In the very early morning hours over the

night of the 3rd of January, an

absolutely earthshattering development

took place in Venezuela that captured

headlines around the world. The US

military began bombarding targets across

the country while US special forces

launched a rapid late night raid into

the country, seized their sitting

president, Nicholas Maduro, along with

his wife, Celia Flores, and then just

loaded them both up onto a helicopter

and flew them out of the country on a

journey that eventually ended with them

both in New York City. just a few hours

later, facing criminal charges in

American courts. One country effectively

kidnapping the sitting head of state of

another country like this in an

explosive military raid is utterly

unprecedented. And there are a million

different questions around the operation

floating around right now. Why did Trump

order the mission in the first place?

Why did the operation go so well for the

Americans and so disastrously for

Maduro? What's going to happen next? Is

the US military involvement in Venezuela

going to escalate further? And what does

it all mean for America, Venezuela, and

the rest of the world beyond? I'm going

to do my best to answer as many

questions around this operation here as

possible. So, let's start with how the

actual raid itself went and why it was

so absurdly successful from a tactical

perspective for the Americans. Many

months worth of planning, preparation,

and escalation took place before the

raid was launched. Beginning in August

of 2025, the US military began

conducting an overt naval buildup in the

Caribbean Sea that steadily developed

into the largest concentration of US

military assets anywhere in Latin

America since the end of the Cold War.

Eventually, the Navy and Marines

concentrated in the area with an

amphibious ready group centered around

the USS Eoima, an amphibious assault

ship, and a carrier strike group

centered around the USS Gerald R. Ford,

an ultraodern nuclearpowered aircraft

carrier along with all of their

accompanying escort vessels totaling

around 11,000 sailors and marines and

nearly a 100 aircraft. While additional

aircraft like advanced F-35 fighter jets

and B1 bombers were increasingly forward

deployed air bases in Puerto Rico and

the US Virgin Islands nearby. Initially,

the Trump administration publicly

claimed that this entire military

buildup was intended solely to counter

drugs and narcotics trafficking into the

US. And beginning in September, they

began an air strike campaign against

boats in international waters that they

claimed were smuggling drugs. Between

then and the start of the raid around 4

months later, at least 35 known strikes

on various boats and other targets in

this campaign were carried out that

killed at least 115 confirmed people.

Then in December, the pressure continued

escalating when Trump declared that the

flotilla would begin enforcing a

blockade on Venezuela's oil exports that

were being fed by blacklisted tankers,

which resulted in the Americans boarding

and seizing one of these blacklisted oil

tankers off the coast of Venezuela on

the 10th of December. At around the same

time, the Trump administration labeled

Maduro as the head of a foreign

terrorist organization. And in late

December, the CIA conducted a drone

strike on a remote port facility on the

Venezuelan coast itself that they allege

was being used by the Trenaragua cartel

to store drones at before moving them on

a boats for shipping. Although nobody

was present at the facility at the time

of the drone strike and no casualties

were reported, it notably marked the

first known time that the US military

directly attacked Venezuelan territory

itself. And it was a clear message to

Maduro of what might be in store for him

soon as well. And all the while, the

Trump administration was pursuing their

real objective of removing Maduro from

power in Venezuela with a plan A and a

plan B. Plan A, they hoped, was that

their increasing pressure on Venezuela

through the military buildup, the

strikes on boats and ports and the

blockade would all convince Maduro that

his personal situation was hopeless and

compel him to step down from office and

surrender voluntarily. And all the

while, in case he didn't, plan B was

always to launch the special forces raid

to seize him through force instead.

Behind the overt military deployments

and escalation that was going on in the

Caribbean, the US was also

simultaneously pursuing a deep covert

operation behind the scenes as well. In

order to make the option for a raid as

highly likely to succeed as possible in

August, at around the same time as the

naval buildup began, the CIA managed to

quietly insert a small team within

Venezuela that was able to gain

extraordinary access to Maduro himself.

One source speaking anonymously to CNN

after the raid reported that the CIA had

managed to secure the cooperation of at

least one significant individual within

the Venezuelan government itself who

aided with tracking Maduro's location

and movements. Through months of

methodical studying, the CIA was able to

acquire accurate intelligence on

Maduro's travel patterns, where and how

he moved around, where he slept, what he

ate, what he wore, and even what his

pets were. All of this enabled the CIA

to pinpoint the exact location the

Maduro would be at on the ultimate night

of the raid. The Fort Tuna military base

just to the south of central Caracus,

Venezuela's capital, a sprawling

military complex and fortress built into

the side of the mountains for defense.

The CIA's intelligence gathering

operation was so insidious and

successful that they even managed to

acquire detailed knowledge about the

internal structure of Maduro's own safe

house where he stayed at within Fort

Tuna. This enabled the US Army's Delta

Force, the branch of the special forces

that would ultimately be tasked with

carrying the raid out, to reconstruct a

perfect one to one replica of Maduro's

safe house that they were able to

practice and practice and practice

storming repeatedly until they had the

whole operation down to precise memory.

in a similar manner to how the Navy

Seals were able to build an exact

replica of Osama bin Laden's safe house

that was also based on CIA intelligence

in the leadup to the raid that killed

him back in 2011. By late December after

Christmas, the Trump administration

apparently concluded that after months

of trying to build pressure on Maduro,

plan A wasn't working and he wasn't

going anywhere without force. On the

29th of December, Trump himself

reportedly gave the green light to plan

B instead, and the preparations for the

raid rapidly began being set in motion.

But for days, the launch of the raid

would be consistently delayed due to

unfavorable cloudy weather conditions in

the area around Caracus. That would make

the jobs of the helicopter pilots flying

in the Delta Force extraction team

exceptionally challenging. Finally, on

the night of the 2nd of January, the

weather broke just enough to clear a

possible path for the helicopters to

take. And so, at 10:46 p.m. Eastern

Standard Time that night, Trump gave the

order to launch. And so, the pieces

immediately began being set in motion

for what would become Operation Absolute

Resolve. Trump himself would watch the

following events unfold live from his

personal residence in Mara Lago,

Florida, rather than in the White

House's situation room, along with a

handful of key aids like the Secretary

of State, Marco Rubio, and the CIA

director, John Ratcliffe. Extremely

specialized Chinuk stealth helicopters

with the Delta Force extraction team on

board took off from the USS Euima and

flew low only about a 100 ft above the

surface of the sea in order to avoid

detection on Venezuelan radar systems

skimming their way toward Caracus. The

helicopters themselves belong to the

160th Special Operations Aviation

Regiment, alternatively known as the

Night Stalkers. Simultaneously, the US

committed around 150 additional

aircraft, including F-18, F-22, and F-35

fighters, B1 bombers, and Reaper drones

to provide support and cover for the

extraction team. These aircraft departed

from around 20 different American bases

at different times from across the US

mainland and Puerto Rico and then

converged together near Caracus just as

the helicopters were approaching the

coast. In order to clear the path for

the helicopters towards the Fortuna

complex where they knew Maduro was

located, the jets and drones conducted

an overwhelming aerial bombardment

against key air defense systems and

other military targets across Caracus,

as well as at this port, which is

Caracus' key conduit to the sea and this

airport nearby to the east. As the

strikes began pounding their targets,

American cider warfare specialists were

also capable of shutting off large

sections of Caracus' power grid as well,

using undisclosed capabilities, plunging

much of the city into darkness and

adding to the cover for the helicopters.

With most of Venezuela's relative air

defense systems around Caracus

apparently knocked off line by the air

strikes, the helicopters crossed over

into Venezuelan airspace and hugged the

mountainous terrain around Caracus to

further conceal their path before they

ultimately arrived at the Fort Tuna

complex in Maduro safe house at 10:01

a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Just a

little over 2 hours after Trump had

initially given the order to go.

Immediately upon their arrival at the

Fort Tuna complex, the American

helicopters began receiving small arms

fire from the Venezuelan security and

hired Cuban security forces on the

ground and there was a major gunfight as

the American forces returned fire. One

of the helicopters was apparently struck

by the gunfire and lightly damaged but

was still capable of flying. The heavily

armed Delta Force extraction team then

descended on a Maduro safe house itself,

which they had tirelessly rehearsed

doing countless times beforehand on

their exact replica of the place. They

even brought along blow torches with

them in case Maduro managed to escape

into his panic room, which they knew

existed and were prepared to pry open.

Trump apparently had authorized the team

to kill Maduro if he resisted the

extraction too heavily, but it

ultimately didn't come to that. Delta

Force swiftly broke into Maduro's

personal quarters where he reportedly

panicked and attempted to flee towards

his panic room as was expected before

the Delta Force was able to tackle and

apprehend him before he could get the

heavy steel door to the panic room shut.

In the end, the Delta Force apprehended

both Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores,

loaded them both back up onto one of

their helicopters, and immediately

departed in the dead of the night under

overhead coverage and suppressive fire

by the fighter jets and Reaper drones

that were still patrolling above. as

they flew out of the country with the

president on board. Multiple other

engagements with Venezuelan and Cuban

security forces were reported, but they

were ultimately powerless to stop them.

