President Donald Trump may have captured the leader of Venezuela’s revolutionary socialist government but it remains possible that the regime Nicolás Maduro headed will survive under a fresh guise.
After the bold US military operation to snatch the Venezuelan autocrat, Trump said that Washington would “run” the oil-rich South American nation for a transition period of unspecified duration.
But without an American presence — Washington’s embassy in Caracas closed in 2019 and last night’s US boots were only fleetingly on the ground — it was not clear who would take command of a country whose economy is in ruins and around a quarter of whose population has fled abroad.