offered to send Sandinista fighters to suppress an armed counterrevolution. Caracas declined, but the gesture showed how deep the ties between the two strongmen had grown.

The Response: Silence and Fear

That history is what made the Nicaraguan regime’s reaction to Maduro’s capture so telling, both for what it contained and for what it conspicuously omitted. According to the local outlet La Prensa, Managua’s immediate response was silence for more than 14 hours, broken only by a brief statement demanding respect for the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people and calling for Maduro’s release.

The statement was more notable for its absences than its content. Gone was the regime’s customary aggressive language toward the United States, and there was no mention of Trump by name. Arturo McFields, the former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States, described that deliberate omission as a product of fear in an interview with ACI Prensa.

“What happened in Venezuela has unleashed fear in the tyrannical government,” McFields said. “The dictatorship is reeling from those images of Maduro, the all-powerful leader, arrested and humiliated… The fear is so great that, although they have expressed solidarity with Maduro, they haven’t mentioned President Trump at any point.” For a regime that had built its legitimacy on anti-American rhetoric, the restraint was profoundly out of character.

Why Nicaragua Is More Exposed Than Venezuela

Maduro’s capture altered Nicaragua’s strategic calculus in ways that reached far beyond the loss of a diplomatic ally. The most consequential shift was the demonstration that direct military intervention was now on the table. Previous U.S. administrations had relied on sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and support for opposition movements. As crippling as those tools could be, none of them threatened a regime’s survival the way direct military force does.

Trump’s operation in Venezuela showed he was willing to deploy that force to remove leaders he deemed unacceptable.

For Managua, that lesson cut especially deep, because Nicaragua is far more vulnerable than Venezuela ever was. Venezuela possessed vast oil reserves, a military that retained some capability even after being severely degraded by early 2026, and enough international weight that any military action carried real geopolitical risk, including the possibility that China or Russia might try to intervene.

Nicaragua enjoys none of those advantages. It is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, with virtually no natural resources. Its military is small and oriented toward internal security rather than external defense. And most decisively, its economy depends overwhelmingly on access to American markets, with nearly two-thirds of its exports bound for the United States. That dependence hands Washington even greater leverage than it ever held over Caracas.

The Return of the Monroe Doctrine

Trump’s invocation of the Monroe Doctrine to justify the Venezuela operation added another layer of menace. The doctrine, which in essence declares that the United States is paramount in the Western Hemisphere and that everyone else should defer to it, had not been a meaningful pillar of Washington’s foreign policy for decades. Trump decided to revive it, and, to borrow a phrase from the president, to do so bigly.

In a recently published National Security Strategy and in speeches following Maduro’s capture, Trump made clear that the Monroe Doctrine, now reframed as the “Donroe Doctrine,” would govern Washington’s dealings with its regional neighbors. For the Ortega regime, that announcement amounted to a complete breakdown of the assumptions underpinning its survival strategy.

The regime’s logic had always been that repression at home was tolerable so long as it did not escalate to the extremes seen in places like Iran, because the era of American intervention in Latin America was presumed to be over. The Donroe Doctrine erased that premise. The days when ideological commitment and revolutionary solidarity could be counted on to outlast Washington’s pressure were suddenly in doubt.

Managua’s Survival Playbook

The regime’s immediate response revealed just how thoroughly it grasped this new reality. According to sources who spoke with La Prensa, Rosario Murillo, the wife of Daniel Ortega and his co-president, made a series of decisions designed to ensure the regime’s survival. The first was reinforcing security around the presidential residence, guarding against the unlikely scenario that Washington might attempt a two-for-one presidential capture.

She also further curtailed Ortega’s already limited public appearances. Many Sandinista militants had anticipated a public event on January 10, the anniversary of the family dictatorship, at which Ortega would once again rail against the Yankees. That event never materialized, with the government citing Ortega’s health. Murillo additionally reduced the public profile of her son, Laureano Ortega Murillo, the regime’s liaison with the anti-U.S. powers China, Russia, and Iran, a move read as an effort to avoid provoking tensions with Washington in light of the Donroe Doctrine.

Beyond pure survival tactics, Managua also sought to recast itself as a willing partner in the global democratic order. On January 10, Nicaragua quietly released dozens of political prisoners. The timing was not subtle. One day earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Managua had praised Venezuela for releasing prisoners and pointedly observed that more than 60 people remained unjustly detained in Nicaragua.

Two Hands, One Regime

The prisoner release marked a sharp departure from the regime’s recent conduct. Since the 2018 protests, Managua had systematically dismantled the opposition through imprisonment, forced exile, and citizenship revocation. Thousands of non-governmental organizations were shuttered, dozens of universities were closed and their assets seized, and in 2024 alone, 46 journalists were forced into exile. The regime had shown no appetite for concessions or reform.

The government would point to the release as evidence of a willingness to change. The opposition saw it differently, calling it a transparent maneuver triggered by the events in Venezuela. They have a strong case. Had the Trump administration not captured Maduro, it is unlikely that Managua would have freed those prisoners.

And the gesture’s sincerity is further undercut by the fact that, according to a local human rights group, Nicaraguan authorities arrested 60 people for reportedly celebrating or expressing support for Maduro’s capture.

In other words, while Nicaragua’s right hand reached out to appease Washington, its left hand kept applying the same repressive tactics that have sustained the regime for decades. Whether that two-track strategy can work remains an open question, one that hinges in large part on what happens next in Cuba.

The Cuba Question

While Nicaragua scrambles to avoid becoming Trump’s next target, a more fundamental threat is taking shape: Cuba. The ideological godfather of the Troika of Tyranny is enduring its worst crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, and unlike in previous emergencies, there is no cavalry coming to its rescue.

According to shipping data and internal PDVSA documents, Venezuela has not sent crude oil or fuel to Cuba in over a month. The shipments stopped even before Maduro’s capture, victims of U.S. blockades that have effectively severed Cuba’s primary energy lifeline. Venezuela had been supplying Cuba with roughly 35,000 barrels of oil daily, about half of the island’s energy deficit. Without it, Cuba’s economy is collapsing in real time.

Havana, once largely insulated from blackouts, now endures 10 hours or more without electricity each day, and in other parts of the country outages can stretch to 20 hours.

The Trump administration grasps both the strategic and symbolic weight of Cuba’s collapse and appears determined to accelerate it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated bluntly that “the head of the snake is in Havana,” signaling that the administration regards Cuba as the region’s primary threat rather than merely another member of the troika. Yet Trump has also left a door open, urging Cuba to negotiate a deal before it is too late and suggesting that, unlike Venezuela, the island still has the option of a managed transition rather than outright regime removal. The administration’s message is unambiguous: reform, or share Maduro’s fate.

What Cuba’s Fate Means for Nicaragua

How the Cuba question resolves matters enormously for Managua. If Cuba refuses to negotiate and Trump removes the regime by military intervention or other means, it would be the worst-case scenario for Nicaragua. A forcible regime change in Cuba would complete the troika’s destruction and establish an undeniable pattern: that Trump is willing and able to remove leftist authoritarian governments in the Western Hemisphere by force when he judges it necessary.

The psychological blow would be devastating. Cuba has withstood American hostility for over six decades, surviving the Bay of Pigs, decades of embargo, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and countless assassination attempts. If even Cuba cannot survive Trump’s approach, Nicaragua’s prospects look bleak. The Ortega regime’s entire survival strategy rests on the belief that revolutionary solidarity and ideological commitment can outlast American pressure. Cuba’s forcible removal would shatter that belief.

A U.S.-imposed regime change in Cuba would also dramatically narrow the window for negotiated solutions elsewhere. Trump might still negotiate with regional regimes, but his patience would be far thinner and the credibility of his military threats far higher. If he is prepared to topple the most iconic leftist regime in Latin American history, Nicaragua’s choice becomes stark: negotiate quickly on terms that will be bitter but hopefully acceptable, or risk a military option now proven to be both real and, by Washington’s reckoning, highly effective.

A Narrow Path to Survival

There is, however, a scenario that offers Managua more hope. If Cuba strikes a deal with the Trump administration, one that lets some version of the regime survive in exchange for meaningful reforms, it would create a template Nicaragua could potentially follow. A negotiated transition in Cuba would show that Trump is willing to accept something short of total regime destruction when certain conditions are met, an approach already visible in Venezuela, where the decapitation of the Maduro government has been followed not by a swift return to democracy but by the elevation of regime figures seen as more amenable to Washington.

Nicaragua’s situation, while dire, is also less politically charged than Cuba’s or Venezuela’s. As several regional observers told POLITICO’s senior foreign affairs correspondent Nahal Toosi, Nicaragua simply does not loom as large in American domestic politics, unlike Venezuela and Cuba, which are tied to large immigrant populations. Rubio himself is famously the son of Cuban immigrants, and the stories he grew up hearing about how socialism ruined Cuba are often cited as a source of his hawkish views toward both Cuba and Venezuela.

The Ortega regime has also avoided going out of its way to humiliate the administration the way Maduro did with his dancing videos, which Trump reportedly believed were mocking imitations of his own style. Taken together, the observers who spoke with Toosi suggested, these factors might just be enough to spare the Ortega regime from Washington’s wrath. Whether that prediction holds is something only time will tell.

Presented by

Simon Whistler

Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the “Troika of Tyranny” and what happened to it?

The Troika of Tyranny is the term former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton used for the trio of leftist authoritarian regimes in the Western Hemisphere: Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The mutual-support network helped each regime survive international pressure for years, but it has now come apart. Maduro was captured by U.S. forces, and Cuba is enduring its worst crisis since the Soviet collapse with Venezuelan oil shipments severed, leaving Nicaragua as the last functioning member.

How did Venezuelan oil shape Nicaragua’s economy and politics under Ortega?

Between 2007 and 2016, Venezuela shipped $3.7 billion worth of oil to Nicaragua on terms where Managua paid only 50 percent within 90 days, with the remainder due over 23 years at just 2 percent interest. Nicaragua sold the oil at market prices, and the resulting margin funded social programs and produced average GDP growth of 4.1 percent. The prosperity made Ortega and his Sandinista party enormously popular, but it left the country dangerously dependent on a single benefactor.

Why did Nicaragua’s response to Maduro’s capture avoid naming Trump?

The regime stayed silent for more than 14 hours, then issued a statement calling for Maduro’s release that conspicuously omitted any mention of Trump—a sharp departure from its customary anti-American rhetoric. Former Nicaraguan ambassador to the OAS Arturo McFields attributed the omission directly to fear, describing the regime as “reeling from those images of Maduro, the all-powerful leader, arrested and humiliated.”

What is the “Donroe Doctrine” and why does it alarm Managua?

The Donroe Doctrine is President Trump’s revival and rebranding of the Monroe Doctrine—the assertion that the United States is dominant in the Western Hemisphere—introduced in a new National Security Strategy following Maduro’s capture. For Nicaragua, it erased the assumption underpinning the regime’s survival strategy: that the era of American intervention in Latin America was over. The Ortega government had calculated that repression at home was tolerable as long as it did not provoke direct American military action, a premise the doctrine explicitly challenged.

What role could Cuba’s fate play in Nicaragua’s survival?

If Cuba refuses to negotiate with the Trump administration and is removed by force, it would establish an undeniable pattern that Trump is willing and able to topple leftist authoritarian governments by force—potentially destroying the Ortega regime’s remaining confidence that it can outlast American pressure. Conversely, if Cuba strikes a negotiated deal that allows some version of the regime to survive in exchange for reforms, it could create a template Nicaragua might follow, showing that Washington will accept something short of total regime destruction when conditions are met.