The U.S. raid-and-capture operation in Venezuela that ended the rule of Nicolás Maduro and upended power politics in the Western Hemisphere was unusually complicated. The motivations behind it were perhaps even more complex – and so are the lessons that the Delta Force blitz provide for Americans and for governments across the globe.
Here are some of the important political currents running beneath the surface of the astonishing episode, which has provided a template for evaluating the early 21st-century Trump Corollary to the early 19th-century Monroe Doctrine – two policies that have no legal basis but still establish distinct American spheres of influence and behaviour and enforce them …
