Operation “Absolute Resolve”: The Midnight Raid That Changed the Rules of the Game

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Between January 2nd and 3rd, 2026, the silence of the night over Caracas was not shattered by the wail of sirens but by the nearly imperceptible hum of helicopter rotors. The shadows of the CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters, which were painted the color of the night sky, slipped over the rooftops of residential districts. Their target was the residence of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. At that same moment, thousands of kilometers away in the North Atlantic, a U.S. destroyer forced an empty Russian-flagged tanker, the Marinera, to halt.

These two seemingly unrelated events were part of the same grand plan. The Delta Force assault team landed and immediately moved toward the bedroom. They had rehearsed this countless times in an exact replica of the compound built from the ground-based agents’ specifications. The commandos captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in their bedroom. During the exfiltration, the team engaged in a brief firefight; however, the Cuban security detail was no match for the attackers. Showing no signs of struggle, Maduro and his wife boarded the American helicopter. This was not the end but the beginning of a new reality in which the old rules were declared null and void.

It was not a military triumph in the classical sense. Rather, it was the final act of a strategic performance in which the lead roles were played not by soldiers but by intelligence agents, crypto traders, and geopolitical pragmatists. The fall of Caracas revealed the weakness not just of one regime but of the entire world order, in which sovereignty became conditional and a crypto wallet proved more valuable than a vault of gold. The story of that night is not just about the fall of a residence but of an entire era.

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Ghosts in Armor: Where Did Venezuela’s Army Vanish in One Night?

The Venezuelan army, built up over decades as the bulwark of Chavismo, did not fire a single shot in defense of its leader. This was not due to betrayal, but rather because systemic decay had rendered the army ineffective.

Upon observing the actions of the Delta Force and U.S. airpower, one is struck not by the efficiency of the special forces or the precision of the airstrikes, but by the absolute passivity of the defense. Air defense radars were silent. Command centers seemed unresponsive. The palace guard was demoralized and disoriented. The key to understanding this lies not in the tactics of the assault but in a chronicle of years-long decline. Generals who grew wealthy controlling oil flows, food markets, and even gold mining had long since ceased to be soldiers. They had become businessmen in uniform, loyal not to an idea or person but to the stability of their corrupt schemes. By 2026, Maduro was not a leader to them but rather a source of instability and a magnet for sanctions and threats.

The state existed in two parallel realities. In one, there was the rhetoric of revolution and popular power. The other was a shadow economy where generals competed for smuggling revenues and equipment rusted without spare parts. The capture of several key generals by U.S. intelligence services one month before the operation was less about “buying traitors” and more about demonstrating this system’s bankruptcy. The generals were shown dossiers compiled from their own offshore accounts and were offered a choice: become martyrs for a doomed regime or preserve their assets and influence in a post-Maduro Venezuela. This was a calculated strike against the corrupt foundation of the army, not the army itself.

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Could the military have protected Maduro if they had wanted to? Technically, yes. On paper, Venezuela’s air defense and special forces were formidable. However, a military machine that hadn’t conducted real exercises in years, with empty warehouses and a morally bankrupt command structure, had become a simulacrum of a fighting force. This model—”ostentatious power masking internal weakness”—will become a case study for all authoritarian regimes. From now on, any army whose generals are more engrossed in business than in tactics will be considered strategically vulnerable. This will likely lead to a new, covert race, not for purchasing weapons, but for ensuring the genuine loyalty of security forces rather than merely performative loyalty.

“The Digital Siege”: How the CIA Took the Palace Without a Single Breach

The true assault on Maduro’s residence occurred months before January 3rd in the quiet of CIA operations centers and through exploiting the vulnerabilities of an isolated dictator’s psychology. The physical capture was merely the final stroke.

While the world debated loud sanctions, a small group of agency analysts engaged in different work. They weren’t hacking servers; they were hacking daily routines. Data from smartwatches purchased through front companies and worn by members of the guard revealed patrol schedules. Requests to elite food delivery services and restaurants revealed the preferences and connections of Maduro’s inner circle. Psychologists built profiles by analyzing the frequency and tone of public speeches by Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. They identified a key pattern: paranoid seclusion that had grown into a catastrophic disconnect from reality. The palace became a gilded cage, not a fortress, where Maduro received only the information that a shrinking circle of confidants wanted him to have.

This gives rise to a theory that balances on the edge of conspiracy and cold calculation. Some European media sources suggest that Maduro knew about the impending raid and agreed to it. Aware of the economic collapse — hyperinflation in the hundreds of thousands of percent and a sixfold drop in oil production — and the growing unrest within military circles, Maduro may have seen only two paths: death at the hands of his own generals in a palace coup or “capture” by the Americans as a “hard but practical exit.” The calm behavior of his wife, who was reportedly not initially intended for capture, adds intrigue to this theory. Whether it was a secret deal or masterful manipulation that induced his inaction will only become clear at trial.

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Given the meticulous preparation of this operation, one must ask: Why did the U.S. stage demonstrative tanker seizures, including the Skipper, Centuries and Bella 1 (later changed its name to Marinera and was arrested again) right before the assault on the residence? There were likely several benefits for U.S. leadership. First, it was an element of the so-called “digital siege.” Each seizure received widespread media coverage and signaled to Maduro and his associates that the US had total control of the situation in Venezuela. Second, it set the stage for further diversion in the news cycle. Days after the president’s capture, articles about him would dwindle, but the media would churn out dozens of new, loud headlines about the tankers, effectively flooding the information space.

Black or Digital Gold: What the Commandos Were Really Looking for in Maduro’s Safes

The official pretext was “narco-terrorism,” the operation’s true objectives were twofold: to restore absolute U.S. control over the oil map of the Western Hemisphere and to hunt for the world’s first state crypto-treasury.

When Delta Force operatives stormed Maduro’s office, one group’s primary target was the server room. They weren’t looking for documents but rather for seed phrases—the keys to cryptocurrency wallets. According to FinCEN (the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) estimates, the Maduro clan and his trusted associates may have accumulated assets equivalent to $60 billion through a network of front exchanges and wallets. Since 2023, PDVSA, the state oil company, had shifted up to 60% of its transactions to USDT and Bitcoin payments in an attempt to circumvent sanctions. The US monitored these transactions on the blockchain but could not stop them. Capturing Maduro was the key to freezing these funds.

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Сryptocurrency was only part of the equation. Strategically, oil was more important. With Maduro in power, Venezuela, despite its colossal oil reserves, was dead to American capital but alive for Russia’s Rosneft and Lukoil and China’s CNPC. Their presence created an anomaly that was intolerable to the Monroe Doctrine—an enemy beachhead right under its nose. Removing Maduro would “sanitize” the market. A new interim government loyal to Washington would review the contracts. China, the largest consumer of Venezuelan oil, will now be forced to negotiate less favorable terms with America or sign new contracts with Russia.

Was this operation a desperate act or a brilliant, multi-pronged strike? It was both. It was an act of desperation in the face of slipping financial control and the geopolitical resurgence of rivals, such as Russia and China in Latin America. It was also a brilliant strike that solved several problems at once: removing a hostile leader, seizing digital assets, bringing oil production back under control, and signaling to Moscow and Beijing that their era of unchecked expansion was over.

The next logical step will target not states, but their digital financial infrastructures. The U.S. and its allies will work to create mechanisms that can completely track and block crypto transactions at the protocol level. This will likely lead to a new concept—”financial sovereignty”—while countries like North Korea and Iran accelerate the development of their own digital currency systems.

The Ally’s Silence: Why Beijing Didn’t Sound the Alarm

The most eloquent aspect of the entire operation was not action, but inaction. Beijing’s restrained, nearly diplomatic disapproval revealed the true nature of modern geopolitics: pragmatism always triumphs over ideology.

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For China, Venezuela is not a fraternal socialist country but rather a source of raw materials and an investment opportunity totaling over $60 billion. According to Asian media reports, its diplomats, known for their pragmatism, had intensified contacts with the opposition and business circles in Miami six months before the events. Their task was not to save Maduro but to ensure the continuity of oil supply contracts under any government. Their silence was the price paid for those guarantees.

This situation shattered the last myth of a multipolar world based on ideological blocs. In its place, a transactional world has emerged where alliances are situational, and the sovereignty of allies is a commodity exchanged for concessions elsewhere. Beijing did not abandon Venezuela because doing so would be economically and strategically disadvantageous. They calculated the risks and chose to preserve their strength to defend more vital interests.

Does this mean that smaller countries caught between the great powers have no chance? It’s possible that attempts by smaller states to hold onto power will lead to explosive growth in interest in mercenary armies and private military companies. Realizing that treaties with great powers no longer guarantee protection, these countries will try to buy security directly. The PMC market will become a new arena for geopolitical influence.

Conclusion

The operation in Caracas was not a war, but rather a targeted removal. It was presented to the world as a surgical operation to remove a problematic element, a message that was understood by all, including those who had previously believed in international institutions and organizations such as the UN and the EU. The events of that night clearly outlined the new rules by which the world must now live.

The first rule is that sovereignty no longer resides solely at the border but also within digital systems and financial schemes. A country whose banks, elites, and key services depend on infrastructure that a rival can control has already lost. Its vulnerability is not a question of military might but of a single network disconnect or frozen transaction.

The second rule is that power resting only on money and not the genuine loyalty of security forces is a sham. No parades or weapons purchases will help if, at the decisive moment, generals decide that their contract with the regime is no longer profitable. The story of the capture of Maduro’s residence is how an army that had been bought off for years ultimately refused to do its job.

The third rule is that the old “spheres of influence” have acquired digital counterparts. The struggle is now not only for land or oil fields but also for control over data, internet traffic, and monetary flows within these zones. The ability to block a region’s digital life becomes as powerful a tool of pressure as a military blockade.

The world no longer divides into allies and adversaries. Instead, it divides into three groups: those who conduct operations, those who become their targets, and those who are used as resources. Any government deemed a convenient target will now be under the threat of similar rapid and demonstrative intervention. Therefore, many leaders now have two main questions: How well protected are their personal digital footprints, and can they still trust the armed individuals they once hired? The game has become more cynical, faster, and more ruthless.

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