Venezuela, five years after the assault on the Capitol

Tomorrow marks five years since Trump sent a mob to storm the US Capitol to prevent the official proclamation of his defeat in the 2020 election. The anniversary is far overshadowed by Maduro's capture, but it serves as a reminder that this use of force was the beginning of Trump's return to the White House, against all reasonable predictions. Trump is the president in whom fear, the use of force, and the largest military in history converge.

And here we are: oil is the reason, drug trafficking is the excuse, Venezuela's alliance with Iran, Russia, and China is the aggravating factor, the doctrine is that America remains the United States' backyard, and the world is a three-way street: the United States, Russia; this is the current state of international relations.

The military operation that has landed Maduro in a Brooklyn jail was as surgical as the immediate outlook for Venezuela is uncertain: "Those gentlemen standing right behind me will govern," said Trump, but greater involvement is needed to change the country's highest homicide rate in the world, an area more than twice the size of California, and a state in collapse.

Because while geopolitics explains the world's reality as a game of pieces, people continue to suffer. Nearly eight million Venezuelans have left their country in the last 10 years in search of a better life than they had under the Chavista regime, but the US intervention is so fraught with questions that preventing Venezuela from descending into utter chaos will hardly be "like watching a TV show."