As America seizes control of the capital city of a sovereign state, having spirited its president to captivity in a brutal and daring night-time raid, many will be forgiven for wondering what happened to Donald J Trump, prospective Nobel Peace Prize winner?

The US president has long boasted of the eight conflicts around the world he is supposed to have resolved, but his assault on Venezuela is a devastating demonstration of raw American power.

And one that has been months in the making. Little was made of aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford being moved to the Caribbean in October, and now it is apparent that the subsequent strikes on drug smuggling boats leaving Venezuela and the seizure of two oil tankers were mere preludes to the main show. 

Because all the while, the US Army's elite Delta Force unit was rehearsing its assault using a building mocked up to resemble Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro's compound in Caracas - for reference, SEAL Team Six which killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011 is thought to have trained for six to eight weeks.

So what is the true motive behind Trump's attack?

He has no desire to return the US to the status of the 'world's policeman' in the manner of the neo-conservatives of the George W Bush era - Trump's withdrawal from Ukraine is evidence of that.

Instead, Trump is a disciple of the 'Monroe Doctrine' - the right of the US, and no other world power, to decide what goes on in the Americas, first proclaimed by President James Monroe in 1823.

So Trump sees it as his country's right to rid the socialist sore of Maduro from its Caribbean backyard. And much of the cocaine and other narcotics that have flooded American streets over the past decade have come from the Venezuelan gangs who are the real wielders of power in Caracas.

President Donald Trump posted an image on his Truth Social account showing him sitting next to CIA Director John Ratcliffe (left) and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (right) as they watched the U.S. military operation in Venezuela

But last November, Trump chose to pardon former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was in a US Federal jail three years into a 45-year sentence for the same offence for which Maduro now stands indicted: drug-running.

Trump seems to believe that narcotics only pose a deadly threat to the US when pushed by Leftist Latin American rulers.

No, the real reason behind Trump's actions is oil - and it is no secret. 

Trump has boasted of making Venezuelans rich by taking over the country's oil production. By doing so he kills two birds with one stone. 

He feeds refineries in Louisiana hungry for a special type of heavy oil in which Venezuela specialises. And he controls the supply that China had been leaning on.