The breaking news this morning was that the U.S. military, under President Donald Trump’s orders, had attacked Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife. “The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolás Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country,” Trump said on Truth Social early in the morning of Jan. 3. “This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow.”
Trump claimed that the purpose of the raid was to bring Maduro and his wife to trial in the Southern District of New York, on charges of drug trafficking. In his hour-long press conference later in the day from Mar-a-Lago, Trump announced that the United States would henceforth be running Venezuela; that the oil industry would also be seized and payment extracted for the 1976 nationalization of the oil sector; and that the U.S. was warning any and all countries that they could receive the same treatment if they didn’t meet U.S. demands in full.
Trump went out of his way to further warn that “Venezuela was increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region”—evidently a reference to China, Russia and other nations. It is highly significant that President Maduro had met with a high-level visiting Chinese delegation, including a personal envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping, scarcely five hours before he was kidnapped. (See the report on Trump’s press conference below.)
Trump also announced that his Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken by phone with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez after the assault, and that she had taken over as President and was compliant and had promised to do whatever the U.S. asked of her. The reality, however, was that VP Rodríguez convened a National Defense Council meeting later in the day, and in a nationwide TV broadcast, in the presence of the top leaders of the nation’s legislative, judiciary and military bodies, denounced the U.S. regime-change operation which was designed to seize Venezuela’s resources, and stated that as a body “we demand the immediate release of President Nicolás Maduro, the only President of Venezuela, and his wife, Cilia Flor.”
The brazen return to Teddy Roosevelt-style gunboat diplomacy was also met by a storm of international protests, from Russia, to China, Brazil, Mexico, and others. An emergency session of the UN Security Council has also been called to address the crisis.
“The details to follow” of the military operation per se included a ten-minute briefing from Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine during Trump’s mid-day press conference. Caine gave an overview of the planning, preparation and execution of what the military is calling “Operation Absolute Resolve.” He stressed that the mission could not have gone forward “without the incredible work by various intelligence agencies, including the CIA, NSA, and NGA (National Geospatial Intelligence Agency).”
“After months of work by our intelligence teammates, to find Maduro and understand how he moved, where he lived, where he traveled, what he ate, what he wore, what were his pets, in early December, our force was set pending a series of aligned events,” Caine said. The force package included over 150 aircraft launching from 20 different bases in the Western Hemisphere, including the assault ship USS Iwo Jima off the coast. The aircraft included helicopters carrying U.S. Army Special Forces accompanied by FBI personnel, U.S. Air Force and Navy fighter jets, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft and B-1 bombers along with drones. Airstrikes took out air defenses in Caracas to protect the helicopters. After Maduro and his wife surrendered, they were taken by helicopter to the USS Iwo Jima, and are being transported to the New York region.
