On a March morning in 2020, the United States did something it usually reserves for cartel bosses and fugitives hiding in jungles. It placed a bounty on a sitting head of state. $15 million dollars. Name: Nicolás Maduro. Crime: Narco-terrorism. Location: Caracas.
This bounty would be increased to $25 million under the Biden administration and, most recently, $50 million during Trump’s second Trump in August of 2025.
This was not the first time the US had hunted a president in this manner. It was simply the latest chapter in a quiet, uncomfortable tradition – one that rarely makes it into official speeches but has shaped the modern world.
What might look exceptional with the US capture of Maduro is actually commonplace throughout history and follows a long and well-documented trajectory of the American empire intervening in the Western Hemisphere and beyond.
The US justifies intervention through a mix of domestic law and international precedents. The Constitution gives the President authority as Commander-in-Chief, while Congress can authorise force. Laws like the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and Article 51 of the UN Charter are cited to act in self-defence or protect American interests abroad.
According to past records, the US does not declare war on leaders anymore. It collects them. Some are taken alive. Some are killed. Some escape, becoming legends of defiance. And some – like Maduro – remain in a strange limbo: Indicted but untouched, hunted but breathing, condemned yet still ruling.
To understand why, one must rewind time – not to courtrooms, but to bedrooms, bunkers, embassies, and holes in the ground.
For nearly two centuries, US foreign policy has repeatedly crossed the line between pressure and force, particularly when strategic interests, ideology, and regional signalling converge. From territorial conquest in the 19th century to Cold War regime engineering and post-9/11 military interventions, the record is extensive – and rather revealing.
The first capture
In December 1989, US soldiers poured into Panama under the cover of night. Fighter jets screamed overhead. Tanks rolled through Panama City.
The target was not an army – it was one man. Manuel Noriega had once been Washington’s favourite general: Trained, funded, and protected. But then, he stopped listening. Worse, he embarrassed the US by surviving.
After General Manuel Noriega took refuge in the Holy See’s diplomatic mission in Panama City on 24 December 1989, US forces surrounded the building. The psychological tactics employed from 24 December 1989 to 3 January 1990, involved continuously blasting loud music to put psychological pressure on Noriega and disrupt communications within the embassy.
The music stopped when Noriega surrendered on 3 January 1990. He was confused, exhausted, defeated. He was flown to Miami in handcuffs. A president became a prisoner. The message was unmistakable: sovereignty has limits, and Washington gets to decide what those limits are.
Capture as spectacle
Panama represents the closest historical parallel to the current fracas with Venezuela and Maduro. Under President George HW Bush, US forces invaded to capture Noriega, a former CIA asset turned liability. Hundreds of civilians died.
Noriega was flown to the US, tried, convicted, and imprisoned, while Guillermo Endara assumed the presidency. The goal was to take control of the Panama Canal and project power after the Cold War.
The outcome removed the leader, weakened the state, and caused civilian casualties. This marked a turning point: The physical capture of a sitting leader by US troops became a new precedent.
Saddam Hussein’s fall
Fourteen years later, another president vanished – this time into the earth itself. Saddam Hussein was found not in a palace, not behind guards, but hiding in a narrow hole near Tikrit, bearded, disoriented, clutching a pistol he never fired. This image of Hussein was everywhere.
It wasn’t just about Iraq. It was humiliation as policy. Saddam was captured to be displayed, then handed over to be executed by his own countrymen. This was justice, the US argued.
But justice delivered by invasion leaves scars. The capture reinforced an idea: For the United States, no bunker was deep enough for you to hide in.
The invasion of Iraq was ordered by then president George W Bush in 2003, citing weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism – claims later proven to be false.
The motives were strategic dominance, securing oil resources, and post-9/11 power projection. The outcome was prolonged war, regional instability, and a power vacuum.
Mexico: territory as strategy
The earliest and most consequential American intervention came not through covert action or sanctions, but open war. In 1846, under President James K Polk, the US invaded Mexico following disputes over Texas and westward expansion. The conflict ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on 2 February 1848.
Mexico ceded approximately 55% of its pre-war territory, covering all or parts of present-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Washington paid $15 million and assumed $3.25 million in debts owed by Mexico to US citizens.
The border was fixed along the Rio Grande and Gila River, later expanded by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 to facilitate a southern railroad route.
