Donald Trump and his senior officials have hailed Operation Absolute Resolve, the raid on Caracas and the capture and abduction of Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, as an outstanding military success.
It’s also easy to argue it was a blatant and unashamed violation of international law. And it signals a further erosion of what is left of the rules-based international order.
The temptation for the White House now is to declare victory and quickly move on to other targets while the world is still stunned by the audacity of kidnapping a sitting foreign leader. The people and leaders of Cuba (long an obsession for Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio), Colombia (the largest supplier of cocaine to the US) and Mexico (the key route through which fentanyl gets into the US) will be deeply worried about their future prospects in a Trumpian world.
