The Kidnapping of President Maduro: An Assertion of American Hegemony in the Western Hemisphere
Operation Absolute Resolve achieved its primary objective on Saturday, 3 January 2026. President Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped in a “brilliant operation”, to quote US President Donald Trump, in which 32 Cuban security personnel lost their lives while trying to protect the man who has led the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela since 2013. The special “surgical law enforcement” operation was a closely guarded secret. It followed months of covert planning and rehearsals, involving the US Armed Forces, the CIA, and the FBI, and was undertaken without Congressional authorisation. According to General Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump gave the order to proceed, under favourable weather conditions, at 22:46 PM ET on 2 January. The assault force, led by the US Army’s elite Delta Force (1st Special Forces Operational Detachment) and supported by bombers, fighter jets, reconnaissance planes, and helicopters, landed at Maduro’s compound in central Caracas at 1:01 AM ET on 3 January and conveyed him to the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship, from where he was flown to New York. The operation was live- streamed to the Mar-a-Lago club in West Palm Beach, Florida, for the delectation of President Trump and his officials.
On the day Maduro was kidnapped, his Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was made acting President by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Venezuela, under Article 233 of the Constitution, which also requires a direct ballot for a new President to be held within 30 consecutive days. The deposed President Maduro, along with his wife, Cilia Flores de Maduro, landed at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Orange County, New York, at around 16: 30 PM ET on 4 January 2026. The couple were then taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn in handcuffs, to join America’s “unwanted” in the largest federal pre-trial holding facility in the US.
On 5 January, appearing before 92-year-old Judge Alvin Hellerstein at the US Southern District of New York in Manhattan, Maduro pleaded “not guilty” to four federal charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machineguns and destructive weapons, and conspiracy to possess machineguns and destructive devices against the United States. He said he was “innocent” and “still president of my country.” The next court date has been set for 17 March. Setting aside this list of federal charges, added justification for intervening in Venezuela has been provided by President Trump’s stated intentions to take charge of Venezuela’s oil reserves, reclaim previously nationalised American oil assets, and to develop the nation’s oil infrastructure.
Delcy Rodríguez has strong socialist credentials, aligned with former President Hugo Chávez’s ideology of chavismo, which has since transitioned into madurismo. She is the daughter of Jorge Rodríguez, founder and secretary general of the Socialist League, who died in detention under an earlier regime. Her brother Jorge is president of the National Assembly of Venezuela. Delcy studied law at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (Central University of Venezuela) and topped up her legal studies at Nanterre University in Paris and at Birkbeck College in London, before becoming a university professor. After entering politics, she held several ministerial positions, rising to the post of foreign minister between 2014 and 2017, when she became President of the Constituent National Assembly. Maduro named her Vice President in 2018, and she concurrently became economics minister in 2020. In her new position as President, she has indicated her willingness to cooperate with Trump, even as she describes Maduro and his wife as “hostages.” In her words: “There is only one president in Venezuela and his name is Nicolás Maduro.”
Trump’s intervention in Venezuela is in keeping with various American actions in the Western Hemisphere since the 19th century. According to the Harvard Review of Latin America, the US has intervened successfully to change governments at least 41 times between 1898 and 1994 in its role as regional policeman in Latin America and the Caribbean, acting directly in 17 instances. American economic and political interests have dominated the policy agenda over this period.
Venezuela is now in a state of limbo. President Trump has decided that “there is no way the people could even vote” until the country is nursed “back to health.” The US will run Venezuela in the interim, in some as yet unspecified fashion. Trump has yet to endorse either of the two leading opposition politicians, Edmundo González Urrutia and María Corina Machado, for the presidency. He has even stated that 2024 Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado is “a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect within the country.” Some in the know believe that Trump was miffed that Machado accepted the Prize in his place when he was far more deserving of the award. Machado, an ardent admirer of Trump, has ambitions to make Venezuela the “energy hub” of the Americas.
Maduro was in Trump’s sights for some time, having been indicted by the US Department of Justice in March 2020 on cocaine-trafficking conspiracy charges. He was a bipartisan target, and the Biden administration even upped the $15 million reward for his arrest, imposed under Trump 1.0, to $25 million in January 2025. There can be little doubt that his regime was corrupt and repressive and mismanaged the Venezuelan economy. It is a question of whether the kidnapping of the leader of a recognised sovereign state can be considered legal under existing international law, in the absence of either UN Security Council authorisation or International Court of Justice criminal proceedings, and without the provocation of a direct military attack on the US. It must be said, in this context, that the United Nations has been rendered impotent in recent years, restricted to symbolic gestures that achieve little on the ground. The UN Security Council emergency meeting on 4 January thus overwhelmingly condemned the kidnapping of Maduro, but this will have little impact on the Trump administration. Those in favour of Trump’s intervention in Venezuela, on the other hand, contend that international law should not be invoked to protect tyrannical regimes. The only thing one can be certain about is that Venezuela’s short-term future has become even more uncertain after the latest US intervention, especially since previous American attempts at regime change elsewhere do not inspire confidence widely.
Ashis Banerjee