American airstrikes pounded military and other installations in Caracas while Delta Force operators stormed presidential compounds, kidnapping Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. By sunrise, the couple were airborne, bound for US soil to face “narco-terrorism” indictments. President Donald Trump proclaimed victory on Truth Social: a “large-scale strike” executed with precision, minimal US casualties, and decisive results.This is the most overt US military intervention in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama – a deliberate echo of history in Washington’s perennial backyard.The operation is inseparable from the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), released just weeks ago. For the first time in decades, the document explicitly elevates the Western Hemisphere to America’s highest strategic priority. It vows to “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence” and introduces the “Trump Corollary” – a formal update to Roosevelt’s 1904 expansion that justified US policing of the region.This new corollary commits Washington to denying “non-Hemispheric competitors”, principally China and Russia, any military positioning, strategic asset ownership or undue influence in the Americas.Venezuela, with its deep oil ties to Beijing, military cooperation with Moscow and supposed drug-trafficking networks, embodies the very threat matrix the NSS constructs: migration surges, narcotics flows and extra-regional penetration. Today’s strike transforms doctrine into deed, fusing the alibi of “counter-narcotics enforcement” with great-power exclusion – precisely the methodological shift toward proactive hemispheric containment that I analysed in recent columns on Trump 2.0’s emerging grand strategy.Latin America’s response has been predictably fractured along ideological lines. Progressive governments have condemned the action as a grave violation of sovereignty and international law. Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva labelled it a “dangerous precedent” that risks “violence, chaos and instability”. Colombia’s Gustavo Petro rejected unilateral military force outright. Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, Chile’s Gabriel Boric and Uruguay’s foreign ministry all invoked the UN Charter’s prohibitions on intervention.These statements resurrect memories of CIA-orchestrated coups, Operation Condor and the long shadow of Cold War dominance – themes I revisited in earlier pieces examining how historical grievances continue to shape regional attitudes toward US power.On the right, jubilation prevails. Argentina’s Javier Milei posted an exuberant “FREEDOM MOVES FORWARD. LONG LIVE FREEDOM DAMMIT” framing Maduro’s removal as a continental triumph. Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa celebrated the collapse of “narco-Chavismo” and offered support to opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González.This regional polarisation threatens to deepen existing cracks in the Organization of American States and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, institutions already paralysed by Venezuela-related disputes.Neighbouring countries confront immediate practical consequences. Colombia, host to millions of Venezuelan refugees and plagued by cross-border trafficking, fears fresh instability. Brazil, under Lula’s leftist administration, may reinforce frontiers while amplifying criticism of US unilateralism on global platforms.Also read: World Takes Sides After US Strikes Venezuela and Captures MaduroA prolonged power vacuum in Caracas could trigger factional fighting among Chavista loyalists, including figures such as Diosdado Cabello or Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López, potentially unleashing new waves of migration and violence. Conversely, a rapid opposition-led transition might stabilise oil production and ease regional pressures, though this scenario feels premature given Venezuela’s institutional decay.Geopolitically, the strike serves as the Trump Corollary’s opening salvo in expelling Chinese and Russian footholds. Beijing’s multi-billion-dollar loans-for-oil deals and Moscow’s arms supplies and intelligence cooperation have long irritated Washington. By decapitating the Maduro regime, the US seeks to sever these networks and warn other regional governments against similar alignments.Yet this assertive methodology – shifting from multilateral persuasion to direct enforcement – carries familiar imperial risks. As an analysis of the evolution of American empire from liberal hegemony to spheres-of-influence realism shows, such moves often provoke counter-coalitions. Condemning states may accelerate diversification toward China’s Belt and Road Initiative or Russian energy partnerships, hastening the very multipolar order Washington claims to forestall.Domestically, the operation has laid bare tensions within Trump’s MAGA coalition. While prominent voices such as Alex Jones – who described the raid as “chopping the head off one of the deep state’s biggest funding mechanisms” – and Laura Loomer have cheered the swift, low-casualty success, a significant MAGA segment perceives outright betrayal of “America First” principles.Online critics lamented the move as “yet another betrayal” with one declaring “MAGA is dead”. Others highlighted the hypocrisy: “MAGA one year ago: no more endless wars! MAGA today: regime change and invasion in Venezuela!” These objections echo the pre-strike anxieties from Tucker Carlson’s circle and anti-interventionist advisers who warned against morphing into “George W. Bush” with nation-building adventures.The rift recalls the fragile balancing act triggered by the internal contradictions of “America First” – hawkish impulses toward rivals clashing with populist aversion to overseas entanglements.Legal and constitutional questions further complicate the picture. The operation lacks explicit congressional authorisation, relying instead on executive interpretations of counter-narcotics and self-defence – a familiar pattern of imperial presidency. The NSS’s explicit spheres-of-influence language, meanwhile, invites reciprocal claims: if the Western Hemisphere is America’s exclusive domain, why object to Russian assertiveness in Ukraine or Chinese pressure on Taiwan? This double standard not only undermines the “rules-based order” Washington once spoke of but sharpens the contradictions between the US and its big power rivals.Also read: Trump’s 2025 UN Speech Weaponises US Imperial Power to Assert American HegemonyTrump presents the strike as quintessential homeland defence: neutralising a supposed narco-regime that allegedly fuels addiction and migration crises while blocking adversary encroachment close to US shores. Yet history is unequivocal about the costs of imperial overreach. From the Philippines in 1898 to Iraq in 2003, assertive American doctrines have often sown resistance rather than order.Today’s action may deliver short-term tactical gains – a weakened Chavista apparatus, disrupted rival networks, perhaps even cheaper oil if production rebounds under new management – but strategic blowback looms. Latin America, already drifting toward multipolarity, may coalesce against perceived Yankee arrogance. Progressive governments could rally domestic support by invoking anti-imperial narratives, while even centrist states question Washington’s reliability.As Venezuela awakens to profound uncertainty – opposition figures positioning for transition, military factions assessing loyalties, citizens navigating blackouts and shortages – the region confronts a revived American imperium.The Trump Corollary’s maiden enforcement illustrates a methodological pivot: from offshore balancing and liberal internationalism toward direct, coercive reclamation of hemispheric primacy. Whether this restores “preeminence” or merely accelerates decline remains the central question of our era. Empires, after all, rarely impose order without eventually discovering that resistance is the most enduring legacy of domination.Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics and associate dean of research in the School of Policy and Global Affairs at City St George’s, University of London, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and writes the American Imperium column at The Wire. He is an International Fellow at the ROADS Initiative think tank, Islamabad, on the board of the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences, USA, and on the advisory board of INCT-INEU, Brazil, its leading association for study of the United States. Author of several books including Foundations of the American Century, he is currently writing a book on the history, politics, and crises of the US foreign policy establishment.