The precise US military action that snatched Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from his residence may help drive the possibilities for a more successful Venezuelan future — but in all likelihood, it will worsen the situation. On 3 January, US military forces arrested an authoritarian Latin American leader. He faced the music in the US court system and was sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment.
We need to recall that this occurred in 1990. The leader was Panama’s Manuel Noriega, a man who was unquestionably a drug trafficker and all-round lowlife. Over the years, few tears have been shed for Noriega’s removal from power.
Perhaps we need to ask if events in Venezuela were meant to connect to that earlier anniversary. Trump has been known, after all, to aim for grand, public gestures to emulate — and supersede — earlier successes by others. And so, early in the morning of 3rd January 2026, the US carried out a fiendishly complex, multiforce military operation that included some 150 aircraft, Delta Force special operations troops, secret high-tech engagements, and CIA and FBI resources aimed at decapitating the Venezuelan government.
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The US forces made effective use of cyberwarfare capabilities that blacked out much of the capital city of Caracas, as well as smart bomb and missile attacks on military facilities throughout the city and several other sites to suppress resistance. An undercover CIA team had apparently been inserted earlier to ascertain the routine movements of Nicolás Maduro and his wife to pinpoint their locations in preparation for the attack. In a midday media conference following the nighttime raid, US President Donald Trump and his secretaries of defence and state, as well as the chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all praised the success, precision and rapidity of the military operation.
In extolling the operation, Trump said he had watched it on live electronic feeds and, he marvelled, the reality of the raid was just like watching a television show. (For Trump, does this mean reality is almost as dramatic as a television action drama?) However, the political and economic sides of this operation, once the first blush of success has faded, will present a much more tangled, confused and confounding texture. This will also include efforts to justify this assault and the potential impact on the behaviour of other nations, something we will explore below.
Once the Venezuelan defence forces were neutralised, the heavily trained and prepared Delta Force personnel entered Maduro’s residence. They quickly captured Maduro and his wife and transported them to a helicopter assault ship, the USS Iwo Jima, in the Caribbean Sea close to Venezuela. The ship headed north to the US naval base at Guantánamo, Cuba, from where the couple were flown to New York City for incarceration in the Metropolitan Detention Center before they face what will certainly be unpleasant fates at the hands of federal prosecutors and the courts.
Meanwhile, in New York City, the federal attorneys of the Southern District of New York unsealed their 25-page indictment against Maduro, a document first drawn up in 2020. Now updated, it includes heavy-duty narco-terrorism and weapons charges. Then there was the Trump media conference on Saturday. In his opening remarks, Trump emphasised his frequently repeated charges that Venezuela under Maduro’s leadership is a corridor for narcotics and fentanyl illegally entering the US, thereby harming the security of the nation and leading to the deaths of many thousands of its citizens, and that Maduro had been tightly tied to the gangs and narcotics smuggling networks.
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