The US strikes on Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolas Maduro represent the “s most severe foreign military intervention“ during the presidency of Donald Trump, CNN's chief international security correspondent Nick Payton Walsh said on Saturday.
“This is a truly shocking development... I can only compare it to the operation against Osama bin Laden and the capture of Saddam Hussein,” he said on CNN.
According to the journalist, the events show that Trump “was serious about removing Maduro and, by all accounts, managed to achieve it in a matter of hours through an extremely powerful act of force in the skies over Caracas“.
At the same time, the events surrounding Venezuela are developing against the backdrop of a date already associated with high-profile US military actions abroad: on January 3, 2020, US forces carried out a strike in Baghdad, killing Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Thus, in terms of scale and potential political consequences, the current operation ranks among the most notable episodes in Washington's foreign policy in recent years.