Maduro fell fast — could your state be next?

In the early morning of 3 January, explosions tore through the skies over Caracas. Fighter jets and special operations helicopters swept low and circled the city centre as flames rose from multiple strategic sites. Within hours, the centre of power of this Latin American country descended into chaos. 

Soon after, US President Donald Trump announced on social media that American forces had carried out a “large scale strike” and confirmed that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife had been “captured and flown out from the country”. 

This was no work of science fiction, but a real-world lightning-speed “surgical” intervention. In comparison, after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, it had taken US forces eight months (around 249 days) to capture the former Iraqi president; this time, the joint air, sea and land operation that lasted just two hours and 20 minutes to seize Maduro had stunned Washington and the world.

The raid on Caracas was not a blind show of force, but a precision strike built on years of intelligence penetration and the deployment of proxies. Before the operation, the US identified key vulnerabilities through technical surveillance and internal channels; during it, the action was cloaked in legal and public opinion justifications as “counter-terrorism” and “counter-narcotics”; afterwards, the narrative was swiftly seized, with Trump declaring “mission accomplished”.

The encrypted communications and real-time location data of the presidential security apparatus ultimately came not from external penetration, but from internal leaks. The operation was a surgery pushed to the limit: an external incision, an internal structure long rotten and an instant collapse — exposing the brutal mechanics of an increasingly common “rapid power transition”.

The starkest truth exposed by this operation is that the stability of state power ultimately rests on political legitimacy and internal cohesion. Venezuela’s prolonged economic collapse had long eroded the foundations of the regime: the country suffered a bout of hyperinflation rarely seen worldwide, with the Bloomberg index once recording annual inflation above 100,000%, while the IMF estimates that inflation over the past 12 months has remained as high as 556%.

Since Maduro succeeded Hugo Chavez as president in 2013, an estimated eight million people have fled Venezuela due to the economic crisis and political repression. Under such economic fracture, public trust has withered, the bureaucracy has fallen into disorder, and military morale has sunk, steadily hollowing out the regime’s legitimacy.

The advanced knowledge of Maduro’s whereabouts, communication codes and security routes was a direct consequence of this long-term internal decay: some chose silence, others looked on coldly, while some even opened the way. When legitimacy decays to the point that even basic security fails, the regime becomes a paper fortress, shattering at the slightest gust.

The army’s reaction — or, more accurately, its inaction — served as a stark warning. If a president faces an external capture, a loyal military would normally respond swiftly: jets in the air, streets sealed off, air defence systems on high alert. 

Yet Caracas was eerily quiet — no counterattack or emergency reinforcements. This was not a technical malfunction, but a political choice. Behind that choice lay a sober calculation shaped by years of hyperinflation: salaries devalued, supplies scarce, and internal factionalism running deep. Soldiers’ loyalty had long been eroded by economic despair. 

When “protecting the president” becomes a high-risk, low-reward option, standing aside becomes the safest course. The army’s silence was more decisive than any gunfire — it signalled that the regime’s foundations were already crumbling.

In fact, Maduro had long since lost confidence in the loyalty of his own troops, and had for many years been heavily dependent on Cuban intelligence and security personnel to keep his regime running. According to disclosures from the Cuban side, of the 80 people killed in the recent US airstrikes, at least 32 were from the Cuban military or the Ministry of the Interior. This meant that Venezuela’s core security apparatus had already been partially “outsourced”, and this structural dependence in itself exposed the regime’s deep-rooted vulnerability.

The “silent relent” of the intelligence system became the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Intelligence agencies should have been a country’s early warning system, but years of economic crisis led to their budgets being severely cut, a talent drain and an intensification of internal factionalism. 

In this operation, the US military struck multiple key military sites simultaneously, yet the intelligence network showed no reaction. This was no coincidence, but a manifestation of systemic collapse. The failure of the intelligence system was even more fatal than the army’s hesitance, because it deprives the state of the ability to “perceive danger” even before any operation took place. A blind state cannot organise effective resistance.

Meanwhile, collective silence from top leadership signalled the end of the regime’s legitimacy. In the face of the president being taken away, there should have been an immediate declaration of a state of emergency, a united message issued, as well as organised mobilisation — but there was only silence on the Venezuelan front. 

Years of economic crisis had already driven government factions to fight their own battles, while the bureaucracy, eroded by inflation, had lost its ability to execute. Each faction chose self-preservation in the power vacuum while the opposition was unusually restrained, clearly viewing this as a window for a “reshuffling of power” rather than a “national crisis”. This silence is not incompetence, but consensus: there is no salvation for the old regime.

More broadly, the Caracas raid reflected a trend in today’s international system: external intervention is increasingly reliant on internal collapse, and internal collapse is in turn amplified by external pressure. 

The traditional model of “invasion-occupation-reconstruction” is extremely costly, whereas the current model of “precise removal plus internal self-destruction” is less costly and more efficient. A country like Venezuela — which has experienced one of the most extreme bouts of hyperinflation in the world — was structurally fragile to begin with. External forces needed merely a light push to trigger total collapse.

That night in Caracas was more than a Venezuelan crisis; it was a mirror reflecting the essence of contemporary state vulnerability — real security does not lie in the number of weapons, but in internal cohesion. The stability of a regime does not lie in slogans, ideals or resplendent promises, but in the loyalty and belief that buoy its institutions. External intervention succeeds less by force than by exploiting the deepest cracks within.

In the decade ahead, “political scalpels” could strike across more regions — but their success will depend on one thing: whether a country’s internal structures are intact or hollowed out.

The flames from that night in Caracas still linger in many minds. It was not an end, but a warning: when a state has rotted at its core, external forces need only the slightest touch to make it collapse.

True security lies in the legitimacy of power and the cohesion within. For most small- and medium-sized states, stability begins at home — by repairing fractures, meeting the needs of the people and respecting their rights.

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