\n<\/p>\n
American <\/span>forces\u2019 surgical capture<\/span> of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, carried out in a daring raid shortly after 1 a.m. local time today, had been planned and rehearsed for months. Informants monitored the first couple\u2019s movements, more than 150 aircraft provided cover starting late last night, missile strikes on military installations knocked out air defenses, and low-flying helicopters landed Delta Force soldiers in the center of Caracas. U.S forces engaged in a shoot-out with Venezuelan guards, then apprehended the dictator in his lavish presidential palace just as he sought refuge in a steel safe room. But a few hours later, President Donald Trump almost eclipsed the dramatic operation\u2019s success when, from behind a podium on a makeshift stage in a gold-clad room at Mar-a-Lago, he unveiled another surprise: America now runs Venezuela, he said, and wants the country\u2019s oil reserves to foot the bill.<\/p>\n Maduro and his wife were taken to the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship usually used to carry troops and cargo ashore. This evening, they arrived in New York facing charges of narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and other weapons-related offenses. Trump posted a photo of the deposed leader in U.S. custody: Maduro dressed in a gray sweatsuit, his cuffed hands clenching a bottle of water, his eyes covered, his ears covered by sound-blocking muffs. It was a far cry from some of the recent images of a defiant Maduro dancing onstage in front of supporters, vowing to remain in power, and singing John Lennon\u2019s peace anthem Imagine<\/em> at a rally.<\/p>\n Maduro\u2019s capture\u2014a high-risk, high-yield military operation\u2014offered Trump a moment of triumph in his months-long quest to topple the Latin American despot. But even some of Trump\u2019s closest allies told us that they were unnerved by the president\u2019s brash, no-plan-for-tomorrow approach to ousting a sovereign nation\u2019s leader. Trump provided few details as he declared that a group of officials who were standing near him at the news conference, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, would \u201crun\u201d the country until a \u201csafe, proper, and judicious transition\u201d could take place. It was a stunning announcement for a president who campaigned on the perils of nation building. And Trump made no mention of wanting to spread democracy or allowing Venezuela\u2019s opposition, which the United States has recognized as the legitimate winners of 2024\u2019s election, to take power.<\/p>\n Rather, in his lengthy press conference, the only Venezuelan politician Trump spoke about other than Maduro was Maduro\u2019s own vice president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez. She was sworn in as interim president soon after Maduro\u2019s departure but maintains that Maduro is the legitimate president and condemned his arrest. Trump said she had already told Rubio that the new government in Caracas would do whatever the U.S. wanted\u2014something she denied. In summary, Trump said, the U.S. is looking to \u201cmake Venezuela great again\u2014very simple.\u201d<\/p>\n The vagaries of the administration\u2019s plans stood out in contrast with the precision of Maduro\u2019s capture. They also invited questions about how deeply the U.S. would become involved in Venezuela\u2019s future, as well as about the legality of the operation. Trump didn\u2019t try to get congressional authorization for war or even notify it of today\u2019s operation in advance, citing the Hill\u2019s propensity to leak. (Lawmakers were briefed after the operation was complete.) Trump also did not address questions about the implications of removing a sitting president for Russian President Vladimir Putin as he seeks to control Ukraine, or for China\u2019s Xi Jinping as he sizes up the possibility of taking Taiwan. \u201cIf China declared Taiwan a rogue province, could they go after its leaders?\u201d Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked us in an interview. \u201cIf Russia declares Zelensky a criminal, could Putin extract him from Ukraine and that\u2019d be okay?\u201d<\/p>\n Trump dismissed the idea that deposing Maduro contradicts his \u201cAmerica First\u201d mantra, which has been widely interpreted as noninterventionist. \u201cIt is\u201d America First, Trump insisted today, \u201cbecause we want to surround ourselves with good neighbors. We want to surround ourselves with stability.\u201d He even embraced the possibility of putting \u201cboots on the ground\u201d after years of preferring to use strikes from afar to achieve his foreign-policy goals. He dubbed his new approach, without much apparent enthusiasm, the \u201cDonroe Doctrine,\u201d an awkward mashup of his own name and that of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which aimed to cement U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n At the root of it all, Trump made clear, is oil, something that his critics had long claimed while the administration portrayed the months-long pressure campaign as principally about stopping the drug trade. Today, Trump didn\u2019t hide his intent. The U.S. wants to revitalize Venezuela\u2019s oil industry, with U.S. oil companies leading the charge, even though Venezuelan crude is heavy and hard to refine by international standards. That revenue, he added, would go to the Venezuelan people, and to the U.S., for what the administration has claimed is recompense for Venezuela\u2019s nationalization of the industry years ago. Until recently, Trump had seemed open to a deal with Maduro that would achieve the same goal. But overnight, as explosions echoed over the hills of Caracas, Maduro\u2019s time ran out.<\/p>\n \u201cNicol\u00e1s Maduro had multiple opportunities to avoid this,\u201d Rubio said at the Mar-a-Lago press conference. \u201cHe was provided multiple very, very, very generous offers, and chose instead to act like a wild man.\u201d<\/p>\n So the Trump administration removed him by force. But a former senior U.S. official noted: \u201cThis was the easy part. Let\u2019s see what they do next.\u201d<\/p>\n The CIA put operatives<\/span> in Venezuela in August after Trump ordered covert operations. Those operatives studied what Maduro wore, what he ate, where he traveled, what pets he kept. Delta Force trained for his capture using a mock safe house. For weeks, U.S. aircraft approached Venezuelan airspace but stopped short of crossing the line, instead seeking insight into how the Venezuelan military might respond to an attack, defense officials said.<\/p>\n A core group of senior officials\u2014Rubio; Hegseth; General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; CIA Director John Ratcliffe; and Stephen Miller, Trump\u2019s deputy chief of staff\u2014led the planning with Trump, one official told us.<\/p>\n \u201cThey finally\u2014about two weeks ago\u2014gave Maduro a final warning. It was through official channels, in a way that communicated the seriousness of it,\u201d a person familiar with the planning told us. \u201cThere was no ambiguity,\u201d this person said. \u201cThis was Maduro\u2019s last chance for an off-ramp.\u201d<\/p>\n By early last month, the U.S. was ready to move in when the weather was right. That moment came as Friday turned to Saturday, when the skies over Venezuela\u2019s seaside capital cleared. Trump gave the order to proceed at 10:46 p.m. EST.<\/p>\n The U.S. conducted strikes to disable Venezuela\u2019s air defenses, Caine said. Across the hills of Caracas, Venezuelans could see the assault unfold. They felt the ground shake. Then the city lost communications and power. As U.S. forces approached, they came under heavy fire, which caused injuries among U.S. forces and likely deaths among Venezuelans, defense officials told us. A U.S. helicopter was damaged.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of gunfire,\u201d Trump said during his press conference; at least two U.S. troops were hospitalized. Minutes later, at 2:01 a.m. local time, U.S. forces entered Maduro\u2019s compound and found the Venezuelan leader and his wife sleeping. Trump said the longtime tyrant ran to open a heavy door leading to a safe room but couldn\u2019t manage it in time. The couple surrendered, were loaded into helicopters, and were out of Venezuelan airspace by 3:29 a.m.<\/p>\n Military officials stressed that the weather was a guiding factor in the timing, but an administration official suggested that political undercurrents were also at play. It was \u201cnow or never,\u201d this person said. A number of officials told us that in recent weeks, the window for Trump to remove Maduro had seemed to be closing. Bipartisan support in the U.S. for any kind of military action in Venezuela was diminishing, and officials worried that the longer Maduro remained in power, the more entrenched he would become.<\/p>\n Trump is \u201ckicking off the year with a win,\u201d this administration official said. Another former senior administration official who remains in frequent contact with the White House acknowledged that Trump needed a victory amid tough headlines and slumping poll numbers. Trump is fond of symbolic dates, as well, and originally had eyed the period around Christmas for the assault. Instead, on Christmas Day, Trump ordered a different set of military strikes\u2014on alleged Islamic State targets in Nigeria. Trump has grown fond of these one-off, splashy shows of force, counting last year\u2019s bombing of Iranian nuclear sites as one of his triumphs. Trump said there had been a plan for a second phase of the Venezuelan operation, but that it wasn\u2019t needed\u2014at least not yet.<\/p>\n The Trump administration<\/span> never laid out a consistent case for Congress or the public in advance of today\u2019s operation as to why Maduro had to go. Much of the pressure campaign in recent months focused on lethal strikes against alleged drug boats, even though little of the drugs that flow through Venezuela are destined for the U.S.<\/p>\n At the Mar-a-Lago press conference, Rubio emphasized that the arrest and extraction of Maduro and his wife was a \u201claw enforcement\u201d operation. \u201cAt its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice, and the Department of War supported the Department of Justice in that job,\u201d Rubio said, using Trump\u2019s title for the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n Conspicuously absent from the press conference was the top U.S. law-enforcement official, whose department\u2019s indictment of Maduro provided the legal justification for the operation. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X that Maduro and his wife \u201cwill soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,\u201d and she later shared a link to a newly unsealed 25-page indictment filed by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. (It was in many respects similar to an indictment issued toward the end of Trump\u2019s first term, with a few new charges and the addition of Maduro\u2019s wife and his son.) The indictment alleges that Maduro and his associates used Venezuelan state and military resources to facilitate and profit from drug trafficking over two decades.<\/p>\n An administration official told us that the arrests of Maduro and his wife were made by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which ultimately reports to the attorney general. The operation, conducted by the Department of Defense and the DEA, was made at the request of the Justice Department.<\/p>\n More than a dozen FBI and DEA personnel were seen disembarking from a plane with Maduro at a New York Air National Guard Base this evening. The FBI declined to comment on the agency\u2019s role in the operation, and the DEA did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, Trump and other administration officials asserted that the U.S. had a claim on Venezuela\u2019s oil reserves\u2014an apparent reference to a 2007 decision by Maduro\u2019s predecessor, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, to nationalize various foreign-owned oil projects. The U.S. oil giants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips were kicked out of the country after they refused to allow Venezuela to acquire majority stakes in their Venezuelan operations. \u201cThe stolen oil must be returned to the United States,\u201d Vice President J. D. Vance said in a post on X today.<\/p>\n Venezuela has the largest estimated oil reserves in the world\u2014accounting for about 17 percent of global reserves, or more than 300 billion barrels, according to the Oil & Gas Journal. But Venezuela produces only 1 million barrels of oil per day. Its potential is largely unrealized because of poor infrastructure, mismanagement, limited resources, and U.S. sanctions. What little is produced has to be sold on the black market for Venezuela to profit. About 80 percent of Venezuela\u2019s oil, which is of low quality, currently goes to China, at least 15 percent goes to the U.S. via a remaining joint venture with Chevron, and the remainder goes to Cuba.<\/p>\n Trump today talked about the potential to revitalize Venezuela\u2019s oil sector and the role that U.S. companies would play\u2014something the country\u2019s opposition has emphasized as a critical part of their economic plans.<\/p>\n \u201cThe oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust, for a long period of time,\u201d Trump said at Mar-a-Lago. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n This would be a massive, costly, and time-consuming undertaking.<\/p>\n \u201cVenezuela could produce 4 million barrels instead of the 1 million barrels it produces per day, but it would take maybe a little bit less than a decade and $100 billion in total over that period to get it to 4 million barrels,\u201d Francisco Monaldi, an expert in Latin American energy policy at Rice University, told us. \u201cVery few countries can do something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n How much opposition<\/span> Venezuela\u2019s military put up to defend Maduro is not clear. But the low number of U.S. casualties suggests that Washington likely had at least some support from within the Venezuelan military, helping make the operation a success, former and current officials told us. \u201cAn action like this would not be possible without significant help or at least intentional \u2018self-restraint\u2019 from the local military,\u201d a Pentagon adviser and Special Forces veteran told us.<\/p>\n The military\u2019s longer-term response to Maduro\u2019s ouster will likely be key to the fate of the nation. Recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan does not bode well for U.S. efforts at nation building, but much will depend on the choices that Venezuelan military leaders make about where their loyalties lie. The big question, the former Pentagon official said, is whether the U.S. can stave off the unrest and regional instability that could result from the sudden power vacuum left behind when Maduro was removed after nearly 13 years in power.<\/p>\n The role of Venezuela\u2019s democratic opposition is also unknown. Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, who secretly left Venezuela last month after a year in hiding to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, said in a statement today that \u201cthe time has come for Popular Sovereignty and National Sovereignty to govern our country. We are going to restore order, free political prisoners, build an exceptional nation, and bring our children home.\u201d<\/p>\n She urged Venezuelans inside the country to \u201cbe ready to take action.\u201d Trump, however, said today at Mar-a-Lago that Machado couldn\u2019t govern the country, because she doesn\u2019t have \u201cthe support or the respect\u201d of the Venezuelan people. Carlos Gim\u00e9nez, a Republican representative from South Florida, told us he assesses Machado\u2019s capabilities differently, calling her \u201cformidable.\u201d He said that he spoke with her on Saturday, and described her as \u201cupbeat that Maduro is no longer there, but realistic that there\u2019s more work to be done, and that this is just the beginning.\u201d A spokesperson for Machado declined to comment, and other representatives didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment for this story.<\/p>\n For now, Venezuelans don\u2019t know who is running their country, even as Venezuelan news networks broadcast images of celebratory flag-waving in the streets. Armed civilian militias, known as colectivos, were patrolling Caracas. \u201cThere is a lot of confusion,\u201d a Venezuelan activist in Caracas told us. \u201cThe government officials have called their followers to the streets, but nobody\u2014except the colectivos\u2014have answered.\u201d<\/p>\n Simon Shuster, Ashley Parker, and Gisela Salim-Peyer contributed reporting for this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" American forces\u2019 surgical capture of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, carried out in a daring raid shortly after 1 a.m. local time today, had been planned and rehearsed for months. 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