If I had a nickel for every time the U.S. military took a Latin American dictator accused of narco trafficking into custody to face trial in the United States on January 3, I’d have two nickels—-which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. Twenty-six years after Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega finally surrendered to U.S. forces surrounding the Papal Nuncio in Panama City as part of Operation Just Case, American special operations forces conducted a daring raid to capture and extradite erstwhile Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. The date, while an interesting coincidence, is not the only similarity between the two operations, as many in the administration are pointing to the former as a model for the legal and historical justification for the latter.
While there remain many lingering questions and concerns about what comes next, there is much for the United States to celebrate about this operation and for which the administration deserves credit. Maduro was, without question, a communist dictator and thug. He had assumed control of Venezuela after the death of Hugo Chávez, who had first set Venezuela on its Bolivarian communist path to poverty, cooperation with other malign states, and animosity to the U.S. and the West. (In fact, prior to Chávez’s hard turn, the U.S. and Venezuela shared a cooperative relationship—one of my instructors during my initial officer training in 1999 was a Venezuelan exchange officer.) Maduro, having been Chávez’s vice president, continued the Chavismo agenda of oppression, murder, economic ruin, and cooperation with the “Axis of Resistance.”
Maduro was an enemy of the Venezuelan people and the cause of liberty, an ally to America’s strategic rivals, and a permanent obstacle to American goals in the Western Hemisphere. His removal is an inherent good that creates the conditions for a potentially beneficial long-term outcome, emphasis on potentially.
America should also take great pride in the incredible prowess and capability of our military forces. Conducting a successful rotary wing raid, into an adversary capital city defended by air defense systems, without a single friendly fatality is a remarkable feat that exactly one nation in the world can pull off. This operation was an example of the kinds of combined arms synchronization—from fixed and rotary wing aviation, intelligence collection and analysis, fires planning, and electronic and cyber warfare—that America has refined and mastered, and which stands as a reminder to global adversaries that there are very few places that are safe from U.S. action if we deem it necessary. It’s also a reminder, to both foreign and domestic audiences, that the United States military is, and has been, pretty effective in achieving the tasks given to it, despite rhetoric to the contrary in the aftermath of our defeat in Afghanistan.
We should also celebrate that this would seem to be a further setback for the Axis of Resistance, already taking a string of losses over the past several years.
Up until recently, this axis represented an interconnected web of rogue regimes working to support each other’s nefarious goals. Bashar al-Assad was able to retain power in Syria for so long in part because of Russian forces and mercenaries as well as Lebanese Hezbollah fighting for the Assadist side in the Syrian civil war. Russia has been bolstered in its stalled war in Ukraine by the influx of Iranian drones and Chinese financial support. Iran had enjoyed a regional deterrent umbrella via the threat of their distributed proxies, one of the reasons nobody struck its nuclear program directly until recently. And Cuba has largely staved off complete economic collapse through support from Venezuelan oil revenue. For much of the early 2000s, Iranian civilian airlines ran flights from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut to Caracas, facilitating the illicit flow of munitions and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanese Hezbollah personnel, including into their foothold in the Western Hemisphere.
But Assad is now gone—in exile in Moscow after his Russian support dried up when those forces were needed in Ukraine and after Hezbollah was severely degraded in the aftermath of October 7. Iran is facing domestic upheaval at home that may threaten its ability to support Russia. And now these American enemies may find themselves deprived of their base from which to try and play in America’s backyard (in the case of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah) and access to oil or oil revenue (in the case of China and Cuba).
But the answer to how good, bad, or ugly what comes next will be is still in question. It’s not unfair to say President Donald Trump’s comments from Mar-a-Lago on Saturday after the operation, well, lacked detail. And what details he did provide raise more questions about what comes next. It’s not quite clear what he meant by “we will run” the country. The president seemingly dismissed the notion that opposition leader Maria Corina Machado would take over, saying Saturday, “It would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” Instead, the administration seems to be working with Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez. The administration has suggested Rodríguez, who has been sworn in as acting president, is ready to cooperate with this new arrangement while her public statements suggest otherwise. It is very possible one or the other parties, or both, are playing a public role with dramatic rhetoric while very different circumstances play out behind the scenes.
And this is where the vast ocean of potential outcomes opens up. Rodríguez governing throughout a short-term transitional period until free and fair elections can be held could be the best-case scenario. This would, in the short term, prevent the mistakes of Iraq, wherein we had to rebuild the functions of government from scratch after de-Ba’athification, and provide the least disruption until such a time (a short time) when a new democratic government could be elected, providing liberty and self-determination to the Venezuelan people who have been deprived of them for so long. However, if this is just an example of removing a communist despot who will not work with American oil companies in exchange for a communist despot who will (Rodríguez is still the standard bearer of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela—-in effect the Maduro regime without Maduro), this does not augur well for the Venezuelan people or the future of the country.
It could be that there is a very specific plan for what comes next and the president, never really a details guy, just didn’t address it. But, as he laid it out at Mar-a-Lago, there is an open vacuum into which chaos or opposing actors can flood. We will “run the country,” but do it from afar, unless we need boots on the ground, on a limited basis, to bring back into line the communist client government that has oppressed its people for years, or to protect oil infrastructure. As if, after the capture of Maduro, we can almost clap our empty hands and walk away, believing everything is on course. In fact, the hard part starts now—just as George W. Bush discovered after his celebratory “Mission Accomplished” photo op to mark the capture of Baghdad.
There is also potential concern for how this operation may align with the “Donroe doctrine,” as the president has come to refer to his approach to the Monroe Doctrine that long guided U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere. It is good when the United States acts to protect freedom and liberty and to prevent enemy activity in our own backyard. It’s good when we advance our interests through the legitimate use of all elements of national power. But if this is meant to indicate that the United States can and will do anything we want in the Western Hemisphere, as some close to the administration have implied in the immediate aftermath of the operation, or further implying other powers have permission to do the same in their near abroad, this creates a new and dangerous global order—if the U.S. were to take a more aggressive approach to territorial conquest in the Americas wouldn’t that de facto justify Chinese designs on Taiwan?The bottom line is the United States and the Venezuelan people have reason to celebrate Operation Absolute Resolve, and the president and his team deserve a great deal of credit for both the bold decision and the masterful execution. I am hopeful that the president’s foreign policy team will build on this tremendous success to bring about a future for Venezuela that is advantageous for the United States, brings hope and opportunity to the Venezuelans, and creates more dilemmas for our adversaries. But, in the famous words of Gust Avrakotos as portrayed in Charlie Wilson’s War, “We’ll see.”
