Delta Force, the Army’s premier special operations unit, has just earned another testament to its deserved reputation as the world’s finest close-quarters battle special forces team.
In a remarkable operation overnight Friday-Saturday, Delta Force and, presumably, a small number of FBI-Hostage Rescue Team operators, helicoptered into the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and forcibly seized dictator President Nicolas Maduro. No Americans were killed, though some were wounded. Maduro and his wife are now being relocated to New York to stand trial in federal court on drug trafficking charges.
MADURO ‘CAPTURED’ AND TAKEN OUT OF VENEZUELA AFTER US MILITARY OPERATION IN CARACAS: TRUMP
At a Mar-a-Lago press conference on Saturday, President Donald Trump pointed out that a lot could have gone wrong with this operation. He is absolutely correct. A helicopter or helicopters could have been shot down in various areas of Caracas by Venezuelan or Cuban operatives armed with shoulder-launched anti-air missile systems. The Delta Force strike team could have been overwhelmed by Maduro’s guards and responding forces. That none of this happened testifies to the abilities of Delta Force and the other U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Army personnel involved in this action.
You simply cannot pull off an action like this without extraordinary military power and an equal measure of professional skill. As the Washington Examiner reported last October, the U.S. military deployments around Venezuela were always too large to be related to drug trafficking alone.
China and Russia will thus pay close heed to this potent capability. The leaders of Cuba, Iran, and North Korea will watch this dominant and choreographed display of American power with particular concern. They will think: if Trump can do this against Maduro, why can’t he do it against us? Trump surely is banking on that consideration as a means to empower his future diplomacy with these nations.
OPINION: A WELCOME END TO THE MADURO REGIME
Still, even as this daring operation will rightly earn its place as one of the finest special operations in history, what happened overnight is the easiest part. The question of what happens next is fraught with far greater risk.
Trump says that the U.S. will now govern Venezuela under the supervision of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He emphasized that Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez’s seizure of American oil assets in the country was a major precipitating factor for this action. And Trump warned that he was ready to order far larger military action if the Venezuelan government and military refused to relinquish power. While it appears that Vice President Delcy Rodríguez is suddenly now cooperating with the U.S., many others in the country will not do so.
Powerful drug cartels such as the Cartel of the Suns are intimately associated with a range of personalities in the Venezuelan military. And criminal outfits such as Tren de Aragua represent just the tip of a far greater iceberg of Venezuelan organized crime groups. Any effort to establish the rule of law will have to confront these organizations or major parts of them. With a vast array of both urban and rural environments in which to hide, criminals and anti-U.S./anti-Venezuelan transitional government insurgents will be able to conduct attacks.
Put simply, nation-building is unlikely to be easy. Nor is nation-building simply about security. Restoring the rule of law, access to food and medical supplies, and the provision of basic services will be expensive and time-consuming.
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It is quite extraordinary that Trump is now so comfortable with that responsibility. A president long regarded as beholden to an anti-interventionist foreign policy is now pursuing the antithesis of that doctrine. Following this action and the successful strikes on Iran’s nuclear program last year, it is clear that Trump is now far more comfortable with the use of military force.
But military force is ultimately only a conduit to political freedom of action. And Venezuela’s path to a stable, prosperous political future is unlikely to be as easy as Trump claims.