How the Pentagon snatched Nicolás Maduro

DONALD ruff, America’s chairman, described it as “an assault the likes of people feature not seen since World War II”. Marco Rubio insisted, more modestly, that it was “primarily a law enforcement operation”. In fact, the truth of America’s nighttime raid on Venezuela to capture and whisk away Nicolás Maduro, its leader, is somewhere in between. The attack on Caracas on January 3rd was an exemplary military operation, eased by outstanding intelligence on Mr Maduro’s movements and probably a dollop of help from the inside.

At a press conference on January 3rd, General Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, set out details of Operation Absolute Resolve, which followed five months in which America had steadily massed air and naval power in the Caribbean. Planning for the mission began months earlier, said General Caine. It involved more than 150 aircraft launching from 20 different bases “across the western hemisphere,” he said, “all coming together” at the same time over Venezuela. American forces had been ready for some time, with favourable weather dictating the timing.

The raid involved stealthy helicopter flights just 100 feet above the water. Images and videos of Chinook helicopters published on social media suggest that the aircraft belonged to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, an elite army unit known as the Night Stalkers. America’s most advanced warplanes, including the F-22 and F-35 fighters, stood watch overhead. As the force approached Caracas, America began “dismantling and disabling” Venezuelan air defences. General Caine suggested that the Pentagon’s space and cyber commands were involved in that effort.

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The helicopters used the capital’s mountainous terrain to conceal their path, arriving at Mr Maduro’s compound at just after 2am local time. One helicopter was hit on arrival but was able to fly home; some personnel suffered bullet and shrapnel wounds. Troops from America’s Delta Force, an elite special-forces unit, are reported to have captured Mr Maduro and his wife. Mr Maduro sought to enter a safe room, but was unable to close its steel doors before being seized. “There was a lot of gunfire,” said Mr Trump. The aerial armada was back over the ocean two-and-a-half hours later, with Mr Maduro delivered to the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious warship.

The raid evoked America’s earlier assault on Panama in 1989, which was aimed at capturing and trying another Latin American leader accused of drug-related offences in the United States—in that case, Manuel Noriega. But that operation, ordered by George H.W. Bush, was a full-fledged invasion, involving more than 27,000 troops, about half of whom were already on Panamanian soil. It was directed at a much smaller country. Panama had perhaps 4,000 combat-capable troops at the time; Venezuela’s army has more than 100,000 troops. And it was much less impressive: Noriega initially evaded capture and had to be flushed out of the Vatican’s mission with blasting rock music after ten days.

The fact that American forces could swoop undetected into the heart of Venezuela’s capital on a moonlit night, despite months of warning and Mr Trump’s public threat, on December 22nd, of a ground operation, suggests that Mr Trump is correct in claiming that no other country could pull off such an operation. The ease with which American troops were able to find and extract Mr Maduro indicates exceptional planning and intelligence.

As in past complex operations, such as the raid to kill or capture Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, which was carried out by the navy’s SEALs, Delta Force built a mock-up of Mr Maduro’s safe house to practise the assault. The CIA, which had a team inside Venezuela since August, according to CNN, is reported to have also had a source inside Mr Maduro’s government. Mr Trump also hinted that America’s offensive cyber capabilities had been used to disable power to parts of the city: “the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have”. The size of the assault force was unusual. America’s ill-fated raid to rescue hostages in Tehran in 1980 involved only 14 aircraft; the raid that killed bin Laden just five.

But the smoothness with which the operation unfolded could also indicate that some in Mr Maduro’s regime, security forces or personal guard had colluded with the Americans to keep resistance to a minimum. “My suspicion is that someone within his inner circle negotiated with the US and ultimately betrayed him,” says Irene Mia, an expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank in London.

Nevertheless, for Pete Hegseth, America’s self-proclaimed secretary of war, the success of the operation offers respite after intense scrutiny of his personal conduct, his handling of classified information and the legality of his strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific in recent months. And for America’s special-operations forces, such as Delta Force, the raid also served as an opportunity to show off their utility to Mr Trump’s foreign policy.

During the counter-terrorism campaigns of the 2000s and 2010s, those forces were largely committed to industrial-scale raids against low-tech jihadists in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The capture of Mr Maduro illustrates their prowess in more challenging missions against state adversaries. General Caine himself hails from a special-operations background. Special forces hold particular appeal to many in Mr Trump’s orbit, who believe that America erred in committing large, infantry-heavy ground forces in the Middle East.

Mr Trump’s audacious raid has decapitated but not dismantled Mr Maduro’s regime. As America found in 2001 in Afghanistan and 2003 in Iraq, military prowess in the first day or two of a campaign is little guide to long-term success. But the Caracas raid could nonetheless offer a tempting model for the future. “Cuba”, offered Mr Trump, “is going to be something we’ll end up talking about.”

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