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Tag: Nicolás Maduro

Kidnapping a President: How Trump Turned Law into a Weapon and Gave Putin and Xi a Green Light
by Amal Zadok

Trump’s armed kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro is not just another reckless intervention; it is the moment the United States openly abandons the legal order it uses to judge its enemies. One operation in Caracas manages to break core rules of international law, trample the Constitution’s allocation of war powers, and weaponize domestic criminal statutes into a pretext for cross‑border regime decapitation. This is not mere hypocrisy; it is a structural shift toward a world where armed force wears the thin mask of law while tearing out the law’s foundations.

Start with the international plane. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, except in self‑defence against an armed attack or with Security Council authorization. None of those conditions existed: Venezuela had not attacked the United States, there was no imminent armed assault, and the Security Council had authorized nothing. Airstrikes around Caracas and the insertion of US forces to seize a sitting head of state are the paradigmatic use of armed force that the Charter was written to forbid, regardless of how loudly Washington chants “narco‑terrorism” or “democracy.”

The raid also violates the principles of sovereign equality and non‑intervention in Articles 2(1) and 2(7) and in customary international law. Forcibly removing a president and floating the idea that the US might effectively “run” Venezuela is not influence; it is a direct assault on the political independence of a UN member. That is why UN officials and governments well beyond Maduro’s circle have called the action illegal aggression and a “dangerous precedent” for the global order.

Head‑of‑state immunity is the next pillar smashed. Customary international law grants sitting heads of state full personal immunity—immunity ratione personae—from foreign criminal jurisdiction and enforcement measures while they are in office. This shield does not endorse any leader’s morality; it prevents foreign courts and special forces from becoming tools of regime change. By abducting Maduro and hauling him before a New York judge, the United States has effectively claimed that its recognition policy decides who is a head of state and who can be treated as a common fugitive.

The extraterritorial kidnapping itself is a further violation. Even advocates of muscular US power concede that seizing a foreign leader from his own soil without consent is a “flagrant violation” of sovereignty and an unlawful abduction under general international law. Several experts argue that the scale and character of the raid reach the level of an “armed attack,” meaning Venezuela would, in principle, enjoy a right of self‑defence against the United States. In one stroke, Washington transforms the law it invokes into a weapon, while shredding the central norm designed to keep interstate violence in check since 1945.

Inside the United States, the pattern is equally stark. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, and the War Powers Resolution requires prior consultation “in every possible instance” and prompt notification when American forces enter hostilities. Trump’s own officials had previously acknowledged that ground operations in Venezuela would require congressional authorization—and that they did not have it. Yet the raid went ahead as a fait accompli, with Congress informed after the fact and forced to choose between retroactive acquiescence or a politically suicidal confrontation with an emboldened executive.

The UN Charter is also a ratified US treaty and, under Article VI of the Constitution, part of the “supreme Law of the Land.” When a president orders a military operation that plainly contradicts Article 2(4)’s ban on the use of force, he is not just flirting with illegality abroad; he is directing the state to act against a binding treaty that sits at the top of the domestic legal hierarchy. Some constitutional scholars therefore describe the raid as a dual illegality: a violation of international law that simultaneously undercuts the treaty‑supremacy structure of US law itself.

The criminal‑law angle exposes the tyrannical core. Extradition treaties, mutual legal assistance and due‑process guarantees are supposed to govern cross‑border arrests; they do not authorize special forces to “pick up” a foreign head of state at gunpoint because US prosecutors filed an indictment. By leaning on the old Ker–Frisbie doctrine—that illegal abduction does not by itself bar a trial—Trump turns a controversial judicial rule into an executive license for kidnapping. What would obviously be kidnapping, conspiracy and unlawful violence for any private actor is rebranded as “policy” when ordered from the Oval Office.

At that point, “tyranny” stops being rhetorical and becomes descriptive. A leader who can unilaterally launch cross‑border raids, ignore Congress’s war role, violate binding treaties and twist criminal procedure into a shield for his own extralegal violence is not meaningfully bound by law. He is constrained only by raw power and political calculation. That is exactly the model Russia and China have been waiting for Washington to normalize—and Trump has just handed them the script.

Trump has not just broken rules; he has opened a doctrinal Pandora’s box. Moscow can now point to the Maduro operation when it justifies the seizure or assassination of Ukrainian officials as “counter‑terrorism” or enforcement of Russian criminal law. Beijing can frame a lightning move on Taipei as a domestic law‑enforcement action against “secessionist criminals,” citing the American precedent that great powers’ indictments and security narratives override borders, immunity and the UN Charter. The United States spent decades preaching a “rules‑based international order”; in Caracas, it demonstrated that, when the stakes are high enough, what really rules is force wrapped in legal costume.

If this stands, the world slides from an imperfect legal order—full of double standards and selective enforcement—into something harsher and more honest: open season, where each great power hunts in its sphere and cites the others’ crimes as precedent. The kidnapping of Maduro is more than a scandal; it is a template that Russia, China and others will eagerly adapt, armed not only with missiles and special forces, but with the very legal arguments Trump has ripped from their cage—a ready‑made script for twenty‑first‑century tyranny dressed up as law.

References
1. ABC News. (2026). Were the US actions in Venezuela legal under international law?
2. Le Monde. (2026). US attack on Venezuela: What does international law say?
3. The Conversation. (2026). Were the US actions in Venezuela legal under international law? An expert explains.
4. Chatham House. (2026). The US capture of President Nicolás Maduro – and attacks on Venezuela – have no justification.
5. Global Affairs. (2026). International Law and Venezuela’s Maduro.
6. Opinio Juris. (2026). The United States’ Attack Against Venezuela: Might Does Not Make Right.
7. UN News. (2026). US actions in Venezuela “constitute a dangerous precedent”.
8. Justice in Conflict. (2026). Maduro’s Indictment, Head‑of‑State Immunity, and the United States.
9. Huquq. (2026). The Maduro Case and the Fractured Foundations of Immunity.
10. Brookings. (2026). Making Sense of the US Military Operation in Venezuela.
11. CNN. (2026). Trump’s Legal Authority in Venezuela, Explained.
12. Bloomberg. (2026). Did Maduro’s Seizure Violate US and International Law?
13. PBS. (2026). Fact‑Checking Trump’s Claims After U.S. Strike on Venezuela and Capture of Maduro.
14. The New Yorker. (2026). The Brazen Illegality of Trump’s Venezuela Operation.
15. BBC News. (2026). US Sharply Criticised by Foes and Friends Over Maduro Seizure.
16. SBS. (2026). From Russia to Iran, Venezuela’s Allies React to the Capture of Maduro.
17. Time. (2026). How the World Is Reacting to the U.S. Capture of Nicolás Maduro.
18. CNN. (2026). Maduro’s Capture Is a Blow to China. But on Chinese Social Media …
19. CBS News. (2026). How Could Trump’s Move Against Venezuela Impact China, Russia, Iran, Cuba?
20. Völkerrechtsblog. (2026). The U.S. Strikes Against Venezuela and the Credibility of the Anti‑Aggression Norm.
21. ABC (Australia). (2026). The Venezuela Strike Sets a New Low for the World Order.
22. CSIS. (2026). The Maduro Raid: A Military Victory with No Viable Endgame.
23. The New York Times. (2026). Is It Legal for U.S. to “Run” Venezuela After Maduro’s Capture?
24. The Conversation. (2026). Trump’s Intervention in Venezuela: The 3 Warnings for the World.
25. The New York Times. (2026). Global Ripples From Venezuela.
26. Empire Unchained Blog. (2026). Empire Unchained: How the US Capture of Maduro Shattered the Post‑War International Order.
Appendix: Summary of Laws Broken Internally and Externally by Trump in the Kidnapping of Maduro
- UN Charter Article 2(4): Prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state; breached by airstrikes and the cross‑border raid without self‑defence or Security Council authorization.
- UN Charter Articles 2(1) and 2(7) & customary non‑intervention: Require sovereign equality and non‑interference; violated by forcibly removing a sitting president and floating effective US control over Venezuela’s politics.
- Customary head‑of‑state immunity (immunity ratione personae): Grants sitting heads of state full personal immunity from foreign criminal jurisdiction and enforcement; ignored by abducting Maduro to stand trial in a US court.
- Customary prohibition of extraterritorial abduction: Forbids kidnapping persons, especially senior officials, from another state’s territory without consent; violated by the armed seizure in Caracas.
- US constitutional allocation of war powers: Congress’s power to declare war and War Powers Resolution consultation and notification requirements were sidestepped by launching the raid without prior authorization or transparent notification.
- Treaty‑supremacy structure (Article VI of the US Constitution): The UN Charter is binding US law; ordering action that breaches Article 2(4) undermines the supremacy of ratified treaties in the domestic legal hierarchy.
- Extradition and criminal‑procedure norms: Established mechanisms (extradition treaties, mutual legal assistance, due process) were bypassed in favour of a unilateral military kidnapping justified by a domestic indictment.
- Functional domestic criminal norms (kidnapping, conspiracy, unlawful violence): Conduct that would clearly constitute serious crimes for private actors is insulated by presidential power, effectively placing the executive above the law it imposes on others.
©️2025 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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January 8, 2026
Oil for Armageddon: How Washington Is Seizing Venezuela to Fight Its Future War with Iran

The pattern of U.S. moves on Venezuelan oil, combined with the strategic vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz, makes it plausible that Washington is positioning itself for a future confrontation with Iran in which Gulf oil flows could be disrupted, while Venezuelan crude serves as a non‑Hormuz fallback for the U.S. and Israel. The recent U.S. attack on Venezuela, the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and their transfer to New York on narcotics and related charges do not undermine this thesis; they expose how “drug enforcement” has become the legal façade for a resource‑seizure operation aimed at securing oil for a long war scenario.

The scale of Venezuela’s oil treasure

Any geopolitical argument about Venezuelan oil must start with sheer scale. Venezuela today holds the largest proven oil reserves on the planet, with estimates around 300–303 billion barrels, or roughly 17–18 percent of all known reserves, surpassing even Saudi Arabia. In other words, this one Latin American country, within flight distance of Florida, controls more oil underground than the entire United States, which has around 55 billion barrels of proven reserves.

Those reserves are not just large but strategically tempting. Much of Venezuelan crude is heavy, but U.S. Gulf Coast refineries are precisely configured to process heavy and extra‑heavy oil, historically imported from Venezuela and Mexico. In a world where Middle East supplies become uncertain, a political arrangement that gives Washington decisive leverage over the biggest single reserve base in the world is an energy security dream.

From sanctions to open seizure: Maduro in New York

For years, Washington relied on sanctions, asset freezes, and indictments to squeeze Caracas while stopping short of open war. The narco‑terrorism case filed in New York against Maduro and other Venezuelan officials framed the country’s leadership as a criminal cartel, preparing public opinion for more extreme measures. That legal architecture has now been matched by force: U.S. strikes on Venezuela, the capture of Maduro and his wife, and their transfer to New York on drug and criminal charges mark a historic escalation from economic warfare to direct regime decapitation.

Crucially, this escalation has been accompanied by unprecedented candor from Donald Trump about what comes next. He has publicly stated that the United States will “run” Venezuela “for now,” asserted that the U.S. “built” Venezuela’s oil industry in the past, and pledged that American companies will return to “rebuild” and tap its oil reserves—framing this as an open‑ended, effectively indefinite arrangement. In other words, the kidnapping of a sitting president on drug charges is not the consummation of a moral crusade against narcotics; it is the opening move in a new phase where Washington claims the right to administer, and profit from, the world’s largest oil reserves.

Why the Strait of Hormuz terrifies planners

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow maritime corridor between Iran and Oman, the only sea exit for the oil‑rich Persian Gulf. In a typical recent year, roughly 20–21 million barrels of oil per day have transited this passage, about 20–21 percent of total global petroleum liquids consumption and over one‑quarter of all seaborne oil trade.

For decades, U.S. planners have quietly admitted what they seldom say openly: Hormuz is the soft underbelly of the global oil system. Around 80 percent of the crude that moves through it goes to Asian markets like China, India, Japan, and South Korea, but any serious disruption sends benchmark prices soaring and hits Western economies as well. Iran has repeatedly threatened to close or disrupt Hormuz if attacked and has demonstrated its capacity to harass or seize tankers, mine shipping lanes, and launch missiles at regional infrastructure.

In a full‑scale U.S.–Iran or Israel–Iran war, Hormuz does not need to be “completely shut” to cause chaos. Sporadic attacks, insurance spikes, and partial interruptions could remove several million barrels a day from the market for months, triggering price shocks, recession risks, and political backlash in oil‑importing democracies. This is the nightmare scenario for Washington: a conflict it believes is necessary for regional dominance colliding with its own population’s intolerance for sky‑high oil prices and economic free‑fall.

Linking the dots: Venezuelan oil as war insurance

Once the strategic importance of Hormuz is understood, U.S. behavior toward Venezuela stops looking random. Over the last decade, Washington has oscillated between punishing Caracas with sanctions and selectively easing restrictions to allow specific companies to re‑enter the Venezuelan oil sector under tight U.S. licensing. That pattern looked less like moral outrage and more like controlled positioning: weaken the Maduro government politically, while keeping the door open for U.S. and allied corporate access to the oil fields and infrastructure.

The post‑capture phase clarifies that logic. With Maduro removed and Trump openly declaring that the United States is taking indefinite control of Venezuela, Washington has maximal leverage to shape any “transitional” administration, dictate terms to state oil company PDVSA, and secure contracts for U.S. and European majors under the umbrella of American military and legal control. The same legal system that now holds Maduro and his wife on drug charges in New York will be used to claim the moral high ground, while U.S. energy companies are presented as the responsible adults arriving to restore order and “get the oil flowing again.”

To see why this matters for a future Iran war, imagine a scenario in which Iranian mines and missiles reduce tanker traffic through Hormuz by a third for several months. The resulting loss of millions of barrels per day would send global prices spiralling and force consuming states to scramble for alternative supplies. In that context, U.S.‑linked production in Venezuela—now explicitly under a U.S. “run” arrangement with indefinite control—could be ramped up and redirected to cushion the blow for North America and its closest allies. Washington would not be able to replace every lost Gulf barrel, but it would possess a strategic tap that others, especially rival powers, do not control.

Beyond democracy talk: energy security and Israel

Officially, U.S. leaders justify both the earlier sanctions and the latest military operation as a defense of democracy, human rights, and the integrity of the international drug control regime. Yet Washington maintains close partnerships with Gulf monarchies whose political systems are far more autocratic than Caracas at its worst, and Trump himself has pardoned or commuted sentences for U.S.‑linked traffickers and allies, undermining the supposed moral consistency of the “war on drugs.”

Set alongside the explicit promise that the U.S. will now “run” Venezuela indefinitely and unleash its oil potential, the common denominator is not liberal values but strategic oil supply and alignment with U.S. and Israeli military objectives in the Middle East.

Israel’s position is central here. Any large regional war involving Iran will almost certainly involve Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear, missile, or command sites, prompting Iranian retaliation via proxies and potentially via direct attacks on Gulf infrastructure and shipping. Israeli and U.S. analysts openly discuss the risk of Hezbollah rockets, Iraqi militias, and Yemeni missiles converging on U.S. bases, desalination plants, and oil installations in a multi‑front escalation. For Washington, guaranteeing Israel’s ability to wage such a campaign without collapsing Western economies requires pre‑securing alternative oil streams that bypass the vulnerable chokepoints Iran can threaten. Venezuelan crude, moved across the Caribbean and Atlantic to U.S. and European refineries, would be largely immune to Hormuz and Red Sea disruptions.

Seen from this angle, the armed seizure of Venezuela’s head of state on narco‑charges, and Trump’s boast that the U.S. is taking indefinite control of the country, is not just a shocking violation of sovereignty; it is a step in a broader war‑planning architecture. Control over the world’s largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere acts as a form of insurance policy: if Iran makes good on its threats, the U.S. can lean on Venezuelan barrels to stabilize its own market and cushion the shock for its allies.

The logic of pre‑emptive control

Energy planners think in decades, not news cycles. The fact that most Hormuz flows currently go to Asia does not reduce the strategic risk for the United States; it amplifies it, because China and India could leverage their access—or their sudden loss of access—to reshape global power balances during a crisis. If the U.S. is preparing for a world where confrontation with Iran, and by extension with Iran’s partners, becomes more likely, then securing a hemispheric oil fortress in Venezuela becomes rational from a cold strategic standpoint.

By tightening sanctions, escalating to military strikes, physically removing the elected president under a cloud of drug charges, and now declaring indefinite U.S. control of the country, Washington builds a future in which any government in Caracas—friend, foe, or “transitional”—must negotiate oil policy under the shadow of American legal, military, and financial power. The goal is not merely to deny revenue to a hostile regime but to ensure that, when the next major war in the Middle East breaks out, those 300‑plus billion barrels sit within a system of contracts, infrastructure, and shipping lanes Washington can rapidly mobilize. In that scenario, Venezuela ceases to be a sovereign energy actor and becomes, in effect, a strategic fuel depot for a distant conflict in the Persian Gulf.

References

1.Al Jazeera. (2025, September 4). Venezuela has the world’s most oil: Why doesn’t it earn more from exports?

2.BBC News. (2026, January 3). What we know about Maduro’s capture and US plan to “run” Venezuela.

3.CBS News. (2026, January 3). U.S. strikes Venezuela and captures Maduro; Trump says U.S. will run the country.

4.CNN. (2025, June 23). What is the Strait of Hormuz and why is it so significant?

5.CNN. (2026, January 4). Maduro in U.S. custody after surprise Venezuela operation.

6.Fox Business. (2026, January 2). Trump pledges U.S. return to Venezuela oil industry after Maduro capture.

7.Fox News. (2026, January 3). Nicolás Maduro arrives in New York after capture; faces U.S. drug charges.

8.NPR. (2026, January 3). What are the charges against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro?

9.NPR. (2026, January 3). Maduro faces drug charges in U.S. even as Trump freed other traffickers.

10.U.S. Department of Justice. (2025, February 4). Nicolás Maduro Moros and 14 current and former Venezuelan officials charged with narco‑terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking and other criminal charges.

11.ABC News (Australia). (2026, January 3). Donald Trump says US will run Venezuela for now after capture of Nicolás Maduro.

12.Los Angeles Times. (2026, January 3). Trump says U.S. will “run” Venezuela after capturing Maduro in audacious attack.

13.PBS NewsHour. (2026, January 3). A timeline of U.S. military escalation against Venezuela leading to Maduro’s capture.

14.The New Yorker. (2026, January 3). The brazen illegality of Trump’s Venezuela operation.

15.U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2023, November 20). The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint.

16.U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2025, June 15). Amid regional conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains critical oil chokepoint.

17.Worldometers. (2024, October 31). Venezuela oil reserves, production and consumption.

18.World Population Review. (2025, December 17). Oil reserves by country 2025.

19.Newsweek. (2026, January 3). Map shows how Venezuela’s oil reserves compare to the rest of the world.

20.Institute for Energy Research / IEA. (2024). Strait of Hormuz factsheet.

©️2025 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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January 5, 2026
Narco-Fable or Oil Colony? How Washington Turned Maduro into a Pretext to Seize Venezuela

by Amal Zadok

The New York narco‑terror indictment against Nicolás Maduro is not about protecting Americans from cocaine; it is the legal cover for a U.S. bid to seize control of Venezuela’s oil and run the country as a protectorate. Trump has said it plainly: the United States will “run” Venezuela, U.S. corporations will pour in “billions” to rebuild its energy sector, and they will take the wealth “out of the ground” so the operation “costs us nothing.” This is not drug policy. It is looting dressed up as law.

The official story is a familiar Washington thriller: a rogue “narco‑dictator” plotting with guerrillas to flood U.S. streets with cocaine, forcing a reluctant empire to act. Yet U.S. and UN drug‑trade data tell a very different story. Venezuela is, at most, a side corridor in the hemispheric cocaine economy, while the overwhelming flows of narcotics into the United States come through the Eastern Pacific, Central America, and Mexico.

Serious monitoring has long estimated that only around 5–10 percent of Colombian cocaine transits Venezuela in a given year, while roughly 90 percent of U.S.‑bound cocaine uses Western Caribbean and Eastern Pacific routes dominated by Mexico‑based cartels. Some analyses of documented maritime shipments show that in a recent year barely 8 percent of sea‑borne South American cocaine departed via Venezuela and the southern Caribbean, with the rest hugging Pacific and Central American routes north. DEA threat assessments accordingly focus on Mexican cartels and synthetic opioids, often relegating Venezuela to a marginal note, if they mention it at all. The data destroy the U.S. case: the “narco‑state” narrative is not a description of reality but the script for an intervention.

