As the United States asserts control over the capital of a sovereign nation and captures its president in a bold nocturnal operation, many are left wondering about the fate of Donald J. Trump, the former contender for the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Trump has frequently claimed credit for resolving eight global conflicts, but his recent military intervention in Venezuela starkly illustrates the sheer force of American power.

This operation has been meticulously planned over several months. The relocation of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier to the Caribbean in October drew little attention at the time. However, it has since become clear that the subsequent raids on drug-trafficking vessels departing Venezuela and the capture of two oil tankers were just preliminary actions leading up to the main event.

Throughout this period, the US Army’s elite Delta Force was rigorously preparing for the assault, training in a facility designed to replicate Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s compound in Caracas. For comparison, SEAL Team Six, which took down Osama Bin Laden in 2011, reportedly trained for six to eight weeks.

This leads to the pressing question: What is the real motive behind President Trump’s aggressive action?

He has no desire to return the US to the status of the ‘world’s policeman’ in the manner of the neo-conservatives of the George W Bush era – Trump’s withdrawal from Ukraine is evidence of that.

Instead, Trump is a disciple of the ‘Monroe Doctrine’ – the right of the US, and no other world power, to decide what goes on in the Americas, first proclaimed by President James Monroe in 1823.

So Trump sees it as his country’s right to rid the socialist sore of Maduro from its Caribbean backyard. And much of the cocaine and other narcotics that have flooded American streets over the past decade have come from the Venezuelan gangs who are the real wielders of power in Caracas.

President Donald Trump posted an image on his Truth Social account showing him sitting next to CIA Director John Ratcliffe (left) and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (right) as they watched the U.S. military operation in Venezuela

But last November, Trump chose to pardon former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was in a US Federal jail three years into a 45-year sentence for the same offence for which Maduro now stands indicted: drug-running.

Trump seems to believe that narcotics only pose a deadly threat to the US when pushed by Leftist Latin American rulers.

No, the real reason behind Trump’s actions is oil – and it is no secret. 

Trump has boasted of making Venezuelans rich by taking over the country’s oil production. By doing so he kills two birds with one stone. 

He feeds refineries in Louisiana hungry for a special type of heavy oil in which Venezuela specialises. And he controls the supply that China had been leaning on. 

It might be a global power ready to rival the US, but China is energy poor with not nearly enough deposits of gas and oil to keeps its factory furnaces ablaze. Now, China will have to find another source of cheap oil.

Fifty years ago this week Venezuela nationalised its oil industry, including the operations of US oil firms, which Trump recently called ‘theft’. Venezuela has used its oil revenues to poke Washington in ways that have irked successive US presidents, Obama and Biden included, not least by acting as chief supplier to Communist Cuba.

The US President shared this image of Nicolas Maduro, showing the Venezuelan leader in custody

Few in Venezuela will shed a tear for Maduro. Many hate him as an election fraudster, having rigged his country’s poll last year, and Venezuelan refugees from Chile to the US will celebrate his downfall. That won’t stop the far Left here howling at his demise, as they have long lionised Venezuela as a socialist paradise.

But Maduro’s enemies should be careful what they wish for. His swift removal from power does not mean Venezuela will turn to democracy, or even benign dictatorship. The Maduro regime has been decapitated but his henchmen remain in place, and are determined to fight to retain their power.

Trump has made clear that Venezuela will not peacefully slip into a regime led by the cheated candidate in last year’s election, Edmundo Gonzalez, or opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last autumn. Instead it will be ruled at arms’ length by the US, temporarily.

Crucially American soldiers are not stationed in Caracas to keep the peace. Trump insists they are on standby. They need to be as the capital is awash with guns and ambitious leaders – not just in the still active army but of powerful drug gangs – who may fancy seizing territory amid the power vacuum.

There is a strong likelihood that chaos could ensue as in Libya after Obama helped to depose Gaddafi but then stood back and let the country become an ungovernable wreck.

US involvement in foreign wars rarely begins with a long-term commitment. More often it opens with a minor operation that unleashes forces it hadn’t intended. Then America is sucked back into the conflict against its will.

So Trump may soon find himself involved in an extended overseas military campaign, which he was elected to oppose.

Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford