In the early hours of 3 January, the United States crossed a moral, legal, and historical threshold that should alarm the world. American forces bombed targets in Venezuela, including areas in and around its capital, and seized the country’s sitting president and his wife, transporting them in custody to New York to face trial. This extraordinary act was announced not through Congress, nor through any international body, but through a presidential declaration. This was not law enforcement. It was not diplomacy by other means. It was an act of war. The administration would like the world to accept this as routine ~ another “operation,” another “strike,” another exercise in enforcement. Such language is deliberately anesthetizing. Foreign territory was bombed. A sovereign government was violated. A head of state was forcibly removed.
If this does not constitute invasion, the word has lost its meaning. One need not harbour illusions about the Venezuelan regime to grasp the enormity of what has occurred. The country’s president has ruled repressively, undermined democratic processes, and presided over economic collapse that has driven millions from their homes. These facts are well documented. They are also beside the point. International order does not survive by granting powerful nations the discretion to overthrow weaker ones they deem immoral, inconvenient, or expendable. At stake here is not the character of a single leader, but the survival of restraint itself. Under the United States Constitution, the authority to initiate war rests with Congress.
This requirement is not symbolic; it is fundamental. It exists precisely to prevent unilateral military action by a single individual. No such authorization was sought or granted in this case. There was no public debate, no vote, no collective reckoning before bombs fell on a foreign capital. A decision of irreversible consequence was made by executive fiat. International law is even more unequivocal. The United Nations Charter prohibits the use of force against another state’s territorial integrity or political independence except in cases of genuine self-defense or with Security Council approval. Venezuela posed no imminent threat to American soil.
There was no international mandate. What unfolded was neither legal nor defensible under the rules that the global community has spent decades ~ often imperfectly ~ trying to uphold. The administration’s stated justification rests on the language of “narco-terrorism.” History is replete with examples of governments invoking crime to legitimize conquest. The transformation of war into policing is a familiar rhetorical maneuver: arrests instead of invasions, suspects instead of enemies, enforcement instead of aggression. Yet Venezuela is not a central source of the drugs ravaging American communities, nor does its government pose an immediate military threat to the United States. The explanation strains credibility.
A more candid reading points elsewhere. Venezuela possesses some of the largest proven oil reserves in the world and occupies a strategic position in a region long subjected to American political pressure. In recent months, Washington had increased its military footprint in the Caribbean, speaking openly of reasserting dominance in the hemisphere. This assault did not emerge in isolation; it was the culmination of a policy trajectory that had already abandoned restraint. A recent editorial in the New York Times warned that even the removal of brutal or illegitimate regimes by force has repeatedly produced disastrous outcomes. Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan stand as grim reminders that dismantling a government is far easier than building a stable political order.
These are not ideological arguments; they are historical facts. Time and again, intervention has bred chaos rather than cure. Latin America, in particular, carries a long and painful memory of such actions. From Chile to Guatemala, from Nicaragua to Cuba, the region has endured repeated episodes in which Washington claimed to act in the name of order or freedom, only to leave behind instability, resentment, and trauma. Each intervention was justified as exceptional. Each was later acknowledged ~ often quietly ~ as a mistake. Venezuela now risks becoming the latest chapter in this bleak record. Supporters of the invasion insist that this time will be different – that removing the president will unlock democracy, stability, and renewal. Such confidence is deeply misplaced. Power vacuums do not produce harmony; they invite violence.
The generals, armed groups, and political networks that sustained the regime will not disappear because one man has been captured. Nor are they likely to submit willingly to outcomes shaped by foreign force. The dangers extend beyond Venezuela’s borders. Further instability could accelerate migration across the hemisphere, strain neighboring states, disrupt energy markets, and inflame armed groups already operating in the region. A country already exhausted by crisis may now face further suffering ~ not as an unfortunate by-product, but as a predictable consequence. There is also the matter of conduct. Reports that U.S. forces struck Venezuelan targets without offering surrender or due process raise grave concerns under international humanitarian law.
The Geneva Conventions do not distinguish between wars fought for noble or ignoble reasons; they apply precisely when violence occurs. The erosion of these norms is not collateral damage ~ it is the damage. Perhaps the most dangerous consequence of this action lies in the precedent it sets. By asserting the right to bomb a country, abduct its leader, and subject him to domestic prosecution, the United States has weakened the very norms it once championed. Other powers will not treat this as an aberration; they will treat it as permission. If such actions are acceptable when carried out by Washington, they will soon be replicated elsewhere by governments with far less regard for restraint.
The irony is stark. President Trump once presented himself as an opponent of endless wars and reckless interventions. He criticized past administrations for overreach and promised restraint. That posture has now been abandoned. What has unfolded in Venezuela is not the end of imperial habits; it is their revival, stripped of pretense. Democracies do not collapse only through coups or revolutions. They erode when laws become optional, when institutions are bypassed, and when power substitutes itself for legitimacy. Congress was sidelined. International bodies were ignored. Allies were informed after the fact. This is not leadership; it is unilateralism masquerading as resolve. Opposing this action does not require sympathy for Venezuela’s government.
It requires fidelity to a principle far more important: that no nation, however powerful, has the right to rewrite global rules through violence. Sovereignty is not a favor bestowed by great powers; it is the foundation of international order. If the United States wishes to address Venezuela’s failures, it must do so through diplomacy, multilateral pressure, humanitarian engagement, and lawful international mechanisms ~ not bombs and handcuffs. Anything less signals a return to an age when might dictated right and legality followed force. History will judge this moment harshly. The only remaining question is whether citizens, institutions, and allies will demand accountability now ~ or wait, as so often before, until the damage is irreversible.
(The writer is Professor Emeritus at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles)