Since you asked and I haven’t seen anyone else answer, the most recent parallel to the Maduro situation is the capture of Manuel Noriega, the military leader of Panama, in 1990. All around, it was a pretty similar situation. Just like Maduro, Noriega was accused of using Panama as a drug shipping hub and of being a dictator by the US. Relations deteriorated until in late 1989, Panama declared they were “at a state of war” with the US, prompting George H W Bush to launch a ground invasion into Panama with one of the goals being the capture of Noriega, which was achieved within a few weeks in early 1990. He was then flown to the US to face a trial over his drug charges and was held in prison until 2010, though he was then extradited to France and later Panama, where he spent his final 6 years in prison.

Like Maduro, while the capture was ostensibly over drug trafficking concerns, it was largely to further US interests in Panama and Central America as a whole. Namely, it was to gain outsized control over the running of the Panama Canal for the US and grant them special perks such as reduced costs to send goods through. Additionally, it allowed as many as 14 military bases to be established in the area.

Here’s a really fantastic and very thorough comparison between the two that goes into much more detail. https://brendonbeebe.substack.com/p/comparison-of-us-capture-of-nicolas

Maduro and Trump are friends

Maduro gets to escape his country and save face instead of being assassinated or executed.

Trump gets to manufacture a conflict so he can start martial law and become a dictator, and to distract from us learning he came inside little girls.

Oftentimes the thing that keeps the USA in check from becoming the mafia Don of the world is knowledge that violations of international law enforces individual countries fixing their own problems and self determining their own governments. America acting like they can make decisions for other nations has always been internationally unwelcome. Breaching international law means consequences usually. People pull out of alliances, sweetheart deals evaporate, diplomatic power becomes strained and people stop sharing intelligence with you that helps keep your citizens safe. Sovereignty is a big deal. America has gotten away with a lot because they have a gun to the heads of the world due to how they ended WWII with their military complex intact while the rest of the world was spent. They leveraged that into hard (millitary/economic) and soft (diplomatic, collaborative, good faith) power.

Thing is, this regime doesn’t value soft power at all. Previous administrations had to use a lot of subterfuge to weave deniabillity into their actions. The rest of the world had to step lightly around America because essentially they had the biggest stick but there was this idea that if you courted favour with the bully that at least meant you and your friends were safe. But look at what’s happening right now.

America is pulling out of the international markets and international bodies of government. The message is clear that they are operating on hard power only because they believe themselves powerful enough to operate on their own and grab what they want… Even if that means economic sanctions that raise prices of nessesities, travel restrictions for citizens, intelligence gaps that leave targets open to their enemies or actual war that puts American lives at risk.

They are “solving these problems” right now because they don’t care about the safety or economic advantages for their citizens. They want to grab power that they can dissolve amongst their friends even if it means sacrifices and violence. Natural resource power isn’t usually extracted by governments. You sell contracts which they can turn into soft power amongst wealthy sycophants.

how easy they kidnapped Maduro

they made it look like they woke up one day and just decided to take venezuela, when in reality they’ve probably been planning the op for months. bombing the “drug” boats was just a test run for international response. of course people wagged their fingers, but nothing beyond that. so US moved forward with invading the country, and guess what–more finger wagging

you can expect an upcoming deluge of rhetoric about how “greenland citizens WANT to be ‘liberated’!!! we need to go FREE them from oppressive denmark!!!” the fact that it’s guaranteed people will still be surprised when they invade greenland is the reason i have no hope for the future of this country

russia has tons of oil, but putin is pretty paranoid so its probably harder to capture him. and besides he politically financing all the gop, some of the OLD guard DINOs as well, plus providing propaganda to all MSMs and social media. they arnt going to bite the hands that feed them.

for NK, china is protecting the kim and the govt, and practically propping up thier economy.

Nukes.

If you don’t got nukes, you get Gaddafied

The past week (months, years…) have taught me to not to believe anyone saying the US government “can’t”. It certainly can. It just doesn’t.

Edit: the next Democratic president should build high-speed rail that cuts through and ruins Republican-heavy residential areas. Don’t go through permitting or whatever, just start ripping up the roads. They can go cry about it in the comment section. There will be no other consequences.

They have nukes and even without that their countries would fight back against occupation for more effectively than Venezuela can.

If your country is corrupt and capitalist to the death, can you start a war with any country that produces oil and minerals?

Nukes

I think your premise that it was easy is misinformed. We likely used modern classified tech to pull it off. There are reports emerging of anomalies related to common router vulnerabilities in Caracas. We don’t know how the operation was conducted and probably won’t know any time soon. Kidnapping a head of state is unprecedented. The Trump admin would absolutely use new tech to do this in a show of military prowess.

They most likely made deals with the ones next in line to power, mostly generals, to ensure success. Good luck getting russian or north korean generals to “look the other way” when you want to 'nap their president.

deleted by creator

worse world leaders have not had this happen to them

They protect themselves better.

Also, you should not think that Usa were leading in this regard. So you could ask as well why Trump isn’t in a Siberian jail right now (my opinion: he knew when to kowtow before the stronger man).

Maduro made a crutial mistake, he didn’t have nukes.

Putin, Xi, and fat boy Kim, they all have nukes.

DPRK is also supported by PRC, so there’s no way the US would touch it (I mean unless trump got crazy and started ordering nuke strikes to end the world)