If the real goal were saving American lives from drugs, the targets are obvious. The fentanyl that is killing tens of thousands of Americans is overwhelmingly produced by Mexican organizations using chemical precursors sourced from Asia, not air‑dropped over the Caribbean by Venezuelan generals. Cocaine destined for U.S. cities overwhelmingly travels through Pacific and Central American routes controlled by Mexico‑based cartels, not through a marginal Atlantic detour. Yet Washington chose to bomb Venezuela and abduct its head of state, not to blockade Mexican cartels or meaningfully disrupt precursor supply chains. That choice betrays the truth: this is not a war on drugs. It is a war on a government sitting atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and a warning to any state that dares to challenge U.S. energy dominance.

The indictment itself exposes the weakness of the narco‑fable. It relies heavily on cooperating witnesses, sensational claims about a “Cartel of the Suns,” and a few notorious cases, such as the conviction of the “narco‑nephews” related to Maduro’s wife, while glossing over the basic fact that Venezuela neither grows coca nor manufactures synthetic opioids. No serious analyst denies that Venezuelan officers and officials have dipped their hands into trafficking; corruption inside the state is real and corrosive. But scattered corruption does not a hemispheric hub make, and the attempt to inflate every crooked colonel into proof of a unified state conspiracy reveals more about prosecutors’ ambition than about the actual geography of the drug trade. The “narco‑state” label functions less as an empirical category and more as a magic word, unlocking sanctions, military deployments, and—now—regime change.

The military operation against Maduro shows just how convenient that label is. U.S. forces and allied actors executed a near‑perfect decapitation strike: seize the president, fly him to New York, and leave the rest of the machinery standing. If Venezuela were truly an intolerable “narco‑dictatorship,” one would expect the supposed cartel‑state to be dismantled, the institutions “liberated” from their criminal capture, and the security forces re‑founded. Instead, the same authoritarian, corrupt structures remain in place—only now they operate under a new balance of power, with Washington openly boasting that it will oversee the country’s transition and economy. The dictatorship has not fallen; it has changed landlords.

Corruption, far from being eradicated, is the lubricant of this new arrangement. The very fact that elements of the Venezuelan armed forces and political class could be bought or persuaded to hand over Maduro is evidence that the regime’s moral rot is intact. Washington did not come to cleanse that rot; it came to use it. A pliable officer corps, a bureaucracy trained in clientelism, and a security apparatus habituated to repression are not obstacles to a foreign power—they are assets. They allow an outside actor to decapitate a leader, slap the label “transition” on the operation, and continue business as usual with a few new faces at the top and new signatures at the oil ministry.

Trump’s own words remove any remaining doubt about what “business as usual” means. He has bragged that the United States will “run” Venezuela until a satisfactory transition occurs, that U.S. oil majors will invest the “billions” needed to restore production, and that Venezuelan crude will pay for the intervention. Major outlets report officials discussing how American companies will help “restore” output and export Venezuelan oil to global markets, including to rivals like China. In the same breath, Trump has floated the idea that “the hemisphere is in play” and hinted that Washington is reclaiming “what was ours in the past.” This is not the language of partnership or sovereignty. It is the language of empire recovering a lost concession, with oil contracts in one hand and an indictment in the other.

Inside the United States, the way this was done reveals a parallel slide toward authoritarianism. Trump acted without a formal declaration of war, without robust congressional debate, and with legal rationales that stretch the notion of self‑defense to the breaking point. In effect, one man, backed by the permanent national‑security apparatus, decided to overthrow a foreign government, occupy its territory in all but name, and hand its key industry to private corporations—all while presenting this as law enforcement. Washington condemns Maduro as a dictator even as it normalizes the presidential prerogative to wage undeclared wars of regime change. If dictatorship means unchecked executive power fused with militarism and economic plunder, the finger does not point only south.

The media chorus has largely gone along, amplifying the narco‑fable and muting the resource grab. Major outlets have repeated, with minimal scrutiny, claims that Venezuela is a central cocaine menace, even when drug‑trade experts cited in the same stories note that the evidence does not support such a dramatic role. Critical voices and UN‑linked analyses showing Venezuela’s marginal place in the global cocaine map have been pushed to the margins, treated as technical quibbles rather than as the demolition charges they are under the official narrative. When the facts and the story diverge, the story wins—backed by bombs, not by data.

Strip away the propaganda and what remains is brutal simplicity. A superpower has used exaggerated and selectively framed drug charges to remove a hostile leader, keep his authoritarian machinery, and seize practical control over a vast pool of oil. Maduro, an undeniably authoritarian and corrupt figure, has been transformed into the necessary demon for a larger project: the normalization of twenty‑first‑century colonialism under the banner of the “war on drugs” and “democratic transition.” The question is no longer whether Maduro deserved to face justice—Venezuelans themselves had long reasons to oppose him—but whether the United States has any right to turn a country into a protectorate because its president is unpopular in Washington and its oil fields are attractive to Chevron.

A president who boasts that he will “run” Venezuela and reclaim “what was ours in the past” is announcing a doctrine of permanent devouring, one in which Latin America is reduced again to a buffet of oil, gas, minerals, and cheap labor for a power that has been quietly pushed out by the big‑league players in Europe and Asia and now turns back to its “backyard” in search of easy prey. As U.S. influence erodes in Brussels and Beijing, the temptation grows to reassert dominance where the costs seem lower and the resistance more fragmented: will it be Mexico, eternally vilified as a fentanyl factory; Colombia, treated as a forward operating base rather than a sovereign nation; Brazil, with its Amazon and pre‑salt oil; or lithium‑rich Bolivia, already punished once for daring to industrialize its own wealth? A president who bombs first and never bothers to ask Congress has sketched a roadmap in which borderlines are negotiable but corporate concessions are sacred, and at some point the question ceases to be whether one man in Caracas deserved to fall and becomes whether an entire region is prepared to live forever as a colony of a superpower that no longer even pretends to respect its own constitution when it goes to war.

References

1.Evrim Ağacı. (2025, September 2). UN report contradicts US claims on Venezuela drugs.

2.U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. (2024). National Drug Threat Assessment.

3.Washington Office on Latin America. (2021). Beyond the narcostate narrative: What U.S. drug trade monitoring data says about Venezuela.

4.USA Today. (2025, December 9). Trump says Venezuela traffics lethal drugs into US. Experts disagree.

5.Al Jazeera. (2025, October 24). The US warships off Venezuela aren’t there to fight drugs.

6.NBC News. (2026, January 3). Trump says U.S. will govern Venezuela until there’s a “proper transition”.

7.Al Jazeera. (2026, January 3). Trump says US will “run” Venezuela after Nicolas Maduro seized.

8.Vox. (2026, January 3). Trump says the US is going to “run” Venezuela. What does that mean?

9.Reuters. (2026, January 3). Trump says US oil companies will spend billions to restore Venezuela’s crude output.

10.The Hill. (2026, January 3). Trump says US will “run” Venezuela, control oil production.

11.U.S. Department of Justice. (2025). Nicolás Maduro Moros and 14 current and former Venezuelan officials charged with narco‑terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking, and other criminal offenses.

12.Transparencia Venezuela. (2024). Drug trafficking in Venezuela 2024.

13.Chatham House. (2026, January 2). US to “run” Venezuela after Maduro captured: Early analysis.

14.Al Jazeera. (2025, September 4). Is Venezuela the big cocaine menace Trump claims it to be?

15.FAIR. (2025, November 18). Corporate media parrot dubious drug claims that justify war on Venezuela.

16.Statista / IntelliNews. (2025, November 18). Few cocaine shipments head north from Venezuela.

17.UNODC. (2023–2025). Global and transatlantic cocaine reports.

18.Venezuelanalysis. (2025, September 1). Oil geopolitics disguised as “war on drugs”.

19.Military.com. (2025, November 2). Venezuela in 2025: Realities, drug‑transit claims, and international law dimensions.

20.CodePink. (2025, December 14). Trump’s Venezuela drug war gambit and the militarization of the Caribbean.

21.Al Jazeera. (2025, December 4). Meet the US’s drug‑running friends: A history of narcotics involvement.

22.BBC / CNN and related outlets (2025–2026). Coverage of Trump’s capture announcement and regional strategy.

©️2025 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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January 4, 2026