Within just 2 hours and 20 minutes of

having launched the operation, it was

all already over, and the helicopters

were all safely back on board the USS

Emojima, where they had initially

departed from, plus their two additional

new guests, the Venezuelan president and

his wife. From there, the pair were

quickly taken by air to the Guantanamo

Bay Naval Base that the US controls in

Cuba, where a jet was waiting for them

that immediately took them further to

the Steuart Air National Guard base just

north of New York City. By that evening,

Maduro was in the DEA's headquarters in

Manhattan. And moments later, he and his

wife were placed in a cells at the

Metropolitan Detention Center in

Brooklyn, where they are now expected to

be held until their first court

appearances. Satellite images captured

before and after the raid over the Fort

Tuna military complex show the scale of

the damage that was inflicted. Here in

these sets of images captured before and

after, you can see massive damage that

was inflicted by the air strikes on two

different sets of buildings. One set in

the left of the image and another set in

the right of the image. Further away at

the entrance to the Fortuna complex,

satellite imagery has also captured the

destruction of the guard house in the

security gate that was at the entrance,

which was apparently struck by a missile

during the raid. Throughout the course

of the raid, there were multiple

casualties. So far, Venezuela's reported

that 24 of their own security personnel

were killed by the American forces

during the course of the raid, while the

Cuban government has reported that 32 of

their separate security personnel who

were defending Maduro as his personal

bodyguards were also killed during the

raid, totaling up to 56 Venezuelan and

Cuban security personnel who were

collectively killed, in addition to at

least 24 civilians around Caracus who

were also killed in the process. On the

American side, not a single soldier who

participated in the raid was killed,

though six were reportedly injured in

the helicopter that took small arms

fire, though none were critical or

life-threatening injuries. With zero

fatalities and zero loss of equipment on

the American side, 56 inflicted

fatalities on the Venezuelan and Cuban

security personnel, and the successful

capture of Venezuela's sitting

president, the entire operation was an

astronomical success for the US military

from a tactical perspective. But whether

or not it'll ultimately turn into an

actual strategic victory for the US

still remains to be seen. And there are

many, many long-term strategic problems

and consequences concerning just about

everything about it. From around the

world and within the US, there has been

a sharp difference in reactions to the

raid that have roughly followed along

ideological and political lines. The

Trump administration deliberately

withheld knowledge of the raid from the

US Congress until it had already been

launched and never secured any

congressional approval for it, which has

especially sparked anger among the

Democrats in Congress. After the raid

had happened, the Trump administration

asserted that they never informed or

consulted Congress ahead of time due to

fears that doing so would result in

leaks that would have undermined the

element of surprise and compromised the

mission. Nonetheless, it appears that

some leaks happened anyway. Very

suspiciously, just one week before the

launch of the raid, a brand new

anonymous account was created on the

online betting market Poly Market that

placed tens of thousands of dollars

worth of bets on the platform that

Madura would be out of office by the end

of January. Following the conclusion of

the raid just a few days later, these

bets netted the anonymous account more

than $49,000

in profits, which has led to a lot of

speculation that whoever placed the bets

was someone from within the

administration who possessed insider

knowledge. The leadership of Argentina,

Ecuador, Ukraine, and Israel have put

forward statements in support of

America's actions, while the leadership

of countries like Panama, Canada, the

UK, France, Germany, and the EU have put

forward more neutral sounding

statements. Many other countries have

sharply condemned America's seizure of

Maduro, including other Latin American

countries with current left-wing

governments in power like Cuba, Mexico,

Colombia, and Brazil. In addition to

other countries from around the world

like Spain, South Africa, Iran, and

notably, Russia, and China, a statement

released by the Russian Ministry of

Foreign Affairs concerning the raid is

perhaps the most ironic statement that

anyone will release all this year. It

reads, "The United States committed an

act of armed aggression against

Venezuela. This development gives rise

to deep concern and warrants

condemnation. The pretext used to

justify these actions are untenable,

which basically reads like a burglar

who's upset that another burglar broke

into a different house. During the

opening days of the Russian invasion of

Ukraine in February of 2022, the Russian

military attempted a strikingly similar

operation to abduct the president of

Ukraine, that went disastrously wrong by

comparison. Russian special forces

infiltrated the Ukrainian capital with

direct orders to seize President

Zilinski while elite Russian airborne

units aboard helicopters stormed the

nearby hostel airport to reinforce them

and facilitate Zilinsk's extraction.

Instead, it ended up turning into a

bloodbath for the Russians with hundreds

of their most elite paratroopers getting

killed and multiple shot down

helicopters before they gave up without

securing any of their objectives.

showing that these kinds of helicopter

extraction missions are significantly

more difficult and high risk than the

Americans make them appear. Russia's

condemnation of what America just did in

Venezuela when they themselves tried and

failed at doing the exact same thing

just 4 years previously in Ukraine rings

as especially hollow. The Russians are

upset at the removal of Maduro from

power because he was historically one of

their biggest arms clients. Since the

mid200s, the Venezuelans under Chavez

and later Maduro purchased more than $20

billion worth of military equipment from

Russia. With any further purchases now a

pretty open question, especially after

all of the Russian air defense systems

that the Venezuelans purchased

effectively did nothing to stop the

Americans from seizing their president.

It is also yet another deeply

embarrassing blow to Russia's image as a

supposed global great power. Ever since

Russia started getting ridiculously

bogged down fighting their war in

Ukraine, they've been unable to commit

serious resources abroad and their

foreign allies that they used to prop up

and support have been dropping like

flies. Armenia, their CSTTO ally in the

south Cauasus repeatedly lost wars to

Azarbaijan and had a suffer through

witnessing the complete collapse of

Nagoro Carabach. The Bashar al-Assad

regime in Syria completely collapsed at

the end of 2024.

And now Maduro has been removed from

power in Venezuela, which only further

reinforces this perception that Russia

is simply incapable of protecting their

friends right now. China's reaction to

the raid, like many others, has been

very strongly negative. A spokesperson

for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign

Affairs wrote on X that China is deeply

shocked by and strongly condemns the

US's blatant use of force against a

sovereign state in action against its

president. Such a hegemonic acts of the

US seriously violate international law

and Venezuela's sovereignty and

threatened peace and security in Latin

America and the Caribbean region.

Notably, just hours before the raid

seized Maduro from his residence, he was

busy meeting with top Chinese diplomats

who were still present in Caracus at the

time when the bombings and helicopter

assault started. No doubt adding to

China's sense of indignation at the

whole thing. There were some analysts

who had begun arguing that America's

raid and capture of Aduro, a leader of a

nation they didn't like, will set a

dangerous precedent for both Russia and

China to follow in Ukraine and Taiwan.

But I personally don't really think so.

Like I already said, Russia already set

this precedent themselves in 2022 when

they blatantly tried to abduct the

president of Ukraine in the opening

shots of the Ukraine invasion. They were

just bad at it and failed. The possible

precedent it sets for China is more

interesting, but still flawed. The way

that China frames the Taiwan issue and

the way that America is trying to frame

the Venezuela issue in many ways are

remarkably similar. Since China claims

Taiwan as one of its own provinces that

regards as being in rebellion, Beijing

asserts that the Taiwan issue is an

issue of domestic sovereignty and that

any outside intervention into its own

domestic affairs, like an assault on one

of their own provinces to restore

border, is illegitimate. In a similar

fashion, the Trump administration has

asserted that the operation to remove

Maduro had nothing to actually do with

regime change, but was simply a matter

of domestic law enforcement instead.

Executing an arrest warrant against an

individual who just happened to be the

sitting president of a foreign country.

The irony here, of course, is that the

Trump administration claims that their

raid to remove Maduro was just a

domestic issue, while they

simultaneously reject Beijing's

narrative of Taiwan just being a

domestic issue as well. Using a similar

argument, China could conceivably assert

that a move on Taiwan is simply a law

enforcement operation to apprehend the

island's renegade leader, currently Ling

T, whom Beijing similarly does not

recognize as the island's legitimate

leader. However, Taiwan is also nearly

without a doubt a much harder place to

target than Venezuela was. Taiwanese

forces possess significantly more

competent and well-funded armed services

than Venezuela with dramatically more

advanced modern air defense systems that

are provided by the US. In order to pull

off a raid similar to what the Americans

just did in Venezuela, China would have

to strike hundreds of targets in Taiwan

in order to clear a path rather than the

dozens in Venezuela. And by that point,

that would already basically be a

full-scale war. Venezuela under Maduro

was also without a doubt the most

geopolitically aligned country to China

in the Western Hemisphere as well. China

was one of the very few countries that

was willing to openly defy US sanctions

on Venezuela and trade with them for

oil. Although the relationship has been

a very lopsided one in China's favor.

Only 5% of China's total oil imports

were coming in from Venezuela. While

China alone accounted for an

overwhelming 80% of Venezuela's oil

exports, meaning that China was a lot

more important to Venezuela as a buyer

than Venezuela was to China as a seller.

If the US government manages to fully

take control of the Venezuelan oil

industry now that Maduro is out of the

picture, China might lose out on what

historically had represented 5% of their

oil imports, which isn't insignificant,

but they'll also have fairly easy

options to replace the loss. China had

begun to rely more on Russia for

increased oil imports to fill in the

gap, which ironically might just end up

pushing Beijing and Moscow ever closer

together. And this gets us into the

many, many problems relating to the raid

and what comes next. All this time

later, the Trump administration has

still not put forward a clear or even

sound strategic reason for having

launched the raid in the first place.

Officially speaking, the

administration's stated justification

for the raid was to arrest Maduro on

charters of alleged drug trafficking and

narco terrorism. Trump himself has

repeatedly claimed the Maduro was

supposedly responsible for smuggling

gigantic amounts of narcotics into the

US, but the facts compiled and put

forward so far don't really support this

argument. According to US Drug

Enforcement data recently compiled by

the Congressional Research Service, only

a minuscule amount of the fentinyl,

cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin

that finds its way into the US

originates from Venezuela. The report

found that more than 85% of the heroin

that enters the US originates from

Mexico. Virtually zero fentinyl is

produced in Venezuela at all, while the

vast majority of cocaine that enters the

US originates from Colombia still with

Venezuela being primarily used only as a

trans shipment point rather than as a

major supplier and producer in its own

right. Moreover, many many analysts have

questioned whether or not the so-called

cartel of the Suns, the alleged drug

trafficking cartel that the Trump

administration asserts Maduro is the

leader of, even exists at all. Without

further actions against where most of

the drugs entering the US are actually

coming from, like Mexico and Colombia,

removing Maduro alone will do very

little to actually put a dent in

America's drug problem. So, if it wasn't

actually about drugs like the

administration has consistently tried to

claim, what was it really all about?

Some have argued, of course, that it was

supposedly actually about regime change

and restoring the democracy in Venezuela

that used to exist prior to the rise of

Hugo Chavez and the Chaveismo Socialist

regime in the late 1990s. But then in a

news conference that Trump gave the

afternoon after the raid, he appeared to

downplay the regime change and restoring

democracy to Venezuela were actual

objectives or even concerns of his. He

asserted during this conference that the

United States was going to temporarily

run Venezuela now until it was deemed

appropriate to hand over in a

transition. During the same conference,

Trump hardly even mentioned the popular

Venezuelan Democratic opposition at all.

When PointBlank asked if he would

support the primary opposition leader

becoming president next, Maria Karina

Machado, Trump bluntly responded that he

didn't believe she had either the

necessary support or the respect within

the country to pull it off. During the

last presidential election in Venezuela

in July of 2024, Maduro banned Machado

from being able to run against him out

of fear of her popularity and the odds

of her being able to win. Machado and

her party then put forward and Mundo

Gonzalez to run against Maduro instead,

who by virtually all independent tallies

probably managed to decisively win the

2024 election with close to 70% of the

total vote, which was also indirectly a

vote for Machado. Maduro ultimately

refused to release the government's own

records of the election data, claimed

that he won instead, and then stole the

election and repressed everyone who

protested against it, sending both

Machado and Gonzalez into exile abroad.

So there was initially this belief that

the raid to remove Maduro was designed

to install this waiting opposition

government in exile and a power in

Venezuela. But Trump has consistently

downplayed that this is actually his

intention ever since the raid. Instead,

Trump has seemingly welcomed the

continuation of power in Venezuela by

the same greater Shabbismo regime. With

Maduro's former vice president, Deli

Rodriguez having since been formerly

sworn in as Venezuela's interim

president. The Trump administration has

claimed that behind the scenes,

Rodriguez is now fully cooperating with

all of the US's demands, despite her

public condemnations and defiant

speeches urging Venezuelans to take to

the streets to protest the seizure of

Maduro. It is likely that the Trump

administration has calculated that

forcing full-blown regime change on a

Venezuela by installing the Democratic

opposition would result in more chaos

than it would probably be worth. likely

fearful of the prior legacies of

America's disastrous regime change

operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Far

easier, the administration probably

believes to just remove Maduro through

force and threatened that they'll do it

again to pressure the new leaders of the

regime into doing their bidding. There

are even some rumors that Rodriguez

potentially even collaborated with

Washington ahead of the raid, both in

order to remove Maduro from the way of

power and in exchange for an

understanding from Washington to keep

the overall regime in place without him.

What the Trump administration really

appears most interested in in Venezuela

is the country's enormous oil reserves,

the largest of any country on the

planet, even more than Saudi Arabia.

During his press conference hours after

the raid, Trump himself mentioned oil no

less than two dozen times. And he

specifically asserted that the US would

now be running Venezuela to extract its

oil wealth in order to compensate

American firms for losses they incurred

during prior nationalizations of the

country's oil industry in the 1970s and

the 2000s. Back in 2007, Maduro's

predecessor, Hugo Chavez, seized all of

the assets in Venezuela that belonged to

both Exxon and Konico Phillips after

they refused to renegotiate with them

over renewed ownership structures on

their operations in the country. Since

then, both companies and other Western

energy companies have filed a combined

$60 billion worth of outstanding claims

against the Venezuelan government for

the seizure of these assets in both

American and international courts, which

continue to remain outstanding and

unpaid, and which Trump is now demanding

the regime without Maduro repay, which

is probably not really even possible for

reasons that I'll get into later.

Additionally, Trump has declared that

another of his objectives is to revamp

Venezuela's oil production, which used

to be among the highest rates of

production in the world. Back in the mid

1990s, before the rise of the Chabismo

regime, Venezuela was producing about 3

12 million barrels of oil per day. But

since then, Venezuelan production has

cratered over the years due to a

combination of gross mismanagement, long

deferred maintenance, decades of brain

drain of experienced technicians, and

international sanctions down to just a

little over 800,000 barrels per day. A

mere fraction of its historical

potential, and less than 1% of the

global supply currently. Trump has

repeatedly stated that he will make it

so that major American oil companies

like Exxon, Kico Phillips, and Chevron

can go in and invest billions of dollars

into the country's decrepit oil industry

to get it all back up and running again

for the mutual benefit of both Venezuela

and the US alike. With the increased

production and revenues in his mind,

serving both to help rebuild Venezuelan

society and repay the American energy

companies billions of dollars worth of

lost property. But actually doing that

is going to be way way way harder than

Trump may believe. And it doesn't really

make any sense as a justification for

the raid that took out Maduro either.

It's been estimated by Kepler, a data

firm, that merely getting Venezuela back

to the level of oil production that it

had back in the late 2010s before the

major US sanctions began to bite,

roughly 1.5 million barrels per day,

would require a capital injection of

around 10 billion to pull off and would

take 2 to 3 years to accomplish, pushing

the accomplishment near the end of

Trump's term in office. In order to then

go further and restore Venezuela's oil

production back to anywhere close it was

during its heyday before Maduro entered

into office. Another energy consultancy

called Ryad Energy has estimated that it

would require an absolutely colossal

investment of $110 billion to

accomplish. And it would take as long as

an entire decade to actually pull it

off, which is notably double the amount

of capital that all of the American oil

majors invested combined globally in

2024.

And even with all of that time and

capital invested in a Venezuela, it

would only manage to get the country

back up to a production rate of about

2.5 million barrels of oil per day,

which is only about half of the oil that

Texas alone is currently producing right

now. The enormous scope of this

operation that's required to rebuild

Venezuela's trashed oil industry

fundamentally requires long-term

stability and security in the country

along with a certainty that the

government will actually honor their

contracts and not expropriate the

foreign company's investments and

assets. Again, none of which are

conditions that currently actually

exist, especially with the overall

chioismo regime ultimately seeming to

still remain in place even without

Maduro at the helm of it.

Understandably, literally none of the

major US energy majors have so far

expressed any serious interest in

actually increasing their investments

into Venezuela's oil sector. While

Exxon's leadership has even reportedly

told the Trump administration after the

raid that they still view Venezuela as

being completely uninvestable. Anyway,

another major problem is that the nature

of Venezuela's oil, which is very heavy,

sour, and full of impurities, makes it

more expensive, and technically complex

than other kinds of lighter oils to

extract. Most of Venezuela's skilled oil

technicians have fled the country over

the past decade plus of history. Meaning

that to make all of this work, the

foreign energy companies would also have

to inject a huge amount of human capital

into Venezuela in addition to all of

their huge amounts of financial capital.

Worse still, because of how expensive it

is to drill Venezuelan oil, the price

per barrel that's considered the break

even rate for Venezuelan oil production

is greater than $80 according to Wood

McKenzie, another energy consultancy.

And currently, because there is a

gigantic glut of oil that's currently on

the market with more supply than there

is demand, the price per barrel has been

hovering at only around $50 instead.

Well, well below the possible break even

point in Venezuela, meaning that oil

projects there would currently be

operating at a net loss until prices

increase again at some uncertain point

in the future. And all of this

understandably makes US energy majors

even less incentivized to actually

invest any of their meaningful capital

or time into Venezuela. The project is

extremely expensive. It's extremely

risky and it's very volatile with the

Shizmo regime ultimately still in power.

And it's also highly likely to be

unprofitable for years to come. What a

proposition to offer. And all the more

puzzling when the US already produces

more oil than any other country in the

world right now, while Next Door, Guyana

has abundant oil reserves of their own

that are far easier and cheaper to

extract in a much more politically

stable environment than in Venezuela.

Even if the production could end up

becoming revitalized, the more that the

Trump administration diverts the razor

thin profit margins towards America, the

less there will be left over for

rebuilding and redeveloping Venezuelan

society, which will probably lead to

resentment at the regime's collaboration

with America and diminish its popularity

and increasing the odds of a coup

happening that undo the whole process.

Unless America reintervenes with force

through the military again. The price of

oil is also already so low because of

this global glut of supply that it's

near the dangerous tipover point where

it will even become unprofitable for

most domestic US oil producers too.

Adding even more supply onto the global

market from Venezuela to the tune of

potentially nearly 1 to two million

barrels more per day would push down the

price even further, probably harming

America's own oil producers in the

process. Assuming in a fantasy land that

the US actually could manage to get

Venezuela's oil production levels back

to where they historically were before

Maduro, it would also pose a significant

threat to Canada and their oil export

market that largely comes out of the

Alberta oil sands. Many of the heavyduty

oil refineries on the US Gulf Coast were

initially built to handle processing

Venezuela's superheavy crude, which

after relations between the US and

Venezuela cratered after the rise of

Chabismo, were retoled to handle

Canada's superheavy crude from Alberta

instead. If the US managed to get

significant imports of oil to these

refineries coming back in from Venezuela

again, it would give the Americans

leverage to force down the price of

Canadian oil in the US market, which

would pose a long-term threat to

Canada's and Alberta's economies since

they currently rely so heavily on oil

exports exclusively to the US market.

