After the Maduro raid, the question is who checks Trump's risk-taking

Suppose we set aside, for a moment, all the questions about international law, adherence to the United Nations Charter, and whether Congressional assent was required for America’s intervention in Venezuela to capture the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro.

- Bhavan Jaipragas

US military aircraft at the former Roosevelt Roads naval base in Puerto Rico on Jan 4, after the US captured Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro and his wife. As enamoured as this White House is with using special-operations forces in limited tactical strikes to achieve strategic goals – as opposed to infantry-heavy ground operations – success is never guaranteed and there is every chance the costs of failure will be shared.

(PHOTO: REUTERS)

All these questions have been aired, in varying formulations, in recent days by most of America’s allies and partners. They have voiced concern, so as not to be seen as totally abandoning the global rules-based order, which continues to serve their nations’ interests even in its current limp form. But they have also stopped well short of full-throated condemnation of the operation.

There is cover in doing so because Maduro is, after all, a brutal, disastrous dictator who stole the country’s 2024 election and had previously been indicted in absentia in the US for narco-terrorism.

Even taking into account that these countries are taking this stance because they are in an invidious position, not wanting to upset United States President Donald Trump, it is reasonable to assume their respective foreign policy establishments are asking a blunt question among themselves: How many more of these operations should we expect in the remaining years of Mr Trump’s time in the White House?

And as textbook a success as this one was — a show of America’s military supremacy, much like 2025’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities — a corollary question leaps out.

If we are to expect more of these American special-forces operations, how rigorous is the risk assessment beforehand? Is there enough scrutiny, enough people asking the what-ifs?