Donald Trump wants to be the emperor of Latin America

Last week, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was on stage in front of his supporters, waving his hands and dancing, seemingly oblivious to the danger that awaited him. Monday, that same man was a criminal defendant incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York’s Brooklyn borough, having just been arraigned on drug trafficking, narcoterrorism and weapons charges.

Maduro’s fall from grace happened in the middle of the night while he was tucked in bed. After coordinated airstrikes against Venezuelan airfields to knock out the country’s air defense network, low-flying helicopters carrying U.S. special operations forces swooped down on Maduro’s hideout, killed his Cuban security team and whisked him and his wife, Cilia Flores, away to the USS Iowa Jima offshore. Venezuelans awoke the next morning to news that the tall, burly man who had ruled the country for nearly 13 years and through fraudulent elections was forcefully extradited by the Americans back to the United States to stand trial. The whole operation was as smooth as silk.

Much of the coverage to date has focused on the nuts and bolts of how the U.S. snatch-and-grab mission was conducted. But there’s a bigger theme to highlight: What happened in Venezuela over the weekend is the most dramatic illustration of the so-called Trump corollary for the Western Hemisphere. And it can be best summed up simply: As a matter of policy, the United States aspires to sole dominance of the region.