US military operation topples Maduro, sets hemispheric tone

US forces launched a military assault on Venezuela, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and extraditing them to New York. The operation, framed by Washington as a counter-narco-terrorism action, left more than 100 dead including civilians, and is widely read as the opening move of the 'Trump Corollary' to the Monroe Doctrine that the Shield of the Americas would later formalize.