The US assault on Venezuela on January 3 must be understood not merely as an illegal use of pressure, however as a part of a broader shift in direction of nihilistic geopolitics wherein worldwide legislation is brazenly subordinated to imperial administration of worldwide safety. What’s at stake isn’t solely Venezuela’s sovereignty, however the collapse of any remaining confidence within the capability of the United Nations system, and notably the everlasting members of the Safety Council, to restrain aggression, forestall genocide, or uphold the core authorized norms they declare to defend.
The navy intervention, its political aftermath, and the accompanying rhetoric of US management collectively expose a system wherein legality is invoked selectively, veto energy substitutes for accountability, and coercion replaces consent. Venezuela thus turns into each a case research and a warning: not of the failure of worldwide legislation as such, however of its deliberate marginalisation by these states entrusted with managing world safety.
From the standpoint of worldwide legislation, this motion constitutes a crude, brazen, illegal and unprovoked recourse to aggressive pressure, in clear violation of the core norm of the UN Constitution, Article 2(4), which reads: “All Members of the United Nations shall chorus of their worldwide relations from the risk or use of pressure in opposition to the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” The one qualification to this prohibition is ready out in Article 51: “Nothing within the current Constitution shall impair the inherent proper of particular person or collective self-defence if an armed assault happens in opposition to a Member of the United Nations.” This flagrant violation of Venezuelan territorial sovereignty and political independence was preceded by years of US sanctions, weeks of specific threats, and up to date deadly assaults on vessels allegedly transporting medication, in addition to seizures of tankers carrying Venezuelan oil.
This unilateral motion was additional aggravated by the seize of Venezuela’s head of state, Nicolas Maduro, and his spouse, Cilia Flores, by US Particular Forces, reportedly guided by the CIA, to face fees of “narco-terrorism” in a US federal courtroom, in obvious violation of sovereign immunity. This imperial posture, brazenly disregarding the immunity of international leaders, was underscored by President Trump’s declared intention to direct Venezuelan policymaking for an indefinite interval, ostensibly till the nation was “stabilised” sufficiently to revive oil manufacturing below the auspices of main US companies, together with Chevron, Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips. When requested who was answerable for Venezuela’s governance, Trump responded impatiently, “We’re in cost.”
There’s extra politically at stake on this drastic reversal of the US Good Neighbour Coverage, related to Latin American diplomacy since 1933 and the presidency of Franklin D Roosevelt, than initially meets even essentially the most discerning eye. After all, this custom of cooperative relations was repeatedly undermined after the Castro revolution in Cuba and Salvador Allende’s electoral victory in Chile.
Most knowledgeable observers assumed that the assault on Venezuela geared toward reaching regime change, putting in Maria Corina Machado, an ardent advocate of US intervention, longtime chief of the anti-Maduro opposition, and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, whose acceptance speech lavishly praised Trump because the extra deserving candidate. Essentially the most sudden improvement of the intervention has been the bypassing of Machado, and the set up as a substitute of Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as Venezuela’s new president. Washington claimed confidence that Rodriguez would cooperate with US pursuits, notably in relation to Venezuelan oil and different assets, and restore stability on phrases appropriate with US priorities. Trump even declared that had Machado declined the Nobel Prize on the grounds that he deserved it, she would have develop into Venezuela’s president.
A extra believable clarification is that Machado lacked ample home help to stabilise the nation, whereas Rodriguez appeared prepared to accommodate US financial calls for, notably these relating to regulate over Venezuela’s useful resource wealth, whereas having fun with broader widespread help. The pre-attack “pro-democracy” narrative promoted by US state propaganda gained restricted credibility from this continuity of management, reasonably than a symbolic march into Caracas alongside Machado to preside over her inauguration as Venezuela’s new puppet chief. But after assembly Trump on January 9, executives of main US oil companies, extensively assumed to be the principal beneficiaries of the intervention, expressed reservations about resuming operations, citing considerations over instability following the US takeover.
Clarifying relations between worldwide legislation and world safety
This navy operation in Venezuela, along with its political aftermath, clearly violates worldwide legislation governing the usage of pressure, as authoritatively codified within the UN Constitution. But even this apparently simple evaluation comprises ambiguity. The constitution’s institutional design privileges the 5 victorious powers of the second world conflict, granting them everlasting membership of the Safety Council and an unrestricted veto. In impact, duty for managing world safety was intentionally entrusted to those states, which additionally turned the primary nuclear weapons powers, enabling any one in every of them to dam Safety Council motion even when supported by a 14–1 majority.
The Safety Council is the one political organ of the UN authorised to concern binding choices, other than the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ, nonetheless, operates below voluntary jurisdiction, as states might withhold consent to what’s often called “obligatory jurisdiction”. In consequence, the administration of worldwide safety has in follow been left to the discretion of the Everlasting 5, normally dominated by the US or paralysed by vetoes.
On this sense, the Venezuelan operation must be understood much less as signalling the collapse of worldwide legislation than as an expression of nihilistic geopolitical administration. If that’s the case, the suitable treatment isn’t merely to strengthen worldwide legislation, however to strip geopolitical actors of their self-assigned managerial function in world safety. Russia’s aggression in opposition to Ukraine in 2022 could be considered equally: a geopolitical failure, formed by irresponsible NATO provocations, culminating in Russia’s personal provoked but egregious breach of Article 2(4).
The Venezuelan operation additional erodes any residual confidence within the capability of the Everlasting 5, and particularly Trump’s United States, to handle peace, safety or genocide prevention. It due to this fact reinforces the necessity to contemplate various frameworks, both by curbing the veto or by shifting safety governance past the UN to counter-hegemonic mechanisms, together with BRICS, China’s Belt and Street Initiative, and rising South–South improvement frameworks.
It should however be emphasised that worldwide legislation stays indispensable and efficient in most areas of cross-border interplay. In domains equivalent to diplomatic immunity, maritime and aviation security, tourism and communications, negotiated authorized requirements are usually revered and disputes resolved peacefully. Worldwide legislation capabilities the place reciprocity prevails, however has by no means constrained great-power ambition within the area of worldwide safety, the place asymmetries of onerous energy dominate.
The 2025 US nationwide safety technique: Nihilistic geopolitics
To know Venezuela’s place inside Trump’s worldview, it’s important to look at the Nationwide Safety Technique of the US, launched in November 2025. Trump’s cowl letter is suffused with narcissism and contempt for internationalism, together with worldwide legislation, multilateral establishments, and the UN. He proclaims: “America is robust and revered once more — and due to that, we’re making peace all around the world.” Such rhetoric, pathological in any extraordinary particular person, is alarming when issued by a pacesetter who controls the usage of nuclear weapons. Trump concludes by promising to make America “safer, richer, freer, better, and extra highly effective than ever earlier than”.
The NSS repeatedly invokes “pre-eminence” because the central goal of US international coverage, to be pursued by any means needed. The Venezuelan intervention seems as a sequel to US complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and a attainable prelude to additional tasks, together with management over Greenland and renewed navy threats in opposition to Iran. But the doc’s main focus is Latin America, framed by way of a revival of the Monroe Doctrine, now bolstered by the explicitly named “Trump Corollary,” colloquially dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine”.
This hemispheric flip abandons the publish–Chilly Conflict ambition of worldwide US management pursued by Obama and Biden, which consumed huge assets in failed state-building ventures in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. As an alternative, it prioritises useful resource extraction, securing oil, uncommon earths and minerals with immense advantages for US companies, whereas marginalising NATO and abandoning multilateralism, underlying the latest US withdrawal from participation in 66 separate institutional entities, together with the local weather change treaty. Venezuela, with its huge oil reserves, strategic location and authoritarian populist authorities, supplied a great testing floor — and conveniently diverted consideration from Trump’s private entanglements with Jeffrey Epstein.
In sensible phrases, the intervention resembles a coup reasonably than regime change, accompanied by an specific demand that the brand new management take orders from Washington as the worth of political survival. Trump and his Cuban exile secretary of state, Marco Rubio, brazenly linked Venezuela to future regime-change efforts in Colombia and Cuba, with Trump issuing a crude risk to Colombian President Gustavo Petro and US forces reportedly killing 32 Cuban members of Maduro’s Presidential Guard.
Implications
It stays unsure whether or not Delcy Rodriguez’s authorities will negotiate an association that preserves formal sovereignty whereas surrendering substantive management. Such an end result would sign an embrace of digital-age gunboat diplomacy, reversing the UN precept of Everlasting Sovereignty over Pure Sources, and reinstating a hierarchical hemispheric order. This imaginative and prescient even contemplates the subordination of Canadian sovereignty to Washington’s political and financial preferences.
Worldwide reactions to the assault on Venezuela have been muted, reflecting worry, confusion or perceived futility. In the meantime, geopolitical rivalry intensifies, notably with Russia and China, elevating the spectre of a brand new Chilly Conflict or nuclear battle. The NSS makes clear that US preeminence requires excluding all extra-hemispheric powers from the area, by its repeated referencing of “our Hemisphere”.
The Venezuelan episode thus exemplifies a broader technique: the rejection of worldwide legislation, the marginalisation of the UN, and the unilateral assertion of US dominance within the Western Hemisphere, together with potential intervention virtually wherever on the planet, however with instant relevance to Greenland and Iran.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
