A man holds a painting depicting United States President Donald Trump during a protest against the US intervention in Venezuela, in Buenos Aires on January 5. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro appeared in Manhattan federal court on Monday after his forcible seizure by US special forces on Venezuelan soil this weekend, marking the latest development in Washington’s public assault on international law and national sovereignty. Kidnapping the head of state of a sovereign country and putting him in a foreign court for a so-called trial has nothing to do with law enforcement; it is simply a naked show of America’s readiness to wield its raw power.
Washington’s brazen military operation against Venezuela sets a perilous precedent: that any nation with enough power can unilaterally impose its will on another, reducing the international order to a brutal contest of might. In the real international system, no country can legitimately act as an international policeman, and no country can appoint itself as an international judge. International law recognises no such role.
The authority to enforce justice across borders rests with multilateral institutions, not with unilateral acts of coercion carried out at a time and place of one country’s choosing. In fact, Washington has self-torpedoed its claim of legality, voluntarily exposing its greed for natural resources. Shortly after its military operation against Venezuela, US President Donald Trump publicly urged acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez to grant the United States “total access,” especially to Venezuela’s oil resources.
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This blunt demand confirms what the world had long suspected: the operation was never about justice, but a brazen gambit for strategic control and economic plunder. The rhetoric of law enforcement is merely a cynical veneer for a policy of resource extraction and imperial domination.
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