Venezuela Drama Resurfaces: After the U.S. Military 'Captures' Maduro Alive

Everyone, yesterday I had just finished talking about Latin American geopolitics, and today I saw comments saying "they've started fighting." Sure enough, Trump announced on social media: airstrikes on Venezuela, President Maduro captured alive, and he and his wife have been flown out of the country. Right after that, I saw photos of Delta Force escorting Maduro, which confirms it: under direct and powerful U.S. intervention, regime change has occurred in Venezuela. There's a detail worth pondering here: Russian media used the word "kidnapping," while many domestic media outlets followed the U.S. in using "arrest" or "capture." Venezuela, for its part, declared a national state of emergency and condemned the U.S. military aggression. If you don't yet know the ins and outs of this matter, let me briefly lay it out. First, Venezuela is not a small country. It's as big as France plus Germany, with a population of 30 million and 120,000 active-duty troops. More critically, it has the world's largest oil reserves, accounting for 18% of the global total. Second, the U.S. war against Venezuela didn't start today. After Chavez returned to politics in 2001, the U.S. launched a so-called "hybrid war": diplomatic isolation, economic pressure, and support for the opposition. Under long-term economic sanctions, the Maduro regime was already under enormous pressure. Last August, Trump suddenly launched lethal strikes on suspected drug-trafficking vessels under the pretext of combating narcotics; in December of the same year, he bombed port facilities inside the country, and then today's events happened, very suddenly. Third, the so-called drugs are not actually the real reason. Since last year, the U.S. has deployed military forces on a large scale and struck with maximum force, yet has never provided any evidence of drug trafficking. The so-called Venezuelan official drug-trafficking network—the "Cartel of the Suns"—in the view of independent UN observers and think tanks, looks more like a label manufactured by the U.S. So the international consensus is that this is a political action by the U.S. to pressure Maduro out of power. Maduro says the U.S. is eyeing Venezuela's oil and gold—an innocent man is guilty only for possessing a treasure. Fourth, although both Trump and Biden targeted Maduro, their methods were quite different. Biden mainly used soft tactics: easing sanctions and offering some sweeteners. Trump, by contrast, was extremely direct with both sanctions and military means, not consulting allies at all, just going straight to action. This is also a feature of the new U.S. strategy—the U.S. wants to maintain absolute regional hegemony at low cost. Finally, the U.S. had long had various plans for Venezuela: assassination, inciting internal coups, small-scale landing decapitation operations, etc., all of which were rejected because of low success rates. Previous plans were almost all about open positional warfare, requiring an army of 50,000 to overthrow the Maduro regime, which risked an Iraq-style failure. But Trump succeeded this time, and that is actually very unusual. So what happens next in Venezuela could be very complex: there were already many people both supporting and opposing Maduro, but now whoever the U.S. supports may be more opposed, and it could ultimately fall into a cycle of violence. That's still uncertain and remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: the U.S. is forcibly reshaping Latin America's political environment. Last time I said Latin America was collectively turning right—what happens if you don't turn? Now they're giving you a demonstration. This is both a message to Latin America and a message to China and Russia—the world order is changing, and the two of you need to weigh for yourselves where you want to fight and where you want to compromise. China has been operating in Venezuela for many years. The crude oil it can't sell due to sanctions is basically all bought by us, including oil-for-loans, RMB settlement, and the influence of Chinese enterprises in Latin America—all of this will actually be affected. So our response in the future will also be crucial.