The US attack on Venezuela on January 3 should not be seen as merely an unlawful force, but as a result of a wider shift toward nihilistic geopolitics, which openly prioritizes international law over imperial control of global security. What is at stake is not only Venezuela’s sovereignty, but the collapse of any remaining confidence in the capacity of the United Nations system, and particularly the permanent members of the Security Council, to restrain aggression, prevent genocide, or uphold the core legal norms they claim to defend.
The US government’s use of veto power substitutes for accountability, coercion substitutes for consent, and its political aftermath combined with the accompanying rhetoric of US leadership expose a system where legality is selectively used. Thus, Venezuela becomes both a case study and a warning: not that international law as a whole has broken, but that those nations who are responsible for overseeing global security have purposefully marginalized it.
From the standpoint of international law, this action constitutes a crude, brazen, unlawful and unprovoked recourse to aggressive force, in clear violation of the core norm of the UN Charter, Article 2 (4), which reads: “All Members of the United Nations shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”. Article 51, which states, “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations,” is the only exception to this prohibition. Years of US sanctions, weeks of explicit threats, and recent lethal attacks on alleged drug-tracking vessels, as well as the seizure of Venezuelan oil tankers, were the result of this flagrant violation of Venezuelan territorial sovereignty and political independence.
This unilateral action was further aggravated by the capture of Venezuela’s head of state, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, by US Special Forces, reportedly guided by the CIA, to face charges of “narco-terrorism” in a US federal court, in apparent violation of sovereign immunity. President Trump’s stated intention to direct Venezuelan policymaking for an indefinite period, ostensibly until the country was “stabilized” sufficiently to restore oil production under the auspices of major US corporations, including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and ConocoPhillips, highlighted this imperial posture, openly disregarding the immunity of foreign leaders. Trump retorted uncontrollably, “We are in charge,” when asked who was in charge of Venezuela’s governance.
There is more politically at stake in this drastic reversal of the US Good Neighbour Policy, associated with Latin American diplomacy since 1933 and the presidency of Franklin D Roosevelt, than initially meets even the most discerning eye. This type of cooperative relationships was, of course, repeatedly undermined by Salvador Allende’s victory in Chile and the Castro revolution.
Most knowledgeable observers assumed that the Venezuelan attack was intended to end the regime and install Maria Corina Machado, a staunch supporter of US intervention and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, whose acceptance speech lavishly praised Trump as the candidate with the most merit. The most unexpected development of the intervention has been the bypassing of Machado, and the installation instead of Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as Venezuela’s new president. Washington expressed confidence in Rodriguez’ ability to support US interests, particularly those relating to Venezuelan oil and other resources, and to achieve stability in accordance with US priorities. Trump even claimed that if Venezuela’s president had resisted accepting the Nobel Prize because he deserved it, she would have won.
A more plausible explanation is that Machado lacked sufficient domestic support to stabilise the country, whereas Rodriguez appeared willing to accommodate US economic demands, particularly those relating to control over Venezuela’s resource wealth, while enjoying broader popular support. Instead of a symbolic march into Caracas alongside Machado’s inauguration as Venezuela’s new puppet leader, the “pro-democracy” narrative promoted by US state propaganda gained a limited hold for itself from this continuity of leadership. Executives of significant US oil companies, widely regarded as the main beneficiaries of the intervention, met Trump on January 9 and expressed reservations about restarting operations in response to his concerns about instability following the US takeover.
Clarifying relations between international law and global security
The UN Charter explicitly states that this military operation in Venezuela and its political aftermath are in violation of international law that governs the use of force. Even this ostensibly straightforward assessment has ambiguity. The charter’s institutional design privileges the five victorious powers of the second world war, granting them permanent membership of the Security Council and an unrestricted veto. These nations, which became the first nuclear weapons powers, deliberately tasked with overseeing global security, allowing any one of them to veto any resolution even with a 14-to-1 majority.
Other than the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Security Council is the only political body in the UN with the authority to make binding decisions. The ICJ, however, operates under voluntary jurisdiction, as states may withhold consent to what is known as “compulsory jurisdiction”. The Permanent Five, which are typically dominated by the US or paralyzed by vetoes, have therefore been in charge of managing global security in practice.
In this context, Venezuelan operations should be seen more as an expression of nihilistic geopolitical management than as a signal of the collapse of international law. If so, the appropriate remedy is not simply to strengthen international law, but to strip geopolitical actors of their self-assigned managerial role in global security. Similar to how Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2022 was shaped by NATO provocations that were ineffective, leading to Russia’s own provocative yet egregious violation of Article 2(4).
Any remaining confidence in the Permanent Five’s ability to lead peace, security, or prevent genocide is further undermined by the Venezuelan operation. It therefore reinforces the need to consider alternative frameworks, either by curtailing the veto or by shifting security governance beyond the UN to counter-hegemonic mechanisms, including BRICS, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and emerging South–South development frameworks.
However, it should be kept in mind that international law is still essential and effective in the majority of cross-border interaction areas. Negotiated legal standards are typically respected and disputes are settled peacefully in areas like diplomatic immunity, maritime and aviation safety, tourism, and communications. International law functions where reciprocity prevails, but has never constrained great-power ambition in the domain of global security, where asymmetries of hard power dominate.
Nihilistic geopolitics: the US national security strategy for 2025
It is crucial to review the United States’ National Security Strategy, which was released in November 2025, to understand Venezuela’s place within Trump’s worldview. Trump’s cover letter is suffused with narcissism and contempt for internationalism, including international law, multilateral institutions, and the UN. He states, “We are making peace all over the world because America is strong and respected again.” Such jargon, which is normal in an ordinary person, is alarming when delivered by a leader who controls the use of nuclear weapons. Trump concludes by promising to make America “safer, richer, freer, greater, and more powerful than ever before”.
The NSS repeatedly makes “pre-eminence” the main thrust of US foreign policy, which must be pursued wherever necessary. The Venezuelan intervention is seen as a follow-up to the US’s involvement in the genocide in Gaza and a potential prelude to larger projects, including control of Greenland and renewed military threats against Iran. Yet the document’s primary focus is Latin America, framed through a revival of the Monroe Doctrine, now reinforced by the explicitly named “Trump Corollary”, colloquially dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine”.
This hemispheric turn abandons Obama and Biden’s post-Cold War ambitions for global US leadership, which used enormous resources to fund failed state-building projects in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Instead, it prioritizes resource extraction, ensuring US corporations have access to oil, rare earths, and minerals, while ignoring NATO and abandoning multilateralism, which are at the root of the US’s most recent decision to secede from a 66 distinct institutional bodies, including the climate change treaty. Venezuela, with its vast oil reserves, strategic location and authoritarian populist government, provided an ideal testing ground — and conveniently diverted attention from Trump’s personal entanglements with Jeffrey Epstein.
In reality, the intervention resembles a coup rather than a regime change, and it is explicitly demanded by the new leadership to pay for political survival. Trump and Marco Rubio, a Cuban exile secretary of state, have openly discussed Venezuela and potential regime change initiatives in Colombia and Cuba. Trump threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro and US forces, who reportedly killed 32 Cuban members of Maduro’s Presidential Guard, with crude threats.
Implications
It remains uncertain whether Delcy Rodriguez’s government will negotiate an arrangement that preserves formal sovereignty while surrendering substantive control. Such a result would lead to the resumption of the UN’s Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, and the reintroduction of a hierarchical hemispheric order. Even in this perspective, Washington’s political and economic preferences are considered in the same way.
International reactions to the assault on Venezuela have been muted, reflecting fear, confusion or perceived futility. Meanwhile, there is more geopolitical rivalry, especially between Russia and China, which raises the possibility of a new Cold War or nuclear conflict. The NSS repeatedly makes clear that US dominance necessitates the inclusion of all extra-hemispheric powers in the area through references to “our Hemisphere”.
The Venezuelan episode thus exemplifies a broader strategy: the rejection of international law, the marginalisation of the UN, and the unilateral assertion of US dominance in the Western Hemisphere, along with potential intervention almost anywhere on the planet, but with immediate relevance to Greenland and Iran.
