Nicolás Maduro posing with DEA agents following his capture by the United States. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

After four months of US President Donald Trump’s sabre-rattling, set against the backdrop of the most menacing and massive buildup of American military might since its 1989 invasion of Panama, US helicopter-borne troops finally swooped into Caracas in the middle of the night on Saturday, January 3, 2026. They scooped up Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and disappeared back into the darkness. By the end of the day, both were in jail in New York, facing criminal charges including “narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine-importation conspiracy and weapons charges.”

Trump, who had previously justified US intervention in Venezuela by trumpeting a variety of legally dubious claims, including that he was protecting the US against the threat of Maduro’s “narco-terrorist organization,” finally abandoned all pretence.

The United States, he declared, will now “run” Venezuela for an indefinite period and will take “a tremendous amount of [oil] wealth out of the ground… in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country.”

That is the truth—and the challenge for the rest of the world. Including Canada.

International reaction was swift. Venezuela’s ideological supporters (China and Russia) condemned US military actions. Latin America is divided, with right-wing governments (Argentina’s Milei and Ecuador’s Noboa) supporting the operation, while others (Mexico’s Sheinbaum and Brazil’s Lula) condemned the raid.

For much of the rest of the world,........

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