The motives were clear: Territorial expansion, control over trade routes, and land acquisition. The outcome left a legacy of resentment, asymmetric relations, and enduring mistrust.
Cuba: Ideology and containment
US involvement in Cuba began with the Spanish–American War of 1898 under President William McKinley and continued through repeated occupations and heavy influence over Cuban governance. Yet, the defining rupture came after the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
In 1961, President John F Kennedy authorised the Bay of Pigs invasion, a CIA-backed operation using US-trained Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro. The operation collapsed within days, humiliating Washington, strengthening Castro’s domestic legitimacy, and pushing Cuba decisively into the Soviet sphere, setting the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
The motives were ideological containment (specifically, of Communism) and Cold War signalling. The outcome hardened nationalism, entrenched permanent hostility, and marked a strategic failure for the US. Cuba demonstrated a recurring pattern: failed interventions often strengthen the very leaders they were meant to remove.
Haiti: Control without stability
The United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, citing domestic instability and threats to American interests. US forces rewrote Haiti’s constitution, controlled finances, and suppressed resistance.
During the Cold War, the US later supported the Duvalier dictatorship, first under François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, then his son Jean-Claude, despite widespread human rights abuses. The justification was simple: Prevent another Cuba from emerging in the Caribbean.
Once again, it was about regional control and anti-communism, yet the outcome was far from stabilising. Haiti endured institutional collapse and chronic instability, demonstrating how long-term intervention often corrodes state capacity.
Chile, Argentina, Brazil
In Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, US involvement took a subtler form. Under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, American intelligence agencies advised and assisted security forces during Operation Condor, a coordinated campaign against left-wing movements.
The 1973 Chilean coup against Salvador Allende, backed covertly by Washington, replaced an elected government with Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.
The US needed to project ideological dominance and protect its economic interests. The outcome was mass repression, disappearances, and long-term trauma, showing that regime change could occur without invasion – but at immense human cost.
The ones who slipped away
History does not belong only to the hunters. Fidel Castro survived invasion, assassination attempts, poisoned cigars, exploding shells, and half a century of sanctions. He outlived 10 US presidents. Washington never captured him. Time did.
Muammar Gaddafi was hunted with NATO airstrikes, but he was dragged from a drainage pipe and killed by rebels, with the US observing.
Slobodan Milošević was arrested by his own state under pressure and died before judgment.
And then, Maduro
Maduro was not hiding in a hole, nor in exile, nor running. The US has done almost everything except invade. Sanctions had choked Venezuela’s oil lifeline. Indictments had turned Maduro into an international criminal on paper.
Opposition leaders were recognised abroad as presidents-in-waiting. Mercenaries attempted a disastrous beach landing that looked more like farce than a coup. Yet Maduro remained.
Noriega was captured because Panama mattered strategically, but not enough to protect him. Saddam fell because Iraq’s oil fields powered the global economy. Castro survived because Cuba mattered symbolically, not economically.
Maduro survived because Venezuela is expensive to break, oil-rich, and geopolitically guarded. Russia and China stood behind him not out of loyalty, but because every US failure weakens American dominance.
But, in the end, even that wasn’t enough.
Taken together, these episodes trace a clear arc of American intervention. From territorial conquest in Mexico to ideological signalling in Cuba, from fragile Haiti to covert manipulation in South America’s Southern Cone, and from dramatic captures in Panama to rolonged occupation in Iraq, Washington has repeatedly shown that the removal or destabilisation of foreign leaders serves strategic, economic, and ideological interests. Or so they believe.
Capture has never been about morality; it is about cost, consequence, and calculation.
Based on nearly two centuries of intervention, Venezuela matches the classic profile almost perfectly. Post-intervention states in Haiti, Panama, and Iraq struggled to govern credibly. Cuba remains the clearest example of nationalist resilience under foreign pressure.
History suggests Venezuela is unlikely to emerge quickly as a stable, US-aligned democracy. The United States has never intervened without consequence. It has often achieved removal – but rarely resolution.
When Washington placed a bounty and eventually captured on Nicolás Maduro, it was framed as justice – narco-terrorism, corruption, drugs. But history tells a colder story: law is often the language of power after decisions have already been made.
Maduro is part of a long line of men who prove that, to the United States, sovereignty is respected only when it aligns with their interests.
