Irene Mia
The dramatic military-law enforcement operation carried out by the United States in the early hours of 3 January 2026, culminating in the capture and forced transfer of Venezuela’s then-president Nicolás Maduro and his wife to the US to face charges on narcoterrorism, drug trafficking and weapons offences, marked a new high point in President Donald Trump’s vision of US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere – one in which energy and resource security, coercion, and transactional deal-making often take precedence over democratic principles, sovereignty, and international law.
Although the operation is reminiscent of the motivations and modus operandi of the 1989 US invasion of Panama, its repercussions are likely to be significantly more far-reaching, given the complicated backdrop against which it unfolded, marked by intensified great-power rivalry, the re-emergence of spheres-of-influence thinking in US foreign policy, the erosion of the rules-based international order, and the expanding reach of transnational criminal networks. While much attention will focus on how developments in Venezuela reshape regional geopolitics, US–Latin American relations, and Venezuela’s own future, the operation may also have important effects on criminal dynamics both domestically and internationally. These effects could ultimately threaten regional security and undermine the very ‘war on drugs’ that the Trump administration cited as the primary justification for the intervention.
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