How to Abduct a President
What Saturday morning in Caracas reveals about American Power
Last Saturday morning, Delta Force troops killed 80 people in Caracas, abducted Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and had them in a New York federal courtroom by Monday. By Thursday, María Corina Machado was meeting Trump at the White House while Cuba held state funerals for 32 dead soldiers. While we did have markets that had been pricing regime change, very few had priced targeted kidnapping.
Done Before Breakfast
The raid happened quickly. Friday night brought bombing campaigns across northern Venezuela targeting air defence systems. Saturday morning, around 2 AM local time, Delta Force attacked Maduro’s compound at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela’s largest military complex. By Saturday afternoon, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were on the USS Iwo Jima heading north. By Monday morning, both appeared in federal court in Manhattan.
Representative Brian Mast told reporters the operation was “done before breakfast.” This appears accurate. The entire raid lasted under four hours. Casualties included 80 Venezuelans and 32 Cubans who were providing security. No American casualties were reported. Pete Hegseth said nearly 200 US personnel participated. Maduro “didn’t know the troops were coming until about three minutes before they arrived.”
The operational efficiency has struck some observers as remarkable, particularly for an administration whose previous military operations have been characterised by chaos and public infighting. Conspiracy theories have emerged suggesting the raid may have been partly internally orchestrated, with elements of the Venezuelan military cooperating with US forces.
Markets give 19% odds that this was an internal coup with American assistance rather than a purely external operation.
Trump posted a photo on Truth Social of Maduro aboard the USS Iwo Jima. The White House Rapid Response account posted video of Maduro being perp-walked down a hallway with DEA agents, walking on a carpet that reads “DEA NYD.” By Monday, Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to narcoterrorism charges. Both remain detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Maduro joins fellow inmates, including Sean “Diddy” Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried.
Markets on whether Maduro would finish 2025 in power had been at 75%. They crashed to near zero on Saturday morning. Someone made $400,000 on Polymarket betting on Maduro’s ouster, with markets on who exactly the mystery trader was.
On Sovereignty (and other technicalities)
While the Trump administration frames the performance as a “law enforcement operation”, international law scholars call it a clear violation of sovereignty, the prohibition on the use of force, and head-of-state immunity. Both can be true depending on which legal framework you’re using, which is to say the legal framework is whatever the United States decides it is.
The precedent being invoked is United States v. Alvarez-Machain, a 1992 Supreme Court case holding that unlawful abduction doesn’t prevent prosecution. DEA agents had kidnapped a Mexican national from Mexico without the Mexican government’s consent. The Court said this was fine: while the arrest “technically” violated international law, domestic courts could still exercise jurisdiction.
This ruling has now been applied to a head of state.
The convenient workaround is that the United States doesn’t recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate president. If he’s not really the president, then head-of-state immunity doesn’t apply. If he’s not really the president, then this isn’t really a coup. It’s just arresting a drug trafficker who happens to live in a presidential palace.
Senator Mark Warner asked the obvious question: “Does this mean any large country can indict the ruler of a smaller adjacent country and take that person out?” The answer appears to be yes (at least if you have Delta Force and carrier strike groups).
Madurismo Without Maduro
The person currently governing Venezuela is Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in as acting president Sunday. Rodríguez served as Maduro’s vice president and has been under US sanctions since 2018. She’s also the sister of Jorge Rodríguez, head of Venezuela’s National Assembly. The Rodríguez siblings reportedly outlined a “Madurismo without Maduro” roadmap to US envoy Richard Grenell through Qatari channels. The Trump administration rejected it, then installed Delcy anyway.
Trump has been direct about intentions. “We’re going to run Venezuela,” he told NBC News on Tuesday. “We’re in charge.” He suggested the US could launch a second operation if Rodríguez stops cooperating, but said he doesn’t think it will be necessary. By Wednesday, Marco Rubio was backtracking, clarifying that the United States won’t “directly govern” Venezuela but will “exert tremendous leverage.”
This represents a sharp departure from Trump’s campaign promises. The man ran explicitly on ending America’s involvement in foreign conflicts, telling voters he would bring troops home and stop nation-building. Markets on US involvement in new conflicts had Trump at lower odds than previous administrations.
Since taking office in January 2025, the United States has conducted military operations in Venezuela, threatened Cuba and Colombia, maintained deployments in Syria, and expanded drone campaigns in Yemen and Somalia.
Markets on US involvement in foreign conflicts resolved YES. What Trump called ending “stupid foreign wars” appears to mean ending wars he didn’t start while beginning new ones. The Monroe Doctrine revival (or as he likes to brand it, the Donroe Doctrine) looks less like ending American imperialism and more like rebranding it.
What leverage means in practice became clearer on Thursday. Trump threatened to remove Rodríguez if she didn’t cooperate. What “cooperation” means appears to involve Venezuela’s 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the largest in the world. Trump mentioned Tuesday that the United States is already recruiting American oil companies to develop these reserves. He projected it will take less than 18 months to rebuild Venezuela’s energy infrastructure, which seems….optimistic. However, it seems that Trump has all the incentive he needs.
Markets give 65% odds that Venezuelans will be better off by the end of 2026.
The New York Times reported Thursday that “day-to-day life for many Venezuelans has worsened” since Saturday. Supermarkets in Caracas are running low on supplies. Internet blackouts continue. The economy, which had contracted 75% between 2013 and 2020, isn’t improving because someone different is living in the presidential palace.
The Machado Problem
María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize in October and is widely regarded as Venezuela’s legitimate opposition leader. She won primary elections that Maduro’s government refused to recognize. She’s been in hiding since July 2024. Markets give her 43% odds of serving in Venezuelan government leadership by 2027, a 20% chance of her ever being the President of Venezuela, and a 7% chance of her entering Venezuela in January.
Machado met Trump at the White House on Thursday. What came of the meeting remains unclear. Trump has been dismissive of Machado’s authority despite her being the face of Venezuela’s opposition. The Brookings Institution notes that both Trump’s and Rubio’s contradictory visions “leave the vast majority of the Maduro regime in power,” crushing “the freedom and accountability aspirations of the Venezuelan people.”
Markets give 57% odds of Presidential elections in Venezuela by the end of 2026, and 22% odds that those elections are free and fair.
Markets also give 24% odds that Venezuela becomes more authoritarian rather than less.
These numbers suggest some understanding that removing Maduro doesn’t automatically produce democracy, particularly when the United States is threatening to remove his successor if she doesn’t cooperate.
Saturday’s Precedent
Markets had been pricing surgical strikes versus invasion. They were pricing Maduro staying in power versus opposition takeover versus military government. What they weren’t pricing was the abduction of the head of state and his subsequent prosecution in New York.
The aftermath problem remains unsolved. Removing Maduro doesn’t rebuild infrastructure, restart oil production, or address the reality that millions of Venezuelans have fled and aren’t coming back. It doesn’t resolve the question of what a post-Maduro government looks like when the opposition is fragmented and the United States won’t install Machado but also struggles to accept anyone it considers insufficiently cooperative.
Markets can price regime change. They can price economic outcomes, political transitions, and military interventions. What is much more subjective to pinpoint is what happens to global order when the world’s most powerful country decides that sovereignty, head-of-state immunity, and the prohibition on the use of force are more of suggestions than they are rules.
What a lot of people are worried most about is precedent. If the United States can bomb a capital city, kill 80 people, abduct a head of state, and prosecute him in New York while calling it law enforcement, then international law means whatever the strongest country says it means.
Happy forecasting!
-Above the Fold