It took US forces less than two-and-a-half hours to snatch President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in the small hours of last Saturday morning, said Dan Sabbagh in The Guardian. But this “extraordinary display of imperial power” – involving 150 US aircraft, including bombers and fighter jets – was the product of months of planning. According to Gen Dan “Raizin” Caine, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, US intelligence agencies had been working since August to establish Maduro’s “pattern of life”. Using spy drones, and information from one or more agents within the Venezuelan government, they’d discovered “where he lived, where he travelled, what he ate, what he wore, what were his pets”.

As the US steadily built up its military presence in the Caribbean from August – the deployment ultimately included up to a quarter of all the US navy’s warships – Maduro knew he was in danger. He tightened up his security, stopped trailing his public appearances, and slept in different places; yet the US still managed to achieve “tactical surprise”. 

The Trump administration had hoped that its show of force in the Caribbean would persuade Maduro to stand down; and it seems that, late last month, he was offered a “gilded exile” in Turkey, said The New York Times. Yet he rejected that, and was then seen dancing at rallies – a public display of nonchalance that apparently incensed the White House, and prompted Trump to give the order for Operation Absolute Resolve to proceed. Shortly after 2am on Saturday, residents of Caracas were woken by the sound of huge explosions, as US aircraft disabled Venezuelan air defences; the lights went out across the city (“due to a certain expertise that we have”, Trump would boast later); and a convoy of helicopters then swooped over the capital, carrying Delta Force commandos to the Maduros’ fortified compound.

As they stormed in, Maduro made it to a safe room, but – said Trump – “he got bum-rushed so fast” he didn’t have time to close its steel door. A number of US troops suffered bullet and shrapnel wounds; according to Havana, 32 members of Maduro’s Cuban security detail were killed. By 4.20am, the couple had been dragged into a helicopter, and were being flown across the ocean, to the warship USS Iwo Jima. 

The raid evoked memories of the US assault on Panama in 1989, when George H.W. Bush sent in troops to capture another Latin American leader accused of drug-related offences in the US, said The Economist. But that was a "full-fledged invasion, involving more than 27,000 troops”. It was directed at a far smaller country, with a far smaller army – and it was far less impressive. Having initially evaded capture, Manuel Noriega took refuge in the Vatican’s embassy: the US had to flush him out by blasting rock music at it.

The apparent ease with which US forces entered Caracas backs Trump’s boast that this was one of the most “stunning” displays of American might in history – and that “no [other] nation in the world” could have achieved it.

I never thought I’d feel nostalgia for the Iraq War, said Nesrine Malik in The Guardian. But it turns out that the run-up to that conflict, when America did at least strive to convince the world of the righteousness of its cause, was the “good old days”. There was no such effort to legitimise the US strike on Venezuela and the abduction of its president, Nicolás Maduro. Nobody sought consent from any international body or Congress. And while a flimsy legal case was made for the coup – a court charged Maduro this week with, inter alia, “narco-terrorism conspiracy” and possession of machine guns – the Trump administration’s predatory objectives were transparent. The US will “run” Venezuela, said Trump; US oil companies will “go in” and take “a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground”. 

There’s no disguising the truth about this operation, said Thomas Fazi in The Telegraph: it was a “completely unprovoked and blatantly illegal act of aggression against a country that posed no real threat to the United States”. And Trump is threatening to carry out more such acts of “military adventurism”, said Edward Luce in the Financial Times. He has advertised designs on Panama, Canada and Greenland. On Saturday, he claimed that “something is going to have to be done with Mexico”, lamenting the power of its drug cartels, and warned Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s left-wing president, to “watch his ass”. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the “incompetent and senile men” running Cuba should be “a little worried”. Trump has talked of reasserting the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine (which he has facetiously recast as “the Donroe doctrine”) to restore US pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere, said Patrick Cockburn in The i Paper. It seems America is returning to the days of “gunboat diplomacy”. 

The truth is that it never really left them, said Trevor Phillips in The Times. From Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada to George Bush Sr’s seizure of the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, there’s nothing new about Washington wielding force in Latin America. “The first rule of the rules-based order is that America makes the rules, and it makes them to suit America.” The only difference is that Trump is open about it. Power, not “international law”, is the ultimate guarantor of security, said The Wall Street Journal. Last weekend’s display of “US nerve and military prowess will do more than a thousand UN resolutions to protect the free world and make Russia, China and Iran think twice”. The Caracas raid was primarily about China, said Doug Stokes in The Spectator. Beijing has been quietly increasing its presence in Latin America and the Caribbean: in 2024, its trade with the region hit a “staggering” $515 billion (£383 billion). Maduro’s capture was less about securing oil than about stopping Beijing from “establishing a forward operating base in the Americas”. 

“No autocrat likes to see one of their own seized, shackled and renditioned,” said Adrian Blomfield in The Telegraph. But China and Russia won’t be that upset about the ousting of their ally Maduro. The lesson they’ll draw from this episode is that the US is withdrawing from a global role in pursuit of regional hegemony. A world carved up into “spheres of influence” – within which powerful states and strongman rulers can do what they like – would suit Moscow and Beijing just fine, agreed Gideon Rachman in the FT. Indeed, back in 2019, Trump’s former Russia adviser Fiona Hill told Congress that the Russians had been, in her words, “signalling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap agreement between Venezuela and Ukraine”. America’s rivals will also be delighted by Trump’s flouting of international law, said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail. The US may not always have lived up to its high ideals, but by disregarding them entirely, Trump has “recklessly sacrificed America’s moral leadership”. 

And all for what, asked Mary Dejevsky in The Independent. If Venezuela is successfully restored to a functioning democracy, Trump will be able to claim victory. But if, as is all too likely, the situation descends into chaos, he’ll be “very vulnerable”. After all, he promised to extract the US from intractable conflicts, not start new ones. Venezuelans won’t want to “live in a Trump-backed dictatorship staffed with Maduro cronies”, said Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic. Nor will most Americans want to see their military being used to fight on behalf of oil interests. If the US becomes just a “regional bully”, it will alienate friends and foes alike, eventually leaving it “with no sphere, and no influence, at all”.

The twice-Oscar-nominated actress Samantha Morton has had an extraordinary career by any measure – but especially for somebody who spent most of her childhood in care, said Terri White in The Sunday Times. 

She grew up in Nottingham. Her mother struggled with her mental health, her stepfather with alcoholism. Her father, with whom she lived on and off until she was eight, was violent and spent time in prison. For years, Morton pinged between foster care and children’s homes – a brutal experience made yet worse by the fact that she was sexually abused by residential care workers when she was 13. 

She took refuge in books and films: she’d “sneak into the ABC” with her sister, and read any book she could get her hands on; and found her vocation at Nottingham’s Television Workshop, which provides free acting classes to disadvantaged children. At 16, she left for London. Her breakout role was in TV’s “Band of Gold”, and before long she was in Hollywood, starring in major films such as “Sweet and Lowdown” and “Minority Report”. 

Yet rather than leave her past behind, she has for years used her public profile to campaign for better protections for children in care. She thinks it is a “miracle” that she is still alive, given what she went through during her childhood. Many of her friends did not survive. Speaking out on this issue is not, she says, “just my right, it is my duty of care”.