The point (or rather, benefit) of the episode for American objectives isn’t necessarily regime change (though this has, of course, been technically accomplished with the abduction of the elected executive), but to personalize geopolitics. There exist contradictions between the interests of a nation (including but not exclusively its collective people), its state apparatus, and its individual leadership. For the most part, these interests are generally aligned, but there will always exist gaps and material differences. This can be (and historically has been) exploited.

The consequences of this range from a complete (though generally temporary) disorientation of an adversary’s leadership dynamic (such as the Romans kidnapping/eliminating Germanic chieftains like the famous Arminius and his family or Armenian/Parthian kings), to engendering shifts in grand strategy and geopolitical policy (such as the Ming becoming insular and defensive after the capture of the emperor Yingzong), to creating interpersonal compromises that would not otherwise be possible (Churchill allegedly working out the European balance of power with Stalin, including the abandonment of the Italian and Greek communists, over “a napkin paper”).

This latter point is why Trump insists on person-to-person meetings with top leadership from designated adversaries like Xi or Putin (or Kim during his first term). This is also how the USSR was brought down by the likes of Reagan, Thatcher, and Kohl; the personal rapport they built with Gorbachev manifested an intense anxiety within the latter not to “disappoint” his “friends,” which limited his scope of actions (not just feasibly but even cognitively) in response to the secession of the SSRs and the likes of Yeltsin (who himself would fall under a similar snare with Bush and Clinton). Analyses ranging from liberals like Zubok to Marxist-Leninists like Keeran & Kenny have all commented on this relationship dilemma as a reason why Gorbachev (deliberately and consciously) did not follow in Deng’s footsteps (noting that the Chinese response to the Tiananmen counter-revolution, and the subsequent Western propaganda backlash, actually preceded most of the counter-revolutions that would follow in other socialist states, which is a chronological relationship not often fully appreciated).

This does not imply the “Great Man of History” thesis is actually valid, but rather that the influences of the individual and the collective exist in a dialectical relationship instead of a zero-sum state.

With a month’s distance, it can be argued that Maduro’s abduction successfully serves as an example to cow the rest of the world, but this statement requires further nuance. Yes, Venezuela still largely endures and the PSUV hasn’t yet become compradors, but those would have been secondary benefits. The message isn’t to the Venezuelan people but to political leadership in especially (but not limited to) the Global South: the taboo of the personalization of geopolitics not only no longer exists as a deterrence, but that there are also no true consequences to breaches of that taboo against them and their loved ones.

It shows that the country doesn’t necessarily need its particular leadership to endure, but this fact serves to isolate that particular leadership from its people and government, by driving a cognitive and material wedge between the alignment of their interests. This fact has been repeatedly pointed out by leftists since the episode as a way to bolster morale, but without appreciation that the particular leadership being personally captured, humiliated, and treated as a criminal (alongside their partner) won’t share that view. Overall, there has been zero real blowback in general, but also none whatsoever to the benefit of Maduro’s rescue and liberation. It shows that the US could walk in, remove the top leadership, and yet leave the country alone; the country moves on, but the leadership is effectively abandoned to the whims of the United States. This exerts a moderating and coercive influence on any successors.

This abduction takes advantage of the contradictions between the interests of a political leadership and the country’s own interests by honing in on and weaponizing the gap. People are obviously loath to give Trump and his minions any credit, but this doesn’t even need to be the Trump administration’s original intent. The important thing is that these consequences are always retrospectively self-rationalizing, and this is an inevitable perception that will manifest particularly within the leadership of any designated adversaries vulnerable to what was done in Venezuela.

This may provide a material basis to explain any future actions by political leadership not just in Venezuela, but also elsewhere in the Global South that appear to go against the interests of their country, even and especially if that particular leadership has seemingly demonstrated their “bona fides” to certain principled positions in the past.