February 22, 2026: The January 3 ^rd American raid on Venezuela involved a lot more operations beyond capturing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. The American armed forces and intelligence agencies spent months gathering information and creating detailed plans for how to carry it out. The operation was carried out by 200 Special Operations troops brought in by helicopters. Air strikes destroyed anti-aircraft systems that could have fired on the helicopters. Those systems were destroyed with precision strikes that did not damage nearby or adjacent buildings. There was also some CyberWar activity to suppress communications between Venezuelan military and political leaders during the raid.

There was no major damage anywhere. There were only about 75 casualties, including the 32 Cuban soldiers guarding Maduro and his wife. At least two civilians were killed and a few dozen military personnel or civilians on duty at areas bombed. All the airstrikes apparently used 114 kg Small Diameter Bombs or 50 kg Hellfire missiles.

Bombs were used to block the exit from a mechanized infantry base. These were the only available units that could interfere with the U.S. Special Operations forces. There was minimal damage to four key military locations: the Fort Tiuna Military Complex, La Carlota Air Base, La Guaira Port, and El Higuerote Airport. No Venezuelan navy ships were damaged. The air strikes were designed to avoid damaging any economic or government facilities. The damage was minimal so that life would go on after the airstrikes, but the political leaders who replaced Maduro realized they would not be targeted as long as they did not continue Maduro’s drug smuggling and support of smuggling and rebel operations in adjacent countries. Oil exports to enemies of the United States were also supposed to stop because the American naval blockade off Venezuela would shut those down.

There were also air strikes on coastal facilities that supported cocaine and other drugs being exported to the United States. Another aspect of the raid was that it occurred shortly after Maduro met with Chinese diplomat Qiu Xiaoqi to discuss matters of mutual interest. China bought 68 percent of Venezuelan oil at a special, for China only, discount price. That’s only four percent of Chinese oil imports and was easily replaced by oil from other sources. In the last 19 years China loaned Venezuela $63 billion. Venezuela has a current GDP of $82 billion. In 2012 the GDP was $373 billion. Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor and mentor Hugo Chavez were not good for the economy.

China exploited Venezuela as well as invested in the country. China has done the same to five other South American nations. Many of the investments involved Chinese personnel building and managing new port facilities in South America. China sees its South American investments as something worth defending. Chinese wargames often involve Chinese forces operating in South America. To assist in that sort of thing, China has long maintained an ELINT/Electronic Intelligence operation in Cuba. This involves Chinese activities at several locations in Cuba. The recent American military operations in Venezuela involve blocking free shipments of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. Since Cuba is currently broke, with periodic blackouts when the national electric power system fails, the loss of Venezuelan oil is a major problem.

The current American president is pursuing a policy of increasing American economic, military and diplomatic activity in South America. This may also address the continuing plundering of offshore South American fishing grounds by fleets of Chinese trawlers. That would be part of the effort to keep the Chinese and Russians out. China planned to challenge that by selling Air Defense systems to Cuba and Columbia. This is happening despite the fact that Chinese Air Defense systems already in Venezuela were ineffective against the Americans raid that captured Maduro and his wife, killing 32 Cuban bodyguards and some civilians along the way.