So they did it.
Trump announced this morning that US forces have captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife. “Flown out of the Country,” he wrote. A press conference at Mar-a-Lago at 11 a.m. Details to follow. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
That last line. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Like a memo about parking enforcement. Like a note from HR. The president of Venezuela, snatched from his capital in a night raid, and the announcement reads like a form letter.
I do not know what to feel. I am not sure feeling is the right response yet. What I know is that something has shifted. Not just in Venezuela. In the world.
The Facts as We Have Them
Strikes began around 2 a.m. local time. Seven explosions, maybe more. La Carlota airfield. Fuerte Tiuna, the main military complex. Targets in Miranda, Aragua, La Guaira. Power out across southern Caracas. Reports of helicopters, street fighting, gunfire.
Then silence from the Venezuelan government. No Maduro broadcast. No defiant speech. Nothing.
Now we know why.
Trump says the operation was conducted “in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.” That phrase is doing a lot of work. It means: this was not war. This was an arrest. We did not invade a sovereign nation. We apprehended a criminal.
The legal scaffolding was built long ago. Maduro indicted for narco-terrorism in 2020. The $50 million bounty. The Foreign Terrorist Organisation designation. All of it leading here. To American forces pulling a sitting head of state from his palace and flying him out of his own country.
What This Is
Let us be clear. This is the first capture of a sitting head of state by US forces since Noriega in 1989. Panama. Another small country. Another strongman the US once supported. Another night raid.
But Noriega was different. There was at least the pretence of a legal framework. An invasion authorised, however dubiously, under claims of protecting American lives. Noriega was tried in US courts. It took years.
This is something else. This is a president designated a terrorist by executive fiat, snatched in a Special Forces raid, and announced on social media before breakfast. No declaration of war. No Congressional vote. No UN resolution. Just: we took him. Thank you for your attention.
The Donroe Doctrine made flesh.
The Questions That Follow
Where is Maduro now? Guantánamo? A ship in the Caribbean? A black site? Trump’s announcement does not say.
What happens to Venezuela? The government has been decapitated. Defence Minister Padrino López may be dead. The military command structure is shattered. Who fills the void? María Corina Machado, the opposition leader who dedicated her Nobel Prize to Trump? A military junta friendly to Washington? Chaos?
What does China do? They were meeting with Maduro hours before the bombs fell. They buy three quarters of Venezuela’s oil. Do they accept this? Issue a statement and move on? Or does this become something larger?
What does this mean for every other government in the hemisphere that has crossed Washington? Petro in Colombia. Lula in Brazil. Sheinbaum in Mexico. If the US can snatch Maduro, designated a terrorist on American say-so, what stops them doing it again?
The Precedent
That is the thing that keeps circling in my head. The precedent.
The United States has demonstrated that it can label any foreign leader a terrorist, send in Special Forces, and extract them. No war. No vote. No legal process beyond its designation. The target has no recourse, no appeal, no defence. One day you are president. The next you are cargo.
International law? The UN Charter? Sovereignty? These are words. They mean what the powerful say. And the powerful have just said: we can take anyone we want.
I keep thinking about that phrase. Thank you for your attention to this matter. The banality of it. The bureaucratic blandness. As if regime change by night raid is just another item on the agenda. As if sovereignty is a parking violation.
What Now
The press conference is in a few hours. We will learn more then. Or we will learn what they want us to know, which is not the same thing.
Caracas will wake up to a city without a government. To troops in the streets. To a future written in Washington.
The oil will flow. That is certain. The 303 billion barrels will find new owners. The contracts will be rewritten. The money will move. That is what this was always about. Everything else is decoration.
Maduro was no Chavez who made real changes in the interests of working people. He was a dictator. He stole an election. He imprisoned opponents. He ran his country into the ground. All true. None of it justifies what happened this morning. You do not have to defend Maduro to recognise that what the United States has done tears up every norm of international order that has held since 1945.
The strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must. Thucydides wrote that 2,400 years ago. It is still true. It was true this morning over Caracas. Which regime will be next… Iran, Nicaragua., Cuba?
They took him. And the world watched. And nothing will be the same.
Trump, USA Hands off Venezuela
All support to the Venezuelan people
Support solidarity protests.
This is a developing story. Updates will follow the Mar-a-Lago press conference. We will alert our readers to protests being organised.
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Good piece, Simon, and the right instincts on the fundamentals. Two additions and one correction.
Correction: Padrino López has appeared. He’s denounced the raid and announced “massive deployment.” But here’s the analytically significant point: that deployment hasn’t translated into actual combat. The Americans completed their operation and withdrew before serious engagement materialised. Generals who intended to fight would have fought. These generals announced they would fight after the Americans had already left.
Which raises the question your piece doesn’t ask: was this an extraction or a negotiated surrender? Maduro spent months offering oil deals to Chevron, releasing prisoners, staying silent on CIA strikes. The circumstantial evidence for a backroom transaction is substantial.
Most critically: “the Venezuelan people” need names. The Communist Party of Venezuela under Óscar Figuera has been warning for years that Maduro’s anti-imperialism was performative. They refused to form a “patriotic front” with him. They face persecution now from both Madurismo’s remnants and Machado’s incoming government. International solidarity must flow to the PCV, the APR, the authentic left that maintained independence from both Miraflores and Washington. They’re the ones who can rebuild. They need legal defence funds, platforms, material support. Not abstract slogans.
Very good artice and comment by Duncan. Some Additional News : 1. Cuba says 32 citizens killed in U.S. raid to arrest Venezuela’s Maduro – Significant Media Report https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/05/cuba-says-32-citizens-killed-in-us-raid-to-arrest-venezuelas-maduro.html Question – did members of the USA kidnapping force suffer deaths, injuries, or arrests? 2. Statement by UNITE the Union https://www.facebook.com/share/p/172yAk1Ay2/?mibextid=wwXIfr 3. Very good article on the ESSF Site https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article77562 plus others. An extra observation – many organisations on the left understand that defending President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, and calling for his release from Yankee custody, does not mean agreeing with his policies. The same approach must be taken across the left concerning Ukraine. Venezuela-Palestine-Ukraine : Occupation is a Crime. Putin gave Trump a green light – both of these far-right authoritarians have given a signal to Xi Jinping of Chinaover threats to invade Taiwan.