Decapitation Without Destruction: Why the Abduction of President Maduro Creates a Strategic Crisis for the United States

Seizing Nicolás Maduro may have been tactically clean, but it has created a legitimacy crisis likely to draw Washington into prolonged resistance and strategic overreach rather than decisive control.

As the euphoria in the US mainstream media begins to settle over the dramatic events in Venezuela over the last twenty-four hours, a more sober strategic assessment is required. The US military operation that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and transported him to the United States has been widely portrayed as a decisive and clean assertion of…