Hamza Ali, Progress Center for Policies
Introduction
In a move that stunned the world, the United States carried out a military attack on Venezuela, resulting in the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, triggering a mixed wave of condemnation and praise. During a press conference held on Saturday, January 3, at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, U.S. President Donald Trump lauded the operation that led to Maduro’s capture, describing it as “one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military competence and capability in U.S. history.”
Analysis
• On January 5, The Washington Post published an extensive report examining the dynamics and repercussions of the operation. It reached a blunt conclusion: Trump’s military move into Venezuela represents another nail in the coffin of the post–World War II international order. The paper quoted one analyst as saying that “the sense of an overwhelming paradigm shift is unmistakable,” arguing that the attack on Venezuela constitutes the first concrete application of the White House’s National Security Strategy, which defines the Western Hemisphere as an exclusive U.S. sphere of influence. This approach revives the logic of “gunboat diplomacy” and neo-imperialist tendencies reminiscent of a century ago. According to the same analyst, “this is a completely new era,” noting that Trump is not speaking about promoting democracy, but rather about “petro-imperialism.” He warned that Latin American policy elites are increasingly realizing that believing democratic states would be immune from U.S. intervention is a dangerous illusion.
• The newspaper argued that Maduro’s arrest is “not a regional anomaly, but a signal event.” Analysts at the European Council on Foreign Relations observed that the operation “highlights the volatility of Trump’s foreign policy, his comfort with military solutions, and his apparent openness to a world governed by spheres of influence rather than rules.” Another geopolitical analyst added that this development “opens the door wide to a new geopolitical Wild West, where might makes right and laws and rules fade away.”
• Commentators interviewed by the paper pointed to similar dynamics already taking shape, citing Israel’s recognition last month of the breakaway Republic of Somaliland. They argued that “claims about the inviolability of borders ring hollow when aggression goes unpunished or is tacitly accepted.”
• The Economist, in an article published on January 3, described the abduction of Maduro and the attempt to seize control of Venezuela and its oil resources as an extraordinary manifestation of what it termed the new “Donroe Doctrine.” The magazine emphasized that Trump believes the United States had long neglected to enforce the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which sought to exclude foreign powers from Latin America. According to Trump, “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
• In another article published on January 5, the magazine warned that Cuba could be the next target, noting that it is now more vulnerable to regime-change pressure than at any time since the early 1990s. Analysts broadly agree that Trump has established a new arrangement that makes such scenarios increasingly plausible.
• The editorial board of the Financial Times described the move in a January 4 editorial as “reckless,” arguing that Trump’s message is clear: under his leadership, the United States no longer feels bound by the norms of the international order established after 1945, and will intervene almost at will within its sphere of influence, and possibly beyond. The paper concluded that the blatant violation of the sovereignty of a major South American state sends a bleak signal to the rest of the world.
• The diplomatic editor of The Guardian echoed this view, writing that defenders of international law may now find themselves appealing to a world order that is rapidly fading, with Venezuela becoming “the latest burial in an already crowded graveyard.” In his view, Trump’s actions consolidate a new system dominated by the naked self-interest of two or three great powers.
• A professor at Georgetown University went further, arguing that what occurred represents a genuine decoupling of the United States from the rules-based international order and the effective end of the liberal order altogether. According to this perspective, a new international system is emerging, based on the use of force, revisionism, and securing the American continental space. This vision draws on a sovereignty-centered worldview rooted in the concept of “nomos,” as articulated by mid-20th-century German philosopher Carl Schmitt, in which the classification of states as “friend or foe” supersedes the liberal emphasis on cooperation, international law, democracy, and free markets.
• The Wall Street Journal described this approach, in a January 5 article, as the new “Trump game.” It noted that the Venezuela operation capped a month of aggressive military actions, including strikes against militants in northern Nigeria, attacks on Islamic State targets in Syria, and threats to re-strike Iran. According to the paper, this reflects Trump’s growing reliance during his second term on a doctrine of “strike and then coerce,” a strategy likely to face severe tests as the White House seeks to compel compliance from targeted states.
• In the same context, the international editor of the BBC wrote that U.S. intervention in Venezuela brings into sharp focus core elements of Trump’s worldview. He does not conceal his desire for other countries’ resources, having previously attempted to extract profits from Ukraine’s natural wealth in exchange for military assistance. Nor does Trump hide his ambition to control Venezuela’s vast mineral resources, or his belief that U.S. oil companies were wronged when Venezuela’s oil industry was nationalized. Ultimately, Maduro’s capture constitutes another major blow to the idea that the world should be governed by an agreed-upon set of legal rules.
Conclusions
• The capture of Nicolás Maduro represents a decisive rupture in the trajectory of international politics. It is neither a regional exception nor a temporary escalation, but a signal event exposing the effective collapse of the rules-based international order as a governing framework for great-power behavior. Concepts of sovereignty, international law, and multilateral norms have been shown to be conditional, subordinate to power rather than protective against it.
• This development fundamentally reshapes the strategic calculations of all states. The removal of a sitting head of state through force, without meaningful legal or political consequences, normalizes coercion as a legitimate policy tool and lowers the threshold for similar actions elsewhere. In the absence of effective deterrence mechanisms, other states are increasingly likely to adopt the same logic.
• For small and medium-sized states, the implications are particularly grave. Reliance on international rules and institutions can no longer be assumed to guarantee security, compelling these states to adapt to an emerging order defined by spheres of influence and choices of alignment, deterrence, or accommodation. In this sense, Venezuela marks the moment when the rules of the global game were not merely eroded, but openly and decisively rewritten.
