So, did you see the news over the weekend?
Trump actually pulled the trigger on capturing Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a middle-of-the-night extraction.
Honestly, the first thing that hits you is just how wild the mission was. Pulling something like that off with zero American casualties is a massive win for the Special Forces involved. You have to give credit where it’s due—that is some high-level execution.
But man, I’m feeling pretty torn about the whole thing.
On one side, Maduro isn’t exactly a guy you root for. He’s a classic autocrat who’s been tied to the international drug trade while his country crumbled. Millions of people have fled Venezuela as refugees, and the oil industry—which should be the country's backbone—is running at maybe 25% capacity because of total mismanagement and the fact that Maduro was a global pariah. Seeing him gone could potentially unlock a better life for millions of people and stabilize the whole region.
On the other hand... what’s the actual plan now?
This was a totally unilateral move. No Congressional approval, no heads-up. It feels like we’re entering this “law of the jungle” era where superpowers can just snatch foreign leaders whenever they want. It sets a “might makes right” precedent that could really bite us—or the rest of the world—down the road.
It’s also a bit ironic. Trump originally got elected (in part) because people were tired of us playing “world police” in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, here we are, potentially diving back into the nation-building game in Venezuela.
Don't get me wrong—I’m not a total pacifist. If there’s a bad actor hurting Americans and their own people, sometimes doing something is better than doing nothing, especially if they were given plenty of “off-ramps” and ignored them. I still like to think America is a force for good in the world.
But in life (and in business), the “good idea” is only about 10% of the battle. The other 90% is the follow-through. I always joke that I’ll have a “good idea” and then spend the next five years of my life actually trying to make it work. You can't run a country from a boardroom thousands of miles away.
The real question is: Are we actually going to stick around for the next 5 to 10 years to make sure life on the ground actually gets better for Venezuelans? Or are we just going to leave a power vacuum?
I have a feeling Trump will be long gone by the time we actually know if this worked, while millions of people will be left living with the consequences. Time will tell, I guess.