All of this could provide Canada with a

further emphasis to diversify their

customers with a new oil pipeline that

they've already started constructing

from Alberta to the coast of British

Columbia that is increasingly becoming a

vital project for securing Canada's own

financial sovereignty. A true irony of

the whole Maduro raid, if it ends up

actually resulting in America taking

over and revitalizing the Venezuelan oil

industry, is that it could end up

pushing Canada and China closer together

instead, since it would probably mean

cutting out Venezuela's oil supply from

China and America's oil purchases from

Canada, meaning that it would become

logical for Canada and China to simply

reconfigure their own relationship,

pivoting Canadian oil exports to China

instead. So most of the oil argument

that the Trump administration is making

for ousting Maduro also doesn't really

make much sense when you really start

digging into it. The only element of the

oil argument that might make sense is

how it relates to Cuba. The communist

regime in Cuba and the Shabbismo regime

in Venezuela have been closely aligned

since the days of Chavez and continued

throughout the Maduro years. For many

years, Venezuela provided Cuba with

cheap, below market oil supplies in

exchange for Cuban military and

intelligence cooperation and medical

expertise. But with Maduro now out of

the picture, Trump has been clear that

another one of his demands of the new

leadership in Venezuela is to sever the

remaining oil supply to Cuba, which

without a joke is potentially an

existential threat to the Communist

Party of Cuba that is already facing

massive energy shortages on the island

that are resulting in frequent rolling

blackouts. If they can't manage to

acquire new supplies of oil from

somewhere else besides Venezuela, they

stand to possibly start literally

running out of it. Regardless of the

justifications and the grand strategy

involved with removing Maduro, none of

which really quite makes a lot of sense,

the Trump administration has clarified

that it does not intend for the US to

control the Venezuelan government

directly, but indirectly through

continued threats to Rodriguez that a

similar fate as Maduro could befall her

if she doesn't fall in line with

America's demands. Considering that the

demands are limited in nature, involving

access to the country's oil resources

rather than regime change, or even

rather than a moderating of the regime's

repression, it's probably more likely

than not that Venezuela under Rodriguez

and the continuation of Chabismo

actually cooperates. That isn't to say

that it's absolutely a certainty.

However, there's always a risk within

the Shabbismo regime that influential

and ambitious hardliners such as Dostado

Cabo, the interior minister who wields

significant influence over the country's

paramilitary force called the

collectivos and who is widely now seen

as the second most powerful figure in

the country after Rodriguez might

eventually take offense at the new

cooperation with Washington and consider

a coup at which point the Venezuelan

army would have to choose which side to

back. Thus, there's certainly some

element of risk of infighting or even

civil war breaking out in the country

over this issue in the coming months as

evidenced a couple of nights after the

raid when gunfire erupted across the

presidential palace in Caracus that was

captured by multiple videos and which

led to a lot of speculation that a coup

had already started. But that ultimately

turned out to have just been nervous

security units firing in the air at one

of their own drones that they mistakenly

identified as an enemy aircraft. If

Rodriguez doesn't fall in line with the

demands that the Trump administration

expects or an internal conflict erupts

and the country descends into a power

struggle, the US may find itself in the

position of having to increase its

military involvement in Venezuela

further, which is broadly unpopular with

the American public right now, to say

the least. Perhaps most tellingly into

the beliefs that went into the Maduro

raid is the Trump administration's own

release of their national security

strategy, which they published only a

few weeks before the launch of the raid.

In it, the strategy calls for placing

the priority of the Western Hemisphere

over all the other regions in the world.

Well, it specifically outlines a

so-called Trump correlary to the

historical Monroe Doctrine, which

promises to shut out extra hemispheric

powers like China by denying them quote

the ability to position forces or other

threatening capabilities or to own or

control strategically vital assets in

our hemisphere end quote. Further on,

the strategy also rather threateningly

reads that the US wants quote nations to

see us as their partner of first choice

and will through various means

discourage their collaboration with

others end quote. seen in the light of

Maduro in Venezuela's historically close

relationship with China over the past

decade. The raid to capture him serves

another goal of delivering a very overt

warning to China and Russia to stay out

of the Western Hemisphere and that the

hemisphere is exclusively within

America's own self-declared sphere of

influence. It also sends a clear warning

to other regional governments across

Latin America that if they don't

cooperate with the US and drift too

close to China instead, their leaders

could also be next. In a way, it's also

a true return back to form for the

United States, who is long meddled in

the internal affairs of Latin America

with military interventions and

clandestine CIA and intelligence

operations to influence events in their

favor. In 1914, the US deployed troops

to occupy the Mexican port city of

Veraracruz in order to protect US

financial interests there. In 1954, the

CIA backed a coup that overthrew the

democratically elected government in

Guatemala that led to decades of brutal

civil war and chaos in the country. In

1961, President John F. Kennedy

orchestrated the Bay of Pigs fiasco in

Cuba, which helped escalate events

towards the Cuban Missile Crisis that

almost ended the world just a year

later. In 1973, the CIA backed another

coup in Chile against the democratically

elected socialist government of Salvador

Ayende, which resulted in the rise to

power of Austo Pedosha and his brutal

17-year long dictatorship in the

country. In the 1980s, the Reagan

administration heavily intervened in the

affairs of Nicaragua against the

socialist Sandinista government by

funding right-wing paramilitary death

squads that were known as the Contras

that culminated with the Iran Contra

scandal and which inflamed Nicaragua's

civil war. And in 1989, in the most

analogous comparison to the Maduro raid,

President George HW Bush ordered a

full-scale US military invasion of

Panama in order to seize and apprehend

Panama's then leader, Manuel Noriega, on

narcotics and drug smuggling charges.

After the end of the Cold War, the US

entered into a long period of seizing

their big military interventions in

Latin America that have been going on

almost continually for a century

beforehand. But in the new multi-olar

world that is seemingly emerging in the

2020s, the Maduro raid of Venezuela, the

new Trump national security strategy,

and the reinvation of the Monroe

Doctrine all herald the return back to

the historical norm in the relationship

between the US and Latin America, which

as it turns out had only been briefly

dormant throughout the 1990s, the 2000s,

and the 2010s.

While the raid that captured Maduro

turned out to be a textbook tactical

success for the Americans with no losses

in either lives or equipment, it nearly

didn't turn out that way. As new

information about the raid has continued

trickling out, we've since learned that

the pilot flying one of the helicopters

during the raid was struck in his leg by

three bullets fired by the Venezuelan

and Cuban security forces who were

guarding Maduro. The pilot managed to

survive his injuries and was only just

barely capable of pushing through to

continue piloting it all the way back to

safety again. Had the pilot not been as

incredibly skilled or the bullets struck

him in slightly different locations, the

entire operation could have turned out

disastrously different with a crashed

helicopter deep in hostile Venezuelan

territory and potential US soldier

deaths or even prisoners taken by the

Venezuelan government who could have

then been used as leverage. The raid was

a much closerun thing than many of us

were initially led to believe. And in

the worst case scenario, it could have

even developed into a situation like the

Blackhawk Down incident in Somalia in

1993. One of the most disastrous fiascos

in the modern history of the US military

that essentially went in the exact

opposite direction of the Maduro raid in

terms of outcome. Back then, the US

military similarly devised a plan to use

helicopters loaded up with special

forces to launch a rapid raid into the

heart of Movishu in order to seize two

highranking militants as prisoners and

immediately evacuate with them. Like the

Madura raid, this earlier helicopter

raid was intended to only last around an

hour as a rapid in-n-out exfiltration

mission. Instead, it turned into an

agonizing 17-hour long battle after

three of the American helicopters that

were participating in the raid were shot

down by militants on the ground. Two of

them deep within hostile territory,

surrounded by armed enemies that needed

to then be defended to the death. The

whole affair ended up resulting in the

highest number of deaths of American

servicemen during a single battle since

the Vietnam War and the capture of an

American soldier who was then able to be

used by the militants as negotiating

leverage. When the order was given to

launch the raid to capture Maduro in the

same kind of way, there was always a

possibility that it could have ended up

going in a similar direction. And so I

think that understanding the Black Opal

incident as well is a major lesson in

what can also happen during these kind

of high-risk operations when considering

more of them in the future when they

don't end up going exactly as according

to plan. And so I made an entire new

documentary analyzing the hourby-hour

moments that took place during the

Blackhawk Down incident in a brand new

episode in my modern conflict series,

which takes deeper dives in a modern

wars, battles, and operations. But

because of the inherently violent and

controversial details surrounding the

Blackhawk Down incident, including

details and depictions of excessive

violence and terrorism throughout a

17-hour long battle, my documentary

analyzing the whole course of events

would never work on YouTube because it

would instantly become demonetized and

age restricted, which means the

YouTube's algorithm that's based around

showing you ads would never actually be

incentivized to show the video to you or

to promote it. I deal with very large

numbers of my videos on YouTube getting

demonetized and age restricted as they

already are, including one of my most

recent videos here that attempted to

cover the ongoing genocidal events that

are taking place in Dar fur during the

civil war in Sudan. And so that's why

I'm uploading all of my documentaries

and modern conflicts, including this one

covering the Black Down incident,

exclusively to Nebula instead. And why

signing up to Nebula is the absolute

best thing that you can do to support me

and my channel. And there's never been a

better time to sign up because you can

now get 50% off of the annual

subscription for just $30 for the entire

year. A perfect gift that you can also

give to someone for the new year. And

there's plenty of new content for you to

watch right now. There's Scav, a new

documentary series by the Jetlag team

that follows the world's largest

scavenger hunt. There's multiple new

exclusive video essays by Lindseay Ellis

and a new short film by Patrick Williams

called The Dinner Plan that features

Griffin Newman and Zack Cherry. And of

course, Nebula is also still home to

some of the best curated and informative

documentaries available on the internet

today. There's Bobby Broccley's 17 pages

documentary covering one of the largest

scientific controversies of the 20th

century. Real Engineering 16 Days in

Berlin, the most detailed Battle of

Berlin documentary that's ever been

produced. Whenever productions, the

logistics of X series, and of course, my

other Nebula series called Mad Kings,

covering the reigns and decisions of

modern history's most eccentric

dictators. With plenty more originals

for myself and other creators planned

throughout 2026,

I personally treat Nebula as my own

sanctuary away from the noise of

algorithmically driven sites like

YouTube and other social media. Both as

a creator and as a viewer, there's no AI

bots and no AI generated sloth that's

clogging up your feed here. We

individually choose and vet which

creators we actually work with. And that

enables us to only work with the best,

creators who truly love and take pride

in what they do. So, if you want to

support me and hundreds of other

independent creators who still value our

craft and get access to some of the best

documentaries and video essays available

on the internet though you won't find

here on YouTube, you can do so by

visiting the link that's down below in

the description by scanning the QR code

that's here on your screen or by

clicking the button that's here on your

screen and signing up. You'll get 50%

off of an annual subscription by doing

so, which is just $30 for the whole year

or $250 per month, a fraction of the

price of YouTube Premium. You can even

sign up for a lifetime membership as

well with a 40% off discount for $300 if

you don't ever want to deal with yet

another streaming platform subscription

or ads ever again for as long as we both

last. I hope that you'll consider

signing up or gifting to a friend or a

loved one. And as always, thank you so

much for watching.