From Venezuela, Trump’s America has begun implementing key elements of its new security doctrine, particularly in Latin America. Across the region, the so-called “Delta Force” operation in Caracas was widely perceived as a stark warning. The detention of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores - both accused of serious crimes and closely associated with the legacy of former President Hugo Chávez - sent a deliberate and highly symbolic message.

In this operation, the U.S. military acted not as a conventional combat force, but as a de facto law-enforcement authority, operating under what Washington framed as an American judicial mandate. The extensive air and naval capabilities deployed since August were sufficient to sustain a large-scale war, yet war was not the objective. Trump’s strategy favored a swift, decisive intervention aimed at achieving a specific outcome: removing Maduro and opening the door to a profound political transformation in Venezuela.

Intelligence assessments concluded that the prolonged, multidimensional crisis gripping Venezuela had turned Maduro’s continued rule into a fundamental obstacle to any viable resolution. His removal - even through an external operation - was therefore seen as a shock that would unsettle the military, security, and political institutions, while simultaneously forcing them to move toward an alternative governing framework, either in coordination with the United States or under its pressure.

According to reporting by The New York Times, an American intelligence asset operating within the Venezuelan government played a role in facilitating the operation. Parallel AI-based analyses also pointed to elements of internal betrayal as a decisive factor in achieving what was described as “absolute surprise.”

However, the prospects for governance and stability in a post-Maduro Venezuela are likely to be far more complex domestically than what Trump and his aides suggested during the press conference announcing the operation’s success. The “Maduro regime,” as an extension of the Chávez legacy, had cultivated a vast network of beneficiaries and vested interests deeply embedded across state institutions. This network was reinforced by strong ideological hostility toward the United States and by leftist alignments with Russia and China - not to mention ties with Iran - all of which were implicitly targeted by the operation. Trump moved quickly to underscore this broader message, declaring: “Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again.”

It was evident that Venezuela figured prominently on Trump’s agenda, yet few - perhaps not even Trump himself - anticipated a scenario he would later liken to a “television series.” While there was near-universal international consensus that the Venezuelan crisis had persisted for too long and become a heavy burden on global diplomacy, opinions sharply diverged over how it should be resolved. Deep internal political divisions, compounded by financial and economic collapse, had pushed the country further into paralysis. At the same time, U.S. sanctions and embargoes significantly narrowed the options for any major power seeking to intervene or broker a viable resolution, effectively locking the crisis into a prolonged and escalating stalemate. While Moscow, Beijing, and other actors are fully aware that Venezuela lies within what has traditionally been described as the United States’ “backyard,” they may now anticipate that Donald Trump’s doctrine will not stop at Venezuela but will seek to expand that backyard even further. In this context, invoking the UN Charter or the principles of international law governing state sovereignty may appear increasingly futile, particularly in a global system whose credibility and normative authority have eroded - an erosion to which all major powers have, in one way or another, contributed.

Early American plans regarding the governance of Caracas and the management - and commercialization - of Venezuelan oil signaled a clear and forceful return by Washington to a policy of “regime change.” This is a policy the United States had previously claimed to abandon and now avoids naming explicitly, in order to sidestep renewed debate over the legitimacy of military action against Venezuela. Yet in its search for a functional form of legitimacy, the intervention was framed as an effort to “bring Maduro to justice” under an “American judicial ruling,” grounded in two core pillars of U.S. strategy: combating drug trafficking networks - redefined as a form of terrorism posing a direct threat to American security - and curbing mass migration flows toward the United States.

Trump opened the new year with a dramatic military move that echoed the Iraq precedent and openly challenged established international norms. While the administration appears eager to reframe the operation as a judicial achievement, such a claim will remain incomplete unless it is translated into a political success - one that produces tangible benefits for the targeted state and its population. Many analysts, including American observers, have remarked that the “Casa de los Pinos” (Maduro's secret refuge) raid to arrest Maduro bore striking similarities in planning and execution to Mossad-style operations, a comparison underscored by the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu was the only leader to publicly congratulate Trump.

Yet while the technical and security aspects may resemble Israeli tactics, the political objectives are fundamentally different. Israel’s operations are typically designed to foreclose any political horizon for the Palestinians, whereas for Trump and his administration, the value of the military action lies not in perpetuating crisis, but in clearing the most difficult obstacle in order to restore political normalcy in Caracas - and to do so rapidly.

It was more than a coincidence that Nicolás Maduro’s arrest occurred on January 3, 2026 - the same date Manuel Noriega was detained in 1990. Trump has made little effort to conceal his ambitions, not only in Venezuela but also in Panama, alongside objectives that range from highly contentious - such as Canada, Greenland and Denmark - to others he appears to view as more attainable, including Ukraine’s natural resources in exchange for “security guarantees” and the vision of a “Gaza Riviera.”

Taken together, these moves sketch the contours of a “new” international order in its Trumpian form within the Western hemisphere - one that behaves as though it can disregard the rest of the world. Yet the message is unmistakable: it was received in Moscow with regard to Russia’s gains in Ukraine and Europe, and in Beijing concerning China’s ambitions toward Taiwan.
 
 
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar.