The United States’ attack against Venezuela and the dramatic capture of the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, took the world by storm early Saturday. From China to Iran to South Africa, countries worldwide have raised concerns over the latest strikes, while media houses flooded their newspapers and websites with analyzes and exclusive details about the US’ operations in Venezuela. Here’s how global media reacted:
United States
The New York Times’s editorial declared that “Trump’s attack on Venezuela is illegal and unwise.” The opinion by the editorial board also called Maduro an “undemocratic and repressive” leader whoi “has destabilized the Western Hemisphere in recent years.”
The master headline of The New York Times early Sunday (IST) read: “Inside the US Mission to Capture Maduro”. The report termed the US’ operation in Venezuela “tactically precise”. The report claimed, “It was a highly dangerous mission.”
The report further stated that Trump “justified what was named Operation Absolute Resolve as a strike against drug trafficking.”
Meanwhile, an analysis in the Washington Post read: “Toppling Maduro is likely to be the easy part for Trump”. Another analytical piece was headlines as: “US capture of Maduro may be illegal; that likely won’t matter in court”.
The Washington Post also stated that the US strikes in Venezuela appeared to be a “tactically successful military operation.”
At the same time, the CNN claimed that the mission appears to be, for now, “limited to removing Maduro.”
China
China’s state-run media Global Times titled one of its top-placed news pieces as: “US strikes on Venezuela spark concern from domestic, foreign media as protests erupt across country”. It included media
While China’s government condemned the US strikes, local state media CGTN also carried a skeptical tone in its choice of news pieces. Very few, or none of its headlines reflected the US’s point of view. Rather, most of them were about leaders criticizing US President Trump’s actions.
Some of those headlines read: “Democrats accuse Trump of lying to Congress about goals in Venezuela”; “Protests call for an end to US military action in Latin America”; “Protest in front of the White House over US military action in Venezuela”; “UN Security Council to hold emergency meeting on Venezuela on Monday”
UK
A report in the UK-based Guardian was titled, “The ‘Putinization’ of US foreign policy has arrived in Venezuela”. The author of the analysis report opined that Trump “is no longer bending the rules – he is demolishing them, with consequences far beyond Caracas.”
In another report, it stated that the US bombardment of Venezuela and the capture of its president, Nicolás Maduro, follow a long history of interventions in South and Central America and the Caribbean over the past two centuries. “But they also mark an unprecedented moment as the first direct US military attack on a South American country,” it stated.
Middle East
AI Jazeera reported the US’ operation as an “Act of War” in the headline, citing experts to reject Trump’s rationale for Venezuela attack. The report cited an expert as saying, “It was an act of war against Venezuela, and we did not have the kind of self-defense justification that would normally justify bypassing Congress.”
