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Hey there, I'm Asma Khalid.

And I'm Tristan Redmond, and we're here with a bonus episode for you from the Global Story podcast.

The world order is shifting. Old alliances are fraying and new ones are emerging. Some of this

turbulence can be traced to decisions made in the United States.

But the U.S. isn't just a cause of the upheaval.

Its politics are also a symptom of it.

Every day we focus on one story, looking at how America and the world shape each other.

So we hope you enjoy this episode.

And to find more of our show, just search for The Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

When the U.S. government captured Venezuela's president Nicolas Nicolas Maduro over the weekend, much of the world was shocked.

But behind closed doors, U.S. officials had been gaming out what would

happen if Maduro was ousted. Even during President Trump's first term, the government

ran simulations, almost like immersive theater, with teams playing the U.S. and its adversaries,

each of them trying to win the

game. And we're told by one man who was in one of those rooms that every scenario had the same

result. Disaster. From the BBC, I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. And today on the global story,

why did the U.S. capture Maduro if it had already foreseen the risk of chaos?

Douglas Farah is a former journalist who covered Latin America for years for the Washington Post.

Since then, he's used his expertise in the region to advise the U.S. government. He's worked with the U.S. government across the

Obama, Biden, and First Trump administrations. And he's participated in several so-called

war games exercises. So I started off by asking him to explain what these games are and why governments use

...