Nournews : In recent months, U.S. policy toward Venezuela entered a phase that was primarily grounded in criminalization, intimidation, and gradual displays of force. Washington first amplified legal cases against Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of “organized links to drug cartels”—an allegation that has for years been used as a tool of political pressure against the Caracas government. At the same time, the “narco-state” narrative was deliberately reproduced in U.S. media so that any subsequent action would not appear as a military aggression, but rather as a “fight against transnational crime.”

Within this framework, the United States expanded its field operations into the Caribbean Sea. The attack on several vessels attributed to Venezuela and the announcement of their destruction, the seizure of tankers carrying the country’s oil, and the constant display of warships in surrounding waters were all parts of a staged, step-by-step scenario. These moves were not merely intended to inflict material damage, but to send a political message: Venezuela is encircled, and the cost of resistance can be increased. The aim was to psychologically erode the power structure and instill the notion that continued defiance is futile.

Alongside these actions, the weeks-long deployment and military show of force by the United States gained meaning: a carefully choreographed demonstration of capability that was less a prelude to full-scale war than an attempt to compel surrender without direct confrontation. Troop deployments, military flights, verbal threats, and Trump’s contradictory messages all rested on a shared logic — spreading fear among Venezuelan officials and breaking political will before the main shot was ever fired. This is the very pattern Washington has tested in other cases as well: maximum pressure in hopes of internal collapse.

Against this backdrop, the U.S. military attack — and what Washington calls the “arrest and transfer of Maduro” — can be understood as the climax of this process. In formal terms, it represented a full transition from intimidation to hard action. But its significance lies less in the operation itself than in its immediate aftermath — where Washington’s expectation of political collapse failed to materialize.

Following the attack, Venezuela’s political structure did not disintegrate; instead, it responded in a coordinated manner. Senior officials continued to recognize Maduro as the country’s legitimate president and demanded his release. This stance was not merely an expression of sympathy — it was a formal declaration of institutional continuity and a rejection of any transfer of power. Strategically speaking, when key state institutions preserve the political authority of a detained leader, it means the military operation has failed to achieve its core objective: breaking the power structure.

In this situation, Trump attempted to rewrite the narrative. Speaking of “appointing a new ruler for Venezuela” and “selling the country’s oil to buyers” was an effort to project post-operation control. But these claims clash with a fundamental reality: the exercise of political and economic authority is impossible without territorial, administrative, and security control. The contradiction became clearer when Trump himself declared the operation to be over. Ending an operation without consolidating gains simply means stopping halfway.

So far, events have unfolded in such a way that U.S. actions — from criminalization and tanker seizures to the military attack — have failed to produce a durable strategic outcome. There has been no surrender without confrontation, no fracture within the power structure, and no capacity for Washington to impose its political will. By contrast, Venezuela has been able to preserve its institutional cohesion by rallying around the discourse of “foreign aggression.”

What now stands out is the meaningful gap between the scale of America’s show of force and the extent of its real achievements. Rather than serving as the endpoint of a crisis, the military attack has become a symbol of strategic deadlock — one that may be obscured through propaganda, but cannot be resolved by it in the face of on-the-ground realities.