The gangster-style American operation to seize and abduct Nicolás Maduro, accompanied by the bombing of Caracas, constitutes a blatant intervention in Venezuela’s internal affairs. It amounts to an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country and a flagrant violation of every principle of international law, regardless of who Maduro was or was not, and irrespective of whether he did or did not enjoy popular support.
No one appointed Donald Trump as the world’s policeman. Nor did anyone grant him the role of protector of peoples living under undemocratic or authoritarian regimes, or in conditions of poverty and economic deprivation.
There is no dispute that Venezuela under Maduro faced serious problems of governance. But at no point did those problems constitute a threat to the United States or to neighbouring countries that could justify, in the strict sense of the term, any form of foreign intervention. Nor are the accusations that Maduro was involved in drug trafficking or arms trading credible, or supported by serious evidence, despite being repeatedly invoked by Washington and Trump himself.
Such indictments follow a familiar pattern. The United States produces them whenever it decides to undermine international legality and intervene in other countries, near or far, in order to overthrow leaders and regimes it finds inconvenient, and to serve its own economic or geostrategic interests. It did so repeatedly across Latin America, and later in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and now Venezuela.
Everyone knows what lies behind Trump’s attack on Maduro: the pursuit of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the largest in the world. Everything else serves merely as a convenient pretext.
We are not supporters of Maduro, nor defenders of his regime. Nor do we deny that Venezuela faces a serious issue of democratisation. But this is an internal matter for Venezuela and its people alone, not for any self-appointed “guardian”.
Even where disputes have cross-border implications, international law provides mechanisms and institutions for resolving them. What it does not provide is the law of the strong, applied selectively and opportunistically by Donald Trump.
In short, the gangster-like and piratical abduction of Nicolás Maduro and his transfer to the United States to face a so-called “trial”, if accepted as legitimate, would normalise arbitrariness and the imposition of power over law. It would set an extremely dangerous precedent.
Let us not forget that from the moment of his re-election, Donald Trump made no effort to conceal his ambitions regarding Greenland and the Gulf of Mexico, nor his hostility towards other countries, from China and Colombia to Cuba and even Europe itself.
If such actions and practices are legitimised in Venezuela, where exactly does it stop?