The U.S. may want many of its foes gone from power. It doesn't usually send in the military and physically remove them.
Venezuela's abrupt awakening took two forms. Its residents were woken abruptly to the sound of deafening booms: the sound of its capital Caracas under attack from U.S. strikes targeting military infrastructure. Its government has now woken up from any illusion that U.S. military intervention or regime change was just a distant threat.
U.S. President Donald Trump has announced Venezuela's leader, Nicolás Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country. This was a man who wielded a huge amount of power: his government controlled the electoral system, the judiciary, the military, as well as having the loyalty of powerful militia groups. By the end of Saturday, he was pictured in a grey tracksuit, his hands bound, his eyes blindfolded, being transported to detention in the U.S. It was an extraordinary fall from power.
The U.S. has long accused Maduro of leading a criminal trafficking organization, something he strongly denies. It designated as a foreign terrorist group the 'Cartel de los Soles'—a name the U.S. uses to describe a group of elites in Venezuela who it alleges orchestrate illegal activities like drug trafficking and illegal mining. Maduro now faces a U.S. trial over weapons and drugs charges.
For years, Maduro's government has been accused of human rights abuses. In 2020, United Nations investigators said its government had committed egregious violations amounting to crimes against humanity such as extrajudicial killings, torture, violence, and disappearances—and that Maduro and other top officials were implicated. Human rights organizations have recorded hundreds of political prisoners in the country, including some detained after anti-government protests.
The U.S. has not carried out direct military intervention in Latin America like this since its 1989 invasion of Panama to depose the then-military ruler, Manuel Noriega. Back then, like now, Washington framed this as part of a wider crackdown on drug trafficking and criminality. This latest operation, striking inside a sovereign capital directly, is a dramatic escalation in U.S. engagement in the region.
The forcible removal of Maduro will be hailed a major victory by some of the more hawkish figures within the U.S. administration, many of whom have argued that only direct intervention could force Maduro from power. Washington has not recognized him as the country's president since the 2024 elections. The opposition published electronic voting tallies after the vote which it said proved it, not Maduro, won the election.
But for Venezuela's government, this intervention confirms what it has long claimed—that Washington's ultimate goal is regime change.
Venezuela has also accused the U.S. of wanting to steal its oil reserves, the largest in the world, and other resources—an allegation it felt was vindicated after the U.S. seized at least two oil tankers off the coast. The strikes and capture come after months of U.S. military escalation in the region.
Any doubts that remained that those operations were at least in part about regime change too have now been dashed by today's actions. It remains deeply unclear what comes next inside Venezuela itself. Trump has claimed the U.S. will now run Venezuela but has not clarified what he means by that. Will the U.S. try to push for fresh elections? Will it try to depose further senior members of the government or the military and force them to face justice in the U.S.?
More surprisingly, he also said the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado didn't have the support or respect in Venezuela to take power. Instead, he insinuated he could instead work with Maduro's deputy Delcy Rodriguez, saying she was essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again. This raises urgent questions and fears among Maduro's closest allies about their own futures.
The situation remains volatile, with risks of further violence and civil unrest in the wake of these developments.
