On 3 January, 2026, at 2:01 a.m., the US Army Delta Force breached the fortified compound of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to apprehend him and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a joint law enforcement and military mission carried out in Caracas, Venezuela.

A result of months-long careful planning and intelligence gathering, the pre-dawn operation involved massive air power, with over 150 aircraft from 20 bases around the Western Hemisphere, and 200 Special Operators. Venezuelan air defence systems and communications were no match for American airstrikes and cyber operations, enabling helicopters from the ‘Night Stalkers’, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, to insert Delta Force commandos, accompanied by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, into Fuerte Tiuna, where Maduro and his wife slept inside a safe house. By 3:29 a.m., US Special Forces were flying the former dictator and his spouse over the ocean towards the USS Iwo Jima.

Operation Absolute Resolve was a stunning tactical success. It ended Maduro’s illegitimate rule and nullified his unprecedented $50 million bounty. ‘They now call it the “Donroe” Doctrine’, President Donald Trump declared at a press conference afterwards. Indeed, the dust has settled in Caracas, and the audacious operation had achieved its objective: Maduro and Cilia Flores now reside inside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, facing charges of narco-terrorism, cocaine importation, and weapons possession. Such decisive law enforcement and military action, however, brings about uncertainty and risk.

Using an anaconda strategy, the United States surrounded and squeezed Venezuela financially, politically, and militarily until Trump decided to intervene directly to remove Maduro. In the aftermath, the US President vows to ‘run’ Venezuela until the country undertakes ‘a safe, proper and judicious transition’. Delcy Rodríguez, the vice president and Maduro loyalist, assumed the role of acting president, an outcome the Central Intelligence Agency determined would be most conducive to stability in a post-Maduro Venezuela. Trump plans to coerce Rodríguez from afar. Washington will dictate the terms, conditions, and direction for the interim government in Caracas. But can such a gunboat gamble on regime change defy recent history and work? 

The daring capture of Maduro should not come as a surprise. The operation was the culmination of a strategic pivot to the Americas that Trump launched at the outset of his second administration. As reflected in the Western Hemisphere section of the recent National Security Strategy, the Trump administration seeks to address the priority issues of migration, narcotics, and the malign influence of extra-hemispheric competitors under the ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine, which reasserts American power in the Western Hemisphere and aims to prevent adversaries like China from gaining economic and military footholds in the Americas. 

The Trump administration identified Venezuela as ground zero for the major problems plaguing the Western Hemisphere: drug trafficking, migration, transnational crime and allying with America’s enemies. Just as Havana served as a hostile Soviet proxy on America’s doorstep during the Cold War, Caracas became a beachhead for Russia, China, Iran, and transnational criminal organisations in the current era of great power competition.

The Maduro problem adopted new meaning in November 2025 when the United States designated the Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organisation, naming Maduro as the head of a ‘patronage system’ that used the state capacity of Venezuela to engage in narcoterrorism. 

A key aspect of Trump’s aggressive ‘Americas First‘ approach has been elevating transnational criminal organisations to a national security threat that necessitates the use of military force. The Trump administration classifies them as foreign terrorist organisations and dispenses with the law enforcement paradigm completely. In Maduro’s case, both the US military and intelligence agencies helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration execute the complex extraction and arrest.

Prior to the terrorist designation, the Department of War had deployed since August 2025 a vast array of air and naval assets into the Southern Caribbean under Operation Southern Spear to pressure Venezuela. In doing so, the United States has conducted strikes on roughly 35 suspected narco-laden vessels in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea, killing an estimated 115 alleged narcoterrorists. Beyond destroying narcoboats, the Trump administration has blockaded sanctioned oil tankers, beginning with the seizure of the M/T Skipper en route to China in early December.

Alongside this demonstration of military force, Trump’s decision to launch Operation Absolute Resolve followed a year-long campaign of diplomatic engagement with Maduro. On several occasions, Trump offered Maduro the opportunity to depart Venezuela with amnesty to avoid incarceration, only for the wily dictator to reject it, dance foolishly, and sing off-key, much to Trump’s consternation. Trump’s threats to forcibly remove Maduro went unheeded. In declining Trump’s last deal on 23 December, Maduro sealed his own fate. After months of being leery of military intervention, Trump weighed the odds against successfully ousting Maduro and made a risky bet on the US military capturing him without a major incident.

Trump pursued a unilateral solution to a transnational problem. The United States would no longer abide Maduro’s rule in Venezuela, which threatened the American homeland, America’s neighbours, and American allies in Europe, where drugs trafficked through Venezuela drive transnational crime wreaking havoc on Belgium and France. What transpires in Caracas affects both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres alike.

The geopolitics of 2026 made Operation Absolute Resolve possible, alleviating any deterrence against US intervention in Venezuela. Maduro’s foreign patrons could not save him. Russia stands embroiled in its war of aggression against Ukraine. Crippled financially and militarily, Iran suffers from internal unrest and external pressure. The Islamic Republic possesses limited capacity to assist its South American ally. China, meanwhile, preferred rhetorical condemnation, not military confrontation, with the United States in its neighbourhood. The Chinese Communist Party did not consider Venezuelan oil worth a cataclysmic war. 

The plight of Venezuela and its oil industry, however, proves existential for Cuba, which has confirmed the death of 32 Cubans at the hands of American forces. Cuban personnel filled the ranks of Maduro’s personal security forces – but to no avail against a Delta Force raid. 

Like the operation itself, the unfurling of Trump’s policy towards Venezuela moves at breakneck speed. One may find it hard to keep track of Beltway reporting and the changing dynamics on the ground. The deluge of daily news about Trump and Venezuela reveals not only additional details about Trump’s decision-making and the administration’s planning behind the operation, but also Washington’s plans for Caracas’ future. In setting expectations, Trump has forecast an 18-month timeline, if not multiple years, for the United States to shepherd a transition from Chavismo to democratic capitalism. ‘Only time will tell‘, Trump observed to journalists.

The crisis in Venezuela will not be resolved in the near term. The Trump administration has developed a long-term strategy for using American power to compel regime change in Venezuela. Washington will manage the Venezuelan democratic restoration in three phases. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defined those stages as stabilisation, recovery, and transition, all of which will be backed by American economic and military might.

The Trump administration has clear objectives and benchmarks. Leading the administration’s efforts, Rubio speaks frequently to Rodríguez in her native tongue to articulate US demands. The interim authorities must prevent narcotics trafficking, limit irregular migration, stop facilitating transnational crime, and sever relations with China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba. 

At bottom, the United States seeks to forcibly change the Venezuelan state from the Western Hemisphere’s worst actor into a good neighbour.

The stabilisation phase has begun. The Trump administration is coordinating with Rodríguez’s interim government to maintain order. As leverage, the United States has asserted control over Venezuela’s oil sector. In a bid to deny oil shipments to adversaries and reduce oil prices, Trump announced that the interim government will send oil to the United States, starting with up to 50 million barrels. The Department of Energy referred to it as an energy deal between the countries, whereby the United States will ease sanctions on the Venezuelan oil industry to facilitate its rebuilding and assist in refining. The proceeds from Venezuelan oil sold in the global marketplace will flow into US accounts before distribution to Venezuela, purportedly to ensure that the country benefits, not the remnants of the Maduro regime.

Oil is a means, not an end. The United States, of course, does not require Venezuelan oil – but Cuba does. By managing how Venezuela sells its oil and uses the profits, Trump aims to cripple the Miguel Díaz-Canel regime and diminish a long-standing hemispheric enemy.

Outside of controlling natural resources, the United States will need to aid Venezuela in fixing its finances. The country has a ruinous debt problem, which the Trump administration must move quickly to solve before economic stability can return.

Few concrete details are available about the next phases, which may overlap in many respects. The recovery phase will involve reviving the economy through both opening the Venezuelan market to the world and rejuvenating the political arena. As Rubio put it, the second phase will ‘begin to create the process of reconciliation nationally within Venezuela, so that the opposition forces can be amnestied and released from prisons or brought back to the country, and begin to rebuild civil society.’ In fact, Delcy’s brother Jorge Rodríguez, the National Assembly President, recently stated that the interim authorities were freeing political prisoners in an effort to ‘seek peace.’

The third phase, Rubio said, will be the complete government transition. Here, one should anticipate open elections to establish lasting political legitimacy, in which the democratic opposition may field candidates freely and fairly.

The ‘three-fold process’ evinces the Trump administration’s cautiousness, but the capture of Maduro portends nation-building folly for critics. On Face the Nation, Rubio vented his frustration with those who invoke America’s foreign policy missteps in the 21st century: ‘The whole foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan. This is not the Middle East, and our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere.’

Regime change comes in many forms, and every country in which it takes place presents a unique context. Regime change does not necessarily require several hundred thousand troops and a Coalition Provisional Authority, as it did in Iraq after 2003. Still, a policy of regime change serves up political poison in the United States.

The Iraq War syndrome looms large over Venezuela. For understandable reasons, Americans hold deep reservations about becoming involved in another Iraq-style war. Yet the recourse to Iraq War analogies in the contemporary case of Venezuela muddles more than it clarifies. Comparing Operation Absolute Resolve to Operation Iraqi Freedom distorts and oversimplifies the distinct cultural, geopolitical, historical, and operational differences.

The Chavista Venezuela does not mirror Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Venezuela has a history of democracy. Venezuelans have been fighting for freedom since the Bolivarian Revolution gripped the country and deprived them of it. Led by the Nobel Prize-winning María Corina Machado, the democratic opposition has mounted a fierce campaign for democratic restoration. Edmundo González’s triumph over Maduro in the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election showed the widespread support for democracy. That previously elected democratic opposition stands by to govern, and Machado will soon meet Trump at the White House.

Despite this important dissimilarity, Venezuela has the potential for disorder and societal breakdown. Venezuela does not have sectarian conflict, but a multitude of armed groups and organisations roam the streets ready to foment chaos should the interim government fracture and lose control. This prospect for violence and a resulting quagmire informs the risk mitigation underpinning US policy.

The United States, moreover, is not undertaking a full-scale invasion, occupation, and American-run government based in Caracas. Rather, the Trump administration has deployed financial sanctions, a maritime quarantine, and airpower to discipline a rogue state.

Those elements of national power and their exercise are set to continue throughout each phase of Trump’s transition plan for Venezuela. On 7 January, the United States seized two more tankers, a Russian-flagged vessel in the North Atlantic attempting to escape US authorities under a Russian military escort and a Chinese-registered tanker in the Caribbean. Trump has also issued threats to would-be troublemakers.

Greeted by the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian ambassadors at her inauguration, Rodríguez governs under a cloud of suspicion both in Washington and Caracas. Trump warned that ‘if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.’ Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, who oversee the armed forces, intelligence services, police, and paramilitary groups, are poised to thwart Trump’s designs for an orderly transition. Trump’s warning to Rodríguez likewise extends to them, and it must be taken seriously: some officials may face prison like Maduro while others may lose their ill-gotten wealth, but a few may even be sent to their graves.

Venezuela’s prospects for stabilisation, recovery, and transition warrant cautious optimism. The democratic spirit of Venezuelans remains unbroken. US officials, for their part, recognise the difficulties and acknowledge America’s long-term role in the transition process. If Venezuela eventually experiences a full democratic restoration, Trump’s gunboat gambling in South America will have paid off. As for now, Maduro will experience due process and a fair trial, which is far more than he ever gave Venezuelans.