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IN MY OPINION - In the predawn hours of Caracas, a government that had seemed unshakable for decades fell into the hands of a foreign army. Streets that had once echoed with the protests of the dispossessed were now silent, as if the city itself had paused to witness an unprecedented assertion of power. Nicolás Maduro, long the symbol of Venezuela’s collapse, was no longer untouchable, and the world was watching to see what the United States would do with a victory that few had dared to imagine.
Nicolás Maduro rose to power in 2013, following the death of Hugo Chávez, the fiery socialist leader who had dominated Venezuelan politics for 14 years. Once Chávez’s hand-picked successor, Maduro inherited a country already grappling with economic instability, but under his rule, inflation skyrocketed, oil production plummeted, and basic goods became scarce. His government has been widely accused of electoral manipulation, human rights abuses, and corruption, while opposition parties were systematically weakened. Over the past decade, millions of Venezuelans have fled the country, creating one of the largest migration crises in the Western Hemisphere.
For years, Washington relied on sanctions, indictments, and diplomatic isolation to weaken Maduro, betting that economic pressure and international condemnation would fracture his regime from within. Instead, Venezuela collapsed around him. Millions fled. Institutions hollowed out. And Maduro stayed.
This week, that approach ended.
According to U.S. officials, American forces carried out a covert military operation inside Venezuela that resulted in Maduro’s capture and removal from power. Details remain scarce, but what is already clear is that the mission was executed with remarkable precision. Whatever one thinks of the decision itself, the operation showcased a level of coordination, intelligence, and discipline that few militaries in the world could replicate.
President Trump authorized the action. The armed forces carried it out. That distinction matters. Military competence, after two decades of uneven wars and strategic drift, still carries symbolic weight. The message to the world was unmistakable: the United States remains capable, decisive, and willing to act beyond the slow grind of diplomacy and sanctions.
As deterrence, the operation was highly effective. Any leader governing in open defiance of Washington—particularly those engaged in criminal or destabilizing activity—would be rational to reassess their assumptions. The era in which American threats could be dismissed as performative or exhausted may be ending.
Maduro himself was no martyr to sovereignty. He presided over one of the most catastrophic peacetime collapses in modern history. Accused of narcotrafficking and weapons deals, he ruled through corruption and coercion, overseeing the destruction of Venezuela’s economy and the exodus of its people. His removal does, at least theoretically, create space for something new, an opening Venezuelans have not had in years.
The operation also revealed something about the global balance of power. Russia, long a patron of Maduro’s regime, proved unable or unwilling to respond in any meaningful way. Preoccupied with Ukraine and constrained by economic and military strain, Moscow watched as the United States acted without fear of reprisal. The limits of Russian influence beyond its immediate periphery were laid bare.
And yet, for all its tactical success, the operation raises deeper questions—ones that cannot be answered by military efficiency alone.
What was the human cost of the pressure campaign that preceded this moment? How much collateral damage, physical and psychological, was absorbed by Venezuelans who had little control over the forces shaping their fate? The precedent set here is not simply that the United States can remove hostile leaders, but that it is willing to justify extraordinary means to do so. That logic, once introduced, does not remain uniquely American.
Even within the president’s own party, voices of caution are emerging. Senator Rand Paul, for example, has warned that “sending America into another regime‑change project is another thing entirely” and emphasized that bypassing Congress in matters of war threatens the constitutional limits designed to restrain executive power. What is happening in Venezuela is more than a tactical operation: it is effectively war-making without congressional authorization. The administration’s insistence on framing the operation as a law enforcement raid led by the DEA is widely recognized as a legal fig leaf, an attempt to circumvent the Constitution entirely.
This matters because the precedent is dangerous. It signals that the executive branch can act unilaterally to remove foreign leaders, deploy forces abroad, and take lives—all without oversight or debate. Checks and balances, long the cornerstone of American governance, are being eroded not gradually, but in plain sight. As Paul warns, the nation “doesn’t know what comes next”—a reminder that even if the immediate target is universally reviled, the consolidation of unilateral executive authority is a far-reaching consequence with implications for all future conflicts.
Beyond law and principle, there is a more cynical lens through which to view the operation: Venezuela is not simply a humanitarian or security problem; it is a geopolitical prize. Its oil reserves, long a centerpiece of global energy politics, remain vast. But beneath the surface lie other resources: the Orinoco Mining Arc holds gold, diamonds, coltan, bauxite, and other minerals, while nickel, copper, and phosphate could feed global supply chains for batteries and electronics. Coal, natural gas, and even freshwater add strategic value in ways often overlooked. Control over these assets, directly or indirectly, translates into leverage in a resource-constrained world.
There is another, darker potential motive: migration. The Trump administration has long sought third-country agreements to relocate deported migrants. With Maduro removed and Venezuelan authorities politically weakened, Washington could, in theory, use the country as a destination for displaced populations it no longer wants to absorb at home. Whether or not this is an explicit plan, the combination of strategic resources and pliable governance opens space for speculation about how the country might be repurposed to serve multiple domestic and international agendas.
Ukraine and Taiwan, in particular, now inhabit a more dangerous world. By normalizing the forcible removal of a neighboring government without constitutional authorization, the United States has weakened its ability to argue against similar actions elsewhere. Moral authority, once compromised, is difficult to reclaim. As the diplomat George F. Kennan warned decades ago, “War has a momentum of its own, and it carries with it the seeds of its own escalation.” Precedents travel faster than intentions.
History offers little reassurance about what follows regime removal. The United States is not adept at nation-building, nor at imposing democratic norms by force. Installing governments that depend on American backing while retaining domestic legitimacy is a challenge the country has rarely met. When systems collapse, responsibility lingers. We break things and then discover that we own the repair.
The idea that Maduro might have simply left Venezuela if given the chance is a comforting fiction. Indicted and pursued, he would have remained a target wherever he went. Exile was not an escape; it was a different kind of prison. His decision to stay was less defiance than inevitability.
The more unsettling implications of this moment, however, lie not in Caracas but in Washington.
The operation fits neatly into a broader shift in how President Trump appears to understand American power, less as stewardship, more as dominance. A revived Monroe Doctrine is taking shape, sharper and more personal than its predecessors. If Venezuela falls within this logic, what about Colombia? Panama? Cuba? Where does enforcement end, and expansion begin?
Power reshapes those who wield it. Military success can intoxicate. Victory compresses doubt. The language of conquest seeps in quietly: territories become assets, maps become proposals, restraint begins to feel like weakness. Greenland. The Panama Canal. The rhetoric is no longer hypothetical.
This danger is not new. James Madison warned that “of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.” War concentrates authority, dulls skepticism, and rewards certainty over deliberation. A president who begins to see himself as a conqueror rather than a custodian risks exporting instability abroad while importing it at home.
Maduro’s fall may close a dark chapter in Venezuela’s history. It may also open a more uncertain one, for the United States and the world it shapes. Military success answers only the first question. It does not resolve the harder ones that follow.
History will not remember this moment for how efficiently it was executed, but for what it normalized, and whether restraint proved stronger than triumph.
(George Cassidy Payne is a journalist, poet, and disability advocate based in Rochester, New York. He is a 988 Suicide Prevention Counselor, a nonprofit creative strategist, and a community organizer, with two master’s degrees in the humanities. His work focuses on social justice, ethics, and the intersection of language, policy, and human dignity.)
