The US may want many of its foes gone from power. It doesn't usually send in the military and physically remove them.
Venezuela's abrupt awakening took two forms. Its residents were woken abruptly to the sound of deafening booms: the sound of its capital Caracas under attack from US strikes targeting military infrastructure. Its government has now woken up from any illusion that US military intervention or regime change was just a distant threat.
US President Donald Trump has announced Venezuela's leader, Nicolás Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country. This was a man who wielded a huge amount of power: his government controlled the electoral system, the judiciary, the military, as well as having the loyalty of powerful militia groups. By the end of Saturday, he was pictured in a grey tracksuit, his hands bound, his eyes blindfolded, being transported to detention in the US. It was an extraordinary fall from power.
The US has long accused Maduro of leading a criminal trafficking organisation, something he strongly denies. It designated as a foreign terrorist group the 'Cartel de los Soles' - a name the US uses to describe a group of elites in Venezuela who it alleges orchestrate illegal activities like drug trafficking and illegal mining.
Maduro now faces a US trial over weapons and drugs charges.
For years, Maduro's government has been accused of human rights abuses. In 2020, United Nations investigators said its government had committed egregious violations amounting to crimes against humanity such as extrajudicial killings, torture, violence and disappearances - and that Maduro and other top officials were implicated.
The result was deemed neither free nor fair by international election observers. The opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was barred from running in it. But that doesn't make Saturday's events straightforward.
The US has not carried out direct military intervention in Latin America like this since its 1989 invasion of Panama to depose the then-military ruler, Manuel Noriega. This latest operation, striking inside a sovereign capital directly, is a dramatic escalation in US engagement in the region.
The forcible removal of Maduro will be hailed a major victory by some of the more hawkish figures within the US administration. However, it remains deeply unclear what comes next inside Venezuela itself. Trump has claimed the US will now run Venezuela but has not clarified what he means by that.
Will the US try to push for fresh elections? Will it try to depose further senior members of the government or the military? Or will it work with opposition leaders? These are questions left unanswered.
As for Trump, his administration has become increasingly muscular in the region, but not everyone aligned with the opposition agrees with the means of intervention. It remains a complicated political chess game in Venezuela.
