Well, he did it: Donald Trump deposed Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

In a spectacularly brazen military operation, the US captured Maduro along with his wife in Caracas and flew them out of the country. They were swiftly charged in New York, according to Pam Bondi.

“It was a brilliant operation [involving] a lot of good planning and lot of great, great troops and great people,” Trump told The New York Times. It was Delta Force, likely on the heels of extensive G Squadron recon, not DEVGRU, which conducted the main raid to apprehend Maduro, one mainstream US media outlet said.

Early Saturday, amid reports of loud explosions at military installations across the country, the regime in Caracas said the US launched a series of attacks on the capital as well as the Venezuelan states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira. In a statement, Maduro’s government called on “social and political forces” to mobilize and repel the “imperialist attack.”

But it was too late. By then, Maduro was in the process of being seized (one might say kidnapped) and extracted by one of the US military’s most elite assault teams. There were, apparently, some casualties on the Venezuelan side.

If the early, sparse details of the operation are even remotely accurate, it’ll go down as one of the most daring and, hesitant though I am to use this word in the context of a flagrant violation of another country’s sovereignty, successful, raids in US military history. It’ll also change the course of history, obviously in Venezuela, certainly in the whole of Latin America and probably across the entire globe.

Maduro’s capture came four months after the US began striking alleged drug boats in Caribbean, where the Trump administration killed more than 100 people across dozens of attacks. In December, the CIA, which Trump authorized to conduct operations in Venezuela over the summer, used a drone to strike a Venezuelan port.

The drug narrative was always a red herring. Venezuela isn’t a primary supplier of cocaine to the United States, and there’s no connection between Maduro and the fentanyl trade.

Maduro was outwardly defiant to the end, participating in rallies and Christmas festivities even as Trump turned the screws, seizing and boarding tankers carrying Venezuelan crude and forcing PDVSA to shut-in oil wells.

Various reports indicated the Pentagon has for months pondered options for ousting Maduro by force. In late October, it looked as though some manner of operation was imminent, but Trump held off, presumably fearing an entanglement that undermined his pretensions to keeping America out of foreign wars.

But Trump’s isolationist foreign policy was always at odds with his Latin America strategy which is best conceived as an amalgamation of the Monroe Doctrine and 20th century, Cold War-style US interventionism. The operation to capture Maduro will be enshrined in the annals of history as the embodiment of that strategy.

Ahead of Saturday’s attacks, the Pentagon flew more than a dozen C-17 cargo planes from US military bases to Puerto Rico. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s safe to say some of those aircraft were carrying troops who’d spent the preceding three months training for Saturday’s mission. Even before the flights ferrying commandos, the Caribbean deployment included 15,000 US military personnel.

Members of Maduro’s headless government implored Venezuelans to remain calm, but exhorted them to protest all the same. “Let no one fall into despair,” Diosdado Cabello said. “Let no one make things easier for the invading enemy.”

There was a $50 million bounty on Maduro, which I suppose Trump can claim for himself now. (I’m just kidding. I hope.) He was charged in absentia in the US nearly half a dozen years ago as a drug-trafficking, corrupt narco-terrorist, a characterization that’s true, but wildly overstated. Maduro’s best described as a hapless dictator who would’ve been deposed by his own people eventually, even if “eventually” took another decade.

It’s worth noting that the original Maduro indictment didn’t include his wife. Bondi’s remarks strongly suggested the two will be charged in new indictment.

The Trump administration was careful to suggest the military acted in conjunction with “US law enforcement” in “arresting” Maduro, who’ll stand trial in the US. Trump demurred when pressed by the Times on whether he sought congressional approval for the strikes. Everything, he said, would be cleared up during an 11 AM address to the nation.

Marco Rubio tried to preempt allegations that the US acted illegally on Saturday. “Maduro is NOT the President of Venezuela,” he wrote, repeating his longstanding contention that because the regime in Caracas isn’t “the legitimate government,” at least some of the thorny questions that’d normally come up in a situation like this don’t apply.

In the hours after Saturday’s raid, the fate of Venezuela and its government was indeterminate. Technically, power should go to Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s VP. There was no immediate word on the location of María Corina Machado.

Whatever happens in Venezuela now, Trump owns it, for better or worse.