Eh this is a non-escalation because it’s the USA.

Sure in objective historical terms this is a further and greater act of belligerence and war against Venezuela, an unmistakable breach of sovereignty on land and an act of war without question.

But because it’s the US empire here they get to claim this is plausibly deniable spycraft stuff equivalent somehow to an on the ground spy agent planting a bomb and thus not an escalation despite admitting to it.

That and the whole history of the last 25 years of US drone warfare just casually bombing whoever they want regardless of borders and throwing up hands and assuring people they are not at war with a country just because they’re bombing within it (see Pakistan, Syria, large chunks of North-East Africa, etc). That instead they are prosecuting a nebulous war on terrorism or “narcotics” here and thus it’s not a state to state aggression is their ridiculous claim.

They get away with this because they don’t do it to anyone big and strong enough to punch them hard enough back to regret it and because those who aren’t strong enough to stop them aren’t going to antagonize the US into focusing its full fury and military might on them by responding with anything beyond words because they don’t want a full war with the US and think they can manage the US’s targeted but low level and intensity violence against them.

That and those who aren’t strong enough to resist don’t have the means to stop this kind of thing by shooting down US stealth aircraft anyways because they’re undetected or in and out too quickly so their only real option for retribution is a naked attack run on US assets that may not have been directly involved in the operation outside their territorial waters in a way that gives the US a muddied and twisted but acceptable international law and propaganda narrative justification to respond back with full force and open war while claiming they are acting defensively.