The events of January 3 in Venezuela will have profound consequences for geopolitical stability. The illegal attack on Caracas by the US and the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife constitute a grave violation of Venezuelan sovereignty. They are also an extraordinary assault on the foundations of international law.
US President Donald Trump has always seen himself and the US as above the law. But the consequences of the raid on Caracas will reverberate more widely, and with greater force, than those that followed the January 2020 US drone strike that killed Iranian Maj-Gen Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport, or the January 2021 assault on the Capitol by supporters of Trump seeking to disrupt the certification of election results.
What makes the raid on Caracas particularly egregious is its nakedly imperial character: a superpower descending on a sovereign state thousands of kilometres from its shores and overthrowing its government without even the pretence of legal justification.
In the immediate aftermath of the abduction of Maduro, Trump announced that the US would administer Venezuela and take control of its oil. He issued warnings directed at Cuba and Mexico, and repeated threats to take control of Greenland.
What is taking shape is an openly coercive hemispheric order. What Trump has gleefully described as the “Donroe Doctrine” marks a highly personalised return to the logic of the Monroe Doctrine, in which the US claims the Americas as its exclusive sphere of control.
Venezuela has never been any threat to the US, and these actions and threats by the US make a mockery of its previous condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It can even be argued that Russia had more rationale to enter Ukraine than the US had to attack Venezuela, a country geographically distant, economically weakened and politically isolated.
Trump’s claim to be acting against drug trafficking is farcical. The fentanyl that has taken so many lives in the US does not come from Venezuela, and only a tiny amount of the cocaine that moves north into the US passes through Venezuela.
The attack on Venezuela did not begin with Caracas. It began in the Caribbean Sea, where Trump deployed US forces — including warships, aircraft and an aircraft carrier — to carry out unlawful and lethal attacks on small boats in the name of a war on drugs. While claiming to act against narcotics, he simultaneously pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted and sentenced in the US for large-scale cocaine trafficking.
The spurious claims about narcotics are as flimsy and cynical as those about weapons of mass destruction that paved the way for the invasion of Iraq.
Trump is clearly motivated by a desire to gain control of Venezuela’s vast oil wealth, thought to be the world’s largest, rather than any genuine concern about narcotics. The spurious claims about narcotics are as flimsy and cynical as those about weapons of mass destruction that paved the way for the invasion of Iraq.
As shocking as the raid on Caracas has been, it must be seen in a wider context. The unlawful devastation of Gaza by Israel, with US funding, weapons and diplomatic protection, showed the world that the US and its allies understood themselves to be immune from international law, and their enemies to be outside of its protection.
The same disregard for international law has been seen in Nigeria. Under the pretext of protecting Christians from Isis, the White House has bombarded parts of the country, including areas where there is no credible evidence of an Isis presence.
Trump will be emboldened by the success of the raid on Caracas and may well move to seize Greenland and act against other states and governments. Progressive governments in Latin America, such as those in Mexico and Brazil, will now be extremely cautious about challenging the US. The pressure on South Africa is likely to escalate.
After South Africa charged Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023, Trump began pushing claims that white South Africans were facing genocide. These unhinged allegations, long confined to the extreme right, were amplified from the White House. The aim was to delegitimise South Africa and punish a government that had challenged US power and its allies through international law.
The pressure did not only come from Trump and the likes of Elon Musk. There was also a strident and uncritically pro-West lobby at home. This critique has taken on a frenzied tone. Many wholly unevidenced statements have been made, such as the claim that Iran bribed South Africa to take Israel to the ICJ. It was repeatedly said that South Africa had “gone rogue”.
However, when South Africa approached the ICJ it used the mechanisms of international law to insist that Israel be held accountable under that law. Through the formation of the Hague Group, a coalition of states committed to defending international law and opposing impunity, South Africa has worked with other countries to widen support for this position. In doing so it has taken a principled stand on the side of international law and helped build a diplomatic bloc prepared to defend it against power and coercion.
When a permanent member of the UN Security Council openly abducts a head of state, announces its intention to take control of another country’s resources and suffers no consequence, the signal is unmistakable.
The critical question is, what comes next? What is at stake is not only the fate of Venezuela, but the survival of international law as a meaningful constraint on power. When a permanent member of the UN Security Council openly abducts a head of state, announces its intention to take control of another country’s resources and suffers no consequence, the signal is unmistakable. International law ceases to function as law and is reduced to a tool applied selectively against the weak.
We cannot rely on existing US or international institutions. Trump is protected by a dysfunctional Congress and a supreme court that has consistently enabled his excesses. He will not be reined in by the UN. In the face of Israel’s assault on Gaza the UN Security Council has been paralysed by repeated US vetoes, preventing even basic demands for a ceasefire or accountability.
Appeasement will not work. Trump understands it only as weakness. Countries that believe they will be spared what has happened in Venezuela, or what may yet befall others, by bending the knee are sorely mistaken. This White House has no sense of loyalty. Old allies are readily discarded, and yesterday’s favoured partner becomes tomorrow’s target the moment even the slightest independence is shown.
Vulnerability is unevenly distributed. It will not be Europe or North America that bear the first costs of this collapse of restraint, but states in the Global South whose sovereignty has always been treated as conditional. What is being normalised is not an exception, but a method.
The only viable way forward is to expand and deepen the alliance of states committed to defending international law. Individual states, acting alone, can be isolated, punished or made examples of. But when states act together through legal processes, diplomatic co-ordination and shared refusal to accept impunity, there are greater possibilities for holding the line in support of international law.
• Hlela is a research fellow with the Institute for Pan African Thought & Conversation and a PhD candidate in the department of politics & international relations at the University of Johannesburg.
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