The Unleashed World Power

The unleashed world power
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With his attack on Venezuela, Trump is making the death of international law visible to all.
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What the US is making clear in Venezuela is not simply a dispute over a government, an election, or a head of state. It is a warning to the world that international law, which was already fragile and selectively enforced, is now being openly cast aside. And this warning comes from a man who describes himself as a global peacemaker, potential Nobel Prize winner, and self-proclaimed dealmaker, and who claims to have “ended” nearly 20 wars, most of which exist only in his own imagination. This contradiction is no accident. It is the whole point.

by Manova's World Editorial Team

[This article posted on 1/10/2026 is translated from the German on the Internet, http://www.manova.news.]



Under Donald Trump, the United States has not simply resumed a foreign policy of coercive measures — it has hyper-normalized them. Practices once associated with rogue states — economic strangulation, collective punishment, political blacklists — have been rebranded as routine tools of diplomacy.

Sanctions are no longer a last resort, but weapons used reflexively, indiscriminately, and as punishment. EU officials have been sanctioned for the “crime” of dissent.

International human rights activists/lawyers have had their insurance policies canceled and their travel options restricted after criticizing US policy. Palestinian officials have been completely banned from entering the US. These are not measures aimed at resolving conflicts or protecting civilians. They are warnings intended to intimidate, isolate, and silence.

European NATO members, on the other hand, are trapped in a relationship they refuse to name. Security is outsourced upwards, responsibility shifted outwards. When Washington acts illegally, its allies are expected to comply — or at least not to resist. This is not collective defense, but asymmetrical dependence. The result is moral paralysis.

The threat to forcibly remove—or actually kidnap—a foreign head of state crosses an even darker line. It is a clear violation of international law and the United Nations Charter, which expressly prohibit the threat or use of force against the political independence of any state.

Sovereignty is neither a favor granted by Washington nor tied to ideological agreement.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration acted as if these principles no longer existed, displaying a self-assurance based not on legitimacy but on impunity. Imagine if Putin kidnapped Zelensky or Xi Jinping abducted Lai Ching-te from Taiwan. How would the international community react in such cases?

This impunity is reinforced in the US itself. Trump has openly declared that the US War Powers Act is unconstitutional — a claim that could take years to resolve in US courts, if it is resolved at all. Meanwhile, the institutional safeguards against executive overreach have been steadily dismantled. Career diplomats have been silenced, inspectors general dismissed, Congress circumvented. The result is a presidency with extraordinary freedom to act first, escalate quickly, and only later be held accountable — or to take a chance on whether the system dares to intervene.

The criminal charges brought against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, including allegations of large-scale drug trafficking, are highly controversial among international legal experts.

But even if they weren't, it's the method that matters. Unilateral indictments outside international courts, followed by far-reaching sanctions that bring entire economies to collapse, are not justice, but punishment without trial. They are collective punishments imposed on civilian populations who have no say in decisions made on their behalf.

Hospitals run out of medicine. Food supplies collapse. Migration increases. And the resulting humanitarian crisis is then cited as proof that the government in question has failed.

The impact of this behavior extends far beyond Venezuela. When the United States openly violates international law, it not only weakens one rule, but undermines the entire set of rules designed to limit state power. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Saudi Arabia's destruction of Yemen, and China's growing pressure on Taiwan are taking place in a world where rules are applied selectively and their enforcement depends not on principles but on power. In such a world, legality is on everyone's lips, but it does not have a restrictive effect.

Although Trump often invokes the language of peace, his understanding of it is dangerously superficial. He confuses ceasefire with peace, dominance with stability, and subjugation with order.

Ailing economies, collapsing health systems, and political blackmail do not resolve conflicts. They freeze them temporarily, radicalize them permanently, and export them elsewhere.

Because of its refusal to submit to US demands, Cuba has lived under an economic blockade for more than six decades. Venezuela is now subject to the same logic. Any state that resists risks financial isolation, diplomatic irrelevance, and economic strangulation. Only China currently has the size and influence to resist such pressure — a reality that should alarm rather than reassure US allies.

What will happen to Ukraine — or to Europe — if US power is exercised without restraint? What does “rules-based order” mean when the chief architect of that order ignores its rules?

Why has the international community failed to develop collective safeguards against coercive measures by its supposed guarantor of stability?

History offers little comfort — US interventions in Central and South America are the rule, not the exception. Since the Monroe Doctrine, Latin America has been treated less as a collection of sovereign states than as a zone of exploitation and control. Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic suffered protracted occupation or domination. During the Cold War, Washington supported coups and military dictatorships in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and beyond, crushing leftist movements, silencing civil society, and installing regimes that tortured, disappeared, and murdered their own citizens while US economic interests flourished.

Long before Vietnam or Iraq, the US financed proxy militias, death squads, and covert operations throughout the region. The “dirty wars” of the 1970s and 1980s left tens of thousands dead and traumatized entire societies. Venezuela is not a departure from this past, but a continuation, carried forward into an era of sanctions.

If the US continues down this path, domestic unrest and international protests will serve as a pretext for further confrontations — perhaps with Iran — which would exacerbate global instability and strengthen hardliners everywhere.

The lesson conveyed here is simple and corrosive: power comes before law, and the law exists only when it is expedient.

International law can only survive if the powerful are willing to restrain themselves.

The United States does not even pretend to try. By discarding the very rules it helped create, it exposes the “rules-based order” as a fiction — useful only when it serves US interests, and dispensable when it does not. What follows is not peace, but global cynicism; not justice, but a policy of revenge; not security, but a never-ending escalation. The world is being taught a brutal lesson: law is meaningless and power is everything.

The question facing the international community, the EU, and above all NATO is no longer an abstract one. Rather, it is whether they will continue to live under US impunity or finally say no.

Editorial note: This text first appeared under the title “With the Attack on Venezuela, Trump Has Put the Death of International Law in Plain Sight” in Counter Punch. It was translated by Gabriele Herb on a voluntary basis and edited by the volunteer Manova proofreading team.