Venezuela- Down Side of Trump’s Intervention, etc.,

Foreign Policy via archive.ph

By attacking Venezuela, seizing its president, and promising to “run” the country indefinitely—all without an congressional or United Nations authorization—U.S. President Donald Trump may well have shredded what little is left of international norms and opened the way to new acts of aggression from U.S. rivals China and Russia on the world stage, some experts say.

Definitely shredded what little was left of international norms- doubtful on China and Russia.

“Trump probably achieved little in the way of stopping narcotics flows into the United States” .. That’s wasn’t the goal anyway

“If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership?” Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement. “What stops [Russian President] Vladimir Putin from asserting similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president? Once this line is crossed, the rules that restrain global chaos begin to collapse, and authoritarian regimes will be the first to exploit it.”

Hello, the US exploited this first!!- And yes they are an authoritarian regime- Completely lost on Sen Mark Warner! Though he’s saying exactly that!

Trump made clear that his goal was regime change—and even long-term U.S. occupation. This in spite of the administration’s repeated denials that this was his goal; Trump ran for president in 2024 on a platform of avoiding such interventions.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said, and he did not deny suggestions from reporters that this could require years. In a haunting echo of similar claims made more than two decades ago before the U.S. invasion of another oil-rich nation, Iraq, Trump said that any U.S. costs would be reimbursed by “money coming out of the ground”—in other words, Venezuelan oil. “We’re going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” Trump added.

“We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela,” the U.S. president said. He said that U.S. oil companies would now be sent in to fix things and restore “American property”

Speaking to Fox News, Trump said that despite his good relations with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, “She’s not running Mexico. The cartels are running Mexico,” adding that “something’s gonna have to be done with Mexico.”

Trump’s action “weakens the already compromised U.S. ability to credibly make arguments about rules concerning use of force in international politics—which is zero cost to this administration since it does not care about such things,” said William Wohlforth, an international relations expert at Dartmouth University.

“A lawless administration has reached a new low,” said Harold Koh, an expert in international law at Yale and former legal advisor to the State Department. “Trump has baldly violated the UN Charter, with no valid claim of self-defense, and engaged in an illegal extraterritorial arrest that will be vigorously contested in a U.S. court.”

In a statement, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the U.S. operation “contravenes the principle of non-use of force that underpins international law.”

Finish the article from Foreign Policy at the link provided- We’re moving on. At this point in time. Based on information read and digested I’m not taking away the idea any sort of deal was made. The US went in with overwhelming force including electronic warfare and they kidnapped the leader of another nation in a coup plot

Task & Purpose

The operation involved 150 aircraft from 20 different bases and ships, Caine said, including Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps fighter jets and bombers.

160th SOAR helicopters flew low over the Caribbean Sea until they reached land. Fighters and bombers provided air cover. The helicopters fired on Venezuelan ground defenses “with overwhelming force” when the U.S. forces came under fire during the raid. One helicopter was damaged but remained operational during the mission, Caine said. The special operations force was “over the water at 3:29 a.m. Eastern Standard Time,” Caine added, and Maduro was taken to the USS Iwo Jima.

Trump said that the city was largely blacked out ahead of the raid “due to a certain expertise that we have.” U.S. Cyber Command, with oversees the military’s cyberwarfare capabilities, also took part in the operation, Caine said.

They used their cyberwarfare capabilities to overwhelm Venezuelan defenses..IMO

From Brazil media;

Bombs away in Venezuela for Trump, the self-proclaimed ‘peace’ president

Trump’s enthusiasm for war would seem at odds for a president who has loudly declared that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.