A giant banner representing a US flag with swastikas is pictured during the ‘March for Sovereignty and Democracy’ against US President Donald Trump’s threats to Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro at Bolivar Square in Bogota on January 7, 2026.
On January 3, under the cover of darkness, the United States invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its democratically elected leader, Nicolas Maduro, along with his wife. In doing so, it destroyed an edifice that, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, has symbolised the inviolability of state sovereignty.
Following the West’s victory over Communism in 1991, Francis Fukuyama advanced his “End of History” theory, arguing that liberal democracy has reached the final form of government—the zenith of political evolution. How wrong he was. US aggression toward Venezuela exposes this charade.
There is no guarantee that what befell Venezuela on January 3 will not be repeated in other weaker countries. “Might is right”—that is the creed of US President Donald Trump, a presidential misfit. Encouraged by the US doctrine, any powerful country can abduct a weaker nation’s leader and subject them to a sham trial that ultimately puts them behind bars for life.
By launching a barbaric attack on Venezuela and committing a politically and morally loathsome act, Trump exposed his true self—he is not a dove of peace but an aggressive beast. People like him should not have been elected in the first place. But American voters keep making this mistake. According to opinion polls conducted in the aftermath of the aggression against Venezuela, a significant number of Americans remain unconcerned by the criminality of Trump’s actions.
Morality demands that the rest of the world should not, even with a barge pole, attempt to have contact with such a lawless imperial state. The United States deserves to be condemned and ostracised like a political leper. If not, before too long, the imperial thug will unleash its brutal force and colonise or capture more sovereign territories. Greenland is the most vulnerable, followed by Colombia, where people held a protest march against Trump on January 7. Or may be Canada, Cuba, Mexico, or even Iran.
America’s Western allies, or its lapdogs in Europe and the G7, have indirectly justified US military action by claiming that Maduro lacks legitimacy to lead Venezuela after he stole the 2024 election. In their statements, the vigour seen in branding Maduro as an illegitimate ruler is absent from the concerns they express about the US violating the principle of state sovereignty, a principle held sacrosanct by international law. That most European powers are themselves violators of international law, with their complicity in the Gaza genocide well known, is another matter.
What Trump did on January 3 cannot be dismissed as the action of a maverick keeping the world on edge by pursuing the madman’s theory in international relations. He merely unveiled another segment of the well-established strategy of US imperial expansionism, which manifests in forms such as economic neo-colonialism and militaristic hegemony through wars and military bases.
In the early years after World War II, renowned geostrategic expert George Kennan, while serving in the US State Department, famously advised diplomats: “We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population… In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…”
Kennan advocated depravity in the US policy; it is not “live and let live”, but rather “live and let die”. In other words, the US should grow ever richer while driving others into deeper poverty.
America has today become a sham democracy where all arms of government—the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary—are increasingly, whether willingly or unwillingly, becoming accomplices in the hegemonic designs of the state. That the renaming of the US Department of Defence to the Department of War occurred smoothly, without much protest, only confirms that the US polity by and large approves of the state’s immoral hegemonic pursuits.
True democracies respect the rule of law, international law, and the rules-based international order. US foreign policy mandarins believe that nothing—not even democracy, however noble its values may be—should stand in the way of US hegemony. In Washington DC, governments may alternate between Republicans and Democrats, but the hegemonic pursuit continues.
But what we witnessed just three days after people wished each other peace and prosperity in the New Year is the beginning of a new violent world order. Say goodbye to the peace-based civilised world order we thought we had established through the United Nations system. Under Trump, the looter of Venezuela’s oil, the US resembles not a democracy but the unholy Rome of more than two millennia ago.
Like the US today, Rome then had some form of democracy—complete with citizens’ assemblies and elected magistrates. But its democracy did nothing to restrain the Republic from invading country after country. In fact, the Roman plebs actively encouraged expansion, as conquests and loot brought them wealth and prestige.
Like the Romans then, Americans seem to back the White House Caesar’s aggression in Venezuela. His approval rating rose to 42 per cent from 39 per cent in December. Opinion polls show that 65 per cent of Republicans endorse Trump’s criminal military action in Venezuela. Overall, one in three Americans openly supports Trump’s action against a weak nation.
The era when states, regardless of size or power, had absolute sovereignty over their territories is no more. Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, acting like thugs, have the criminal audacity to declare that Venezuela’s oil belongs to them. They had the gumption to order Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, to sever economic relations with China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran, warning that if she failed to comply, tougher action would follow. And it did. Yesterday, the US military seized an oil tanker flying the Russian flag, challenging Russia’s resolve to resist.
Venezuela, which has the world’s largest known oil reserves, is not averse to selling oil to the US. In fact, Maduro was willing to do so. But the US wanted full control of Venezuela’s oil sector. After kidnapping Maduro, the perpetrators now claim they would buy Venezuela’s oil at market price from US companies that move in, with the money supposedly going to the Venezuelan people—as though these US oil giants were charities pursuing spiritual returns rather than profits from black gold.
If narcotics are the cause of Maduro’s kidnapping and his sham trial in the US, then first clean up the CIA, whose secret drug operations for covert missions worldwide are well documented, unlike Venezuela’s alleged narco-terrorism, about which the UN Drug Office has documented little.
The truth is that the US badly needs Venezuela’s heavy crude to keep refineries on its southern coast running at full capacity, for it is heavy crude—used in the production of diesel and other industrial fuels—that drives the world economy, as opposed to light crude, which ends up as petrol.
Trump’s blood-for-oil militarism is unlikely to succeed. Venezuela’s acting president, Rodriguez—whose father was killed decades ago by the country’s CIA-backed right-wing government—is ready to pursue diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Analysts say US boots on the ground will only lead to a Vietnam-like humiliation.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad—so says ancient Greek wisdom. Thucydides was right: America is fighting to prevent its number-one global power position from slipping into China’s hands. Venezuela is one such effort. Greenland is